1. We should be deeply concerned about their state —
[There were various things which grieved and wounded the Apostle's mind, yea, that occasioned him great heaviness, and continual pangs, like those of a woman in her travail q : he was much affected, not only with the numbers of those that were rejecting his message, but with the peculiar advantages they had for knowing the truth, the strong obligations which their very profession, as God's Israel, laid them under to receive it, and the aggravated guilt under which they must speedily and eternally perish. All these reasons are incom- parably stronger as applied to those, who while they call themselves Christians, are unmindful of the privileges they enjoy. Who can think of the many thousands that bear the Christian name, who yet never draw nigh to God with filial affection, never behold the light of his countenance, never lay hold on his covenant of grace, never stay themselves in truth upon his promised mercy ; who, I say, can think of these, and not wish that his " head were a fountain of tears to run down for them night and day1?" If one soul be of such value, that the whole world can never compensate for the loss of it, how shocking is the thought of millions of souls perishing under such an accumulated load of guilt ! Surely no heaviness can be too great, no anguish too abiding, when we are surrounded with such objects, objects despising their own mercies, and " treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath."]
2. We should account nothing too much to do or suffer for their salvation —
[When God threatened to destroy the whole Jewish nation, and offered to raise up from Moses a nation in their stead, Moses begged, that he himself might be blotted out of the list of God's visible church, rather than that tremendous threa-
this interpretation, the Apostle's words are a plain and obvious reason for his excessive grief : for, having been in their situation, and know- ing from bitter experience the evil of it, he could never think of them without the keenest sensations of sorrow and compassion. If the strength of the expression, " I wished myself accursed from Christ," appear to militate against this interpretation, we observe, that the Apostle puts the effect for the cause, that is, the ultimate effect of his aversion to Christ for the aversion itself. A similar mode of expres- sion repeatedly occurs in Scripture. See Isai. xxviii. 15. and xxx. 10. See also Acts xiii. 46. and Rev. ii. 24. where the depths of Satan import what those depths were in reality, and not what the people themselves called them.
i 'OSvvri, compare Gal. iv. 19. r Jer. ix. 1.