upon which he set his heart is lost-who, differently reckoning from Paul, reckons himself an outcast from hope and happiness because of the clouds that sit on this temporary scene-He may try may try himself by these marks, and learn how little indeed it is that he lives by the power of a coming world-learn how, after all, when his faith is brought to a really practical test, it is found most wofully to fail him --and, more especially learn, how possible it is to have quite the form of sound words, and to have all the notions and phrases of the evangelical system, without being impregnated with that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

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LECTURE LVI.

ROMANS, viii, 19–22.

"For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope; because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."

VER. 19-21. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope; because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.'

To understand these verses let it first be adverted to, that the term here translated creature signifieth also creation; and so might comprehend all animate and all inanimate things. It is true, that the inanimate are not capable of hope; and this feeling perhaps should not be extended beyond the members of the human family-though, certain it is, that, amongst the inferior tribes of living creatures, there is also, in some partial degree, the same rest

lessness, the same dissatisfaction with present things, the same desire of things better, and perhaps even the same tendency of wish and expectation towards them, that are so palpably evident of ourselves and all the fellows of our species. And then of mute and insensible things it holdeth true, that, though they cannot hope, they at least wait a restoration. We cannot ascribe to them, without an effort of poetry or of personification, the posture of looking forward to that day of their coming enlargement, when they shall be emancipated from the distress and imprisonment in which they are now held-But still when we include them in the description of these verses, we commit no greater violence upon the literalities of sober and prosaical truth than is done in other parts of Scripture— when all nature is summoned to an act of attendance upon God-when the voice of praise is heard by the ear of fancy as arising to heaven from the mountains and the forests, and the valleys are made to sing, and the little hills on every side to rejoice -when on the approach of its Maker, the whole creation is represented as vocal-when the fields are called upon to break forth into gladness, and the floods to clap their hands. These all are now waiting such an advent and such a jubilee as this; and there is no great stretch of the imagination, when the apostle affirms that they all now hope for a futurity, at which when it becomes present the Psalmist figures them to rejoice.

The next remark that we shall offer for the elu

cidation of these verses is, that the middle clause of the 20th verse should be thrown into a parenthesis. The main assertion of this verse is, that the creature was made subject to vanity in hope; and we are told by the way that it was so made subject unwillingly, or without its own consent. It was not for example by any wilful act of theirs, that animals were made subject to death. There could be no willingness on the part of the ground, in that act of which its curse was one of the consequences. It could be from no fault of the will in nature, that she was visited with that sore distemper, under which she now labours; and whereof she giveth palpable symptom in the volcano, and the earthquake, and the storm, and that general conspiracy of all her elements against which man has to fight and to fatigue himself his whole life long-that he might force out a subsistence, and keep footing through a history that is made up of little better than to drudge and to die.* It was not of its own willingness that the creation was thus brought under the power of vanity, but by reason of him who

* A few of the following passages had been transferred twelve years ago, from the author's MS. Lectures on the Romans to his preparations on Natural Theology, and have since been printed from p. 389 onward of vol. ii. of his work on that subject. Nevertheless they are still retained here though in a different connection; and to ourselves at least it is interesting to feel, that the same process of reflection which suits the dimness of nature anterior to the light of Christianity, is alike suitable to our present state, while we yet see through a glass darkly and anterior to the disclosures of our future immortality.

subjected the same. There are some who understand this of the great tempter, who, by seducing man from his obedience, brought death into our world and all its woe. Others understand him who yielded to that temptation, our first parent, at whose fall a universal blight came upon nature and she is now become a wreck of what she was—still lovely in many of her aspects, though in sore distress—still majestic and venerable, though a venerable ruin -appearing as if out of joint; and giving token by her extended deserts, and the gloom of her unpeopled solitudes, and her wintry frown, and her many fierce and fitful agitations, that some mysterious ailment hath befallen her.

So that the whole passage may be thus paraphrased. The creation is now waiting, as if in the attitude of earnest expectancy, for that era-when, transformed into a new heavens and a new earth, it shall become a suitable habitation for those who are declared and manifested to be the sons of God. For creation, then to be so gloriously restored, has for a time been made subject to vanity not willingly, on the part at least of any who now live, but by reason of him who by his fatal disobedience hath brought it into this bondage-yet is it a bondage that is mingled and alleviated with hope; and that too a warranted hope, because creation shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption: And emancipated from those fetters which now bind and burden and make it impracticable and ungracious, it will come forth in smiles that shall be perennial