overlooked ; and that is, that God still regards the Jews as to a certain degree, his peculiar people ; and that, notwithstanding their degradation and depravity, there is a holiness about their whole nation, and a halo, as it were, around the head of every individual belonging to it. The offering of the first-fruits to the Lord sanctified the whole harvest ; and the offering of a cake of the first of the dough sanctified the whole lump*. Thus the consecration of the patriarchs to Jehovah conferred on all their posterity a relative kind of holiness : and still more did the separation of Abraham unto the Lord, as " the root" of that elect people, impart a federal holiness to all the branches that should ever spring from it. This relative or federal holiness attached to the whole nation ; to the ten tribes, as well as the tribes of Judah and Benjamin : and it adhered to the Jews during their captivity in Babylon, as well as before and after that period. It still continued, also, many years after their crucifixion of their Messiah, and after their privileges had been transferred to the Gentile world. The Apostle, in the words before my text, speaks of it as yet existing : and therefore it must exist at this time, because the reason of the thing exists as much as ever : " If the first-fruit be holy, the lump is also holy ; and if the root be holy, so are the branches." And on this is grounded the admonition to the whole Christian Church, " Boast not against the branches." Now, by marking thus the connexion of our text with the preceding context, we shall see the propriety of noticing the use which we are to make of the rejection of the Jews. This awful dispensation should fill us with,
I. Compassion for them —
There is here, as you will perceive, a fact acknow- ledged—
[" Some, even very many, of the branches have been broken off from the olive-tree which God's right hand had planted : and we Gentiles, who were only a wild olive-tree,
a Lev. xxiii. 10 — 17. and Numb. xv. 19 — 21.