Go from the east to the west, as the sun and the stars direct thee, Go with the girdle of man, go and encompass the earth. Not for the gain of the gold; for the getting, the hoarding, the having, But for the joy of the deed; but for the Duty to do. Go with the spiritual life, the higher volition and action. With the great girdle of God, go and encompass the earth.
Go; say not in thy heart, And what then were it accom- plished. Were the wild impulse allayed, what were the use or the good! Go, when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accom- plished. What thou hast done and shalt do, shall be declared to thee then. Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit
Say to thyself: It is good: yet is there better than it.
This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little;
Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.^
1 Clough.
An Expectant Creation.
•J
Literature.
Boyd (A. K. H.), The Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, 2nd Ser., 218.
Drummond (J.), Spiritual Religion, 216.
Holland (H. S.), Christ or Ecclesiastes, 85.
Lilley (A. L.), Nature and Supernature, 77,
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Romans, 173.
Manning (H, E.), Sermons, iii. 114.
Martineau (J.), Hours of Thought, i. 191.
Newbolt (W. C. E.), Counsels of Faith and Practice, 144.
Paget (E. C), Silence, 162.
Roberts (R.), My Jewels, 226.
Smyth (N.), Reality of Faith, 266.
Symonds (A. R.), Sermons, 12.
Taughan (C. J.), Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, 325.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), No. 500.
Wilberforce (B.), Following on to know the Lord, 199.
„ Westminster Abbey Sermons, 1.
Cambridge Review, xiii. (1891), No. 315 (Wilson). Christian World Pulpit, xviii. 364 (Beecher) ; xxxix. 113 (Peabody);
xliii. 197 (Durward) ; xlvi. 6 (Abbott), 104 (Wilberforce) ; xlvii.
216 (Medley) ; 1. 4. (Thomas) ; Ixi. 204 (Rawnsley) ; Ixviii. 358
(Story) ; Ixxiv. 346 (Marshall) ; Ixxvi. 248 (Houghton). Churchman^s Pulpit : Fourth Sunday after Trinity, x. 205 (Story), 207
(Hall), 209 (Vaughan). Contemporary Pulpit, 1st Ser., x. 129 (Thomson).
An Expectant Creation.
For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. — Rom. viii. 19.
1. St. Paul realizes the coming of Christ as a power in the world. Christianity is not, with the Apostle, a saving truth, but a saving power, which Christ has brought into the world. Law and peace have come through Him, and the quickening of the mortal body through the indwelling Spirit. Sin is subdued, and men are made " children of God : and if children, then heirs ; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ " (viii. 16, 17). But it is impossible for him not to contrast this ideal of freedom with the continuing sufferings of the present time. The creation is still waiting for a redemption, of which man shall be, in a measure, the instrument. The present suffering may well be borne, through the strength of the hope that is before us. Rising to a sublimer height of diction, the Apostle exclaims that " the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God."
2. We are familiar with the thought of the expectation of Almighty God, of the patient long-suffering with which He waits, " not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." We also know well the exhortation to remember the expectation of the Blessed Ones, who, having finished their own course, gather as a great cloud of witnesses, to observe and long for our success. "Shall we not," cries an old preacher, *' hasten and run that we may see our fatherland ? There a great multitude of dear ones, fathers, brothers, sons, are expecting us, and, saved themselves, are anxious for our salvation." But we are not so familiar with the thought of the expectation of creation as a motive for which we should work out our salvation, " perfect- ing holiness in the fear of God." Mankind is wont to regard
28 AN EXPECTANT CREATION
itself as altogether apart from and above the other creatures of this world, which are apt to assume the humble office of an orna- mental fringe to our lives, or of our lowly and necessary servants. Yet this mistaken view might well have been set right by a recollection of the teachings of the Bible, which show plainly that while man was made to be the head and crown of things earthly, yet, on one side of his being at least, he is brother to all of earth's children.
3. The text, then, might be described as St. Paul's statement of the doctrine of Evolution. Of course it would be quite absurd to claim for the Apostle any clear expression of the modern doctrine. No doubt the universe presents a very different picture to us from any which his mind could see, and it would be foolish to force his words into our modern ways of thought. Moreover, he is in this passage primarily thinking only of his little church at Kome, and giving them rules for their duty and loyalty, or what he calls " the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." And yet, with the mind of a great philosopher — or, rather, with the vision of a great prophet — he is swept beyond the special case before him into the general principle which it involves, and in giving rules to Eome he is led to survey the method of the uni- verse. The whole creation, he says, groans and travails in pain until now, as though it bore within itself the burden of the life that was to follow. It is to him what he calls an expectant creation — a prophetic anticipatory world. In the inanimate world there is, he thinks, a kind of dumb sympathy with the sin and struggle and redemption of man. Its history and process point on to the experience of man. Thus, in a large, poetic way, the uni- verse looks to him like a connected and a growing whole, the life of man finding its prophecy and likeness in the life of things, and the life of the lower creation reaching up at last into the experi- ence of man ; and thus, it may be fairly said, there is at least a curious foreshadowing of ways of thought which have now grown familiar.