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LECTURE LVII.

ROMANS, Viii, 23-25.

"And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstwithin ourselves,

groan

fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it."

VER. 23. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.'

It is the turn of expression here, the introduction of even we ourselves '-as additional to and apart from all that he had asserted before, in regard to the intense and even painful expectancy of nature for its coming enlargement-it is this which, more than any other, convinces us of the amplitude that there is in the apostle's contemplations; and we are satisfied that we only follow in his track, when we affirm of creation at large, the agony and the suspense and the brooding anticipations that we have ascribed to the general species, and have even extended in some sense to the irrational creatures, nay to mute and inanimate things. The apostle seems to pass from this wider speculation to the present state of his own limited society-to draw

himself in as it were from the world to the church, whom he represents as in like manner labouring. Even with them too, there is a present draw-back from that full and final blessedness that awaits them there is hope far more specific and sure, than that which floats and dazzles so indistinctly upon the vague imagination of those who are without; but still it is a hope subject to the deduction while they remain in the world of a remaining vanity-there is an evident composition of two ingredients, one of them the Spirit whereof they have received already the first-fruits, but the other of them a vile body that is still in a bondage from which it has not yet been fully redeemed or emancipated-Insomuch that, under a sense of its thwarting and oppressive presence, there is the feeling, and even the exclamation of a sore agony. The reader will not fail to recognise in this passage, the very lamentation that is uttered elsewhere "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me

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from the body of this death.' "Our life at present is hid with Christ in God, and when Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory." "For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven." For we that are

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in this tabernacle do groan being burdened-not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." "Now he that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the ear

nest of the Spirit." It is when thus clothed upon that "our vile bodies are changed and fashioned like unto the glorious body of Christ."

These passages all harmonise, in the account they give of the present state of believers in our world. In spite of the enlargement they have gotten, it is still a state of durance. They have not yet had the Spirit without measure, but only the firstfruits of it. They have not yet been delivered from the presence of an evil nature. It is only overruled, not exterminated. It is only under watch and under warfare-yet not stript of its power to fatigue and to annoy. The life of a Christian differs as much from that of another man-as the smart of the wounds that are inflicted in a battle for freedom, differs from the smart of the wounds that are inflicted upon captives or slaves by the lash of an overseer. But then it also differs as much from that which it will be-as the strenuousness and hazard and agony of the day of conflict, differ from the rest that is enjoyed, and the triumphs which are felt, and the music that is lifted up, and the smiles of gratulation and high contentment that are exchanged from one happy countenance to another, on the day of victory. There is no respite from the warfare on this side of death. A larger supply and manifestation of God's Spirit will not even secure it to us-for while it arms with new power against the enemy within, it also endues us with new and powerful sensibility to the now diminished but still more hated remainders of evil than before.

So

that the final release will not be enjoyed till death, and even then perhaps it will amount to little more than rest from our labours. The final triumph will not be till the resurrection, when the body shall again be called forth from the tenement in which it long hath mouldered; and the corrupt principle shall by the mysterious transformation of the grave be fully disengaged from it; and that framework, every vestige of which was before obliterated, shall put on its ancient form, but be thoroughly freed of that moral virus which now so thoroughly and so intimately pervades it; and its reappearance from the land of its present captivity will indeed be to it a redemption of joy-achieved by Him, who, in giving up His own body, gave up the price of their glorious immortality in behalf of all who believe on Him.

You perceive how it is, by the very nature of the case, that there can be no deliverance to the Christian from the agony of a conflict, and from a sense of soreness, and heaviness and discomfort, on this side of death. For there passeth no such transformation upon his body, as to change it from the state and character of being a vile body-for it so remaineth till the departure of the last breath from it. The whole of what the New Testament describes as the old man, or the carnal man, is alive even unto the moment of our earthly dissolution-enfeebled, no doubt, by the habit of frequent thwarting and mortification to which it hath been subjectedkept more effectually under, in proportion to the

growth and energy of the rival principle, that is fostered by prayer, and strengthened by exercise, and placed after every new victory on the vantage-ground of a higher ascendancy than before over all the rebellious appetites of our ungodly and accursed nature. Yet, in spite of all this prosperity, there is a felt annoyance; and to which the mind becomes more painfully and sensibly alive, as it advances into a meetness for the inheritance of the saints. For if a disciple be making genuine progress-Then, along with the triumph of this which bears him up on the one hand, there is a tenderness that keeps him down on the other; and that because of the remaining evil which still lurks and lingers in his moral constitution, less than before but better seen than before of a milder taint, but now looked at with a purer eye, now reflected on with a deeper humiliation. And thus a And thus a burden upon his spirit which the world cannot sympathise with; and a deeper groaning within, even while to all without the graces of his character are brightening into a more vivid lustre than before-a greater annoyance from one quarter, along with a greater hope and satisfaction from another, and that because his selfacquaintance is growing, and his sensibility is growing: And thus it is that he longs more earnestly as he proceeds, for the entire repose of perfect godliness and purity and love-for a thorough extinction from his moral system of all that evil by which it is still pervaded, and is the more offensive to him. just as he becomes more ethereal and heavenly than

VOL. III.

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