always in my prayers entreating that now, at length, if such be His will, the way may by some means be made clear for me to come to you.

For I am longing to see you, in order to convey to you some spiritual help, so that you may be strengthened;

And I desire you to know, brethren, that I have many a time intended to come to you--though until now I have been disappointed--in order that among you also I might gather some fruit from my labours, as I have already done among the rest of the Gentile nations.

For what if some Jews have proved unfaithful? Shall their faithlessness render God's faithfulness worthless?

And why should we not say--for so they wickedly misrepresent us, and so some charge us with arguing--"Let us do evil that good may come"? The condemnation of those who would so argue is just.

through whom also, as the result of faith, we have obtained an introduction into that state of favour with God in which we stand, and we exult in hope of some day sharing in God's glory.

Why, it is scarcely conceivable that any one would die for a simply just man, although for a good and lovable man perhaps some one, here and there, will have the courage even to lay down his life.

Even as Isaiah says in an earlier place, "Were it not that the Lord, the God of Hosts, had left us some few descendants, we should have become like Sodom, and have come to resemble Gomorrah."

But, some will say, they have not all hearkened to the Good News. No, for Isaiah asks, "Lord, who has believed the Message they have heard from us?"

trying whether I can succeed in rousing my own countrymen to jealousy and thus save some of them.

And if some of the branches have been pruned away, and you, although you were but a wild olive, have been grafted in among them and have become a sharer with others in the rich sap of the root of the olive tree,