4. The expression of these truths is unique, but the truths themselves fall in with the entire scope of Scripture ; and the renovation of the world forms as conspicuous a subject of the prophetic gospel as the renovation of society. It could not be
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otherwise ; for the sympathy of Nature with man is written on the first page of the Bible and on the last. In the spiritual history of Genesis the earth is said to have been cursed for man's sake. In the spiritual vision of the Apocalypse new heavens and a new earth are prepared for redeemed humanity. Meanwhile, the necessity of anxious toil, imposed upon us by the conditions of life in this season of our conflict, is designed by a Father's love for salutary discipline ; and on the other hand, we are encouraged to believe that " the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God " ; waiteth, in due season, to reflect their glory even as they will reflect the glory of their Saviour at His Coming ; waiteth, and yet not in mere idle and passive expectancy, but to receive a blessing towards which it has striven through a discipline of fruitful suffering. For " the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."
Who is the angel that cometh ?
Pain! Let us arise and go forth to greet him :
Not in vain Is the summons come for us to meet him,
He will stay And darken our sun:
He will stay A desolate night, a weary day ; Since in that shadow our- work is done, And in that shadow our crowns are won, Let us say still, whilst his bitter chalice Slowly into our hearts is poured, Blessed is he that cometh In the name of the Lord.
The subject is Creation in Expectation — waiting earnestly for the revealing of the sons of God. Let us consider first the waiting of creation, and then the revealing of the sons of God.
L
The Waiting of Ckeation.
St. Paul, with the eye at once of a poet and of a prophet, dis- cerns in the present scene of created being tokens of a state of expectation. " The creation " is here a word of large import. It
30 AN EXPECTANT CREATION
includes even the irrational, perhaps even the inanimate, portions of God's handiwork on earth. The whole earth in its present state ; the world of nature ; the brute creation, as well as the human creation above and the material creation below it; all indicate a condition of imperfection, of suffering, of decay, all express, unconsciously where not consciously, a sense of want, of deterioration, of distress ; all are, often and in many aspects, not what they would be, not what they were as they came fresh from the organizing hand of God ; all denote, to one who looks on with the sympathy of humanity, much more with the reflection and discernment of one taught of God, a position very far removed from that which once they occupied, from that which they were designed to occupy, from that which they yet must occupy, under the sway of One as infinitely merciful as He is Omnipotent, Omni- present, and Eternal. St. Paul does not hesitate to say that this degenerate, this suffering, this sin-contaminated world, expresses by signs not to be mistaken a longing and a yearning for those times of restitution of all things, those times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord (Acts iii. 19, 21), which shall accompany the fulfilment of the mystery of God (Eev. x. 7). The creation, he says, is watching as with outstretched head for the future un- veiling of the sons of God.
i. Nature and Man.
1. This whole creation of which St. Paul writes is to him not a dead but a living thing. Its movement is not the movement of machinery, but the movement of life. It groans and travails with its desire to fulfil itself. It is, he says, earnestly expectant ; it waits for that which is to come. It is a sympathetic, a patient world. Instead of a blind, purposeless, mechanical process, this man sees a universe with an intention and a desire of its own, bringing forth at last, through the pains which we now call the struggle for existence, the state of things we see. Instead of a world-factory, grinding out with indifference its tides and storms, its plants and animals, and the emotions and ideals of men, he sees a universe working out with expectancy and desire a divinely appointed end. Thus he simply anticipates the whole series of philosophers and poets who have seen in Nature a living and purposeful process, manifesting at each step the presence of one
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comprehensive will. It might have been St. Paul instead of Herbert Spencer who wrote of " the naturally-revealed end toward which the power manifested in evolution works." It might have been St. Paul instead of Tennyson who sang of
One far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves.
2. By a strong figure, the Apostle represents all the universe, even to the dumb brutes, even to the lifeless fields and rocks and trees, as doing what in strict fact only sentient and intelligent man could do — grieving and sorrowing over the prevalence of misery and guilt, and longing for the day when these shall go for ever — awakened to a sense of the moral and physical evil to which it is subject, groaning under the bondage of its own corrup- tion, and sustained only by the hope of a future emancipation into liberty worthy of the creature of God, and of a purification which shall bring it back to the goodness in which it was created at the first.