3. We have missed much in Christian thought by separating man as we have done from the great living creation around him. The poet went out to meet the sunrise with his eyes wide open, and he came back with a shining face and wonder streaming out of his eyes, and he sang, and would not be denied, of a speaking heart of creation that had responded to his own. The breezes had been whispering to him, the flowers had smiled upon him, the brooks had been chattering weary legends of the past, the gi-eat sun had been laughing the sorrow out of his soul, and he had caught a great eternal message, which showed that Nature and he were one. We easily tolerated the poet and listened to his pleasant voice, though we thought his words were wild, and even detected a gleam of insanity in his gaze. But now God is forcing us out of our useless isolation to realize that we are not isolated souls living in a nameless void, but a living and integral part of this splendid creation, that we live in it and it lives in us, that in some real sense it shares our travail and shall share our glory.
Not from his fellows only man may learn Eights to compare and duties to discern ! All creatures and all objects, in degree, Are friends and patrons of humanity.
32 AN EXPECTANT CREATION
There are to whom the garden, grove, and field,
Perpetual lessons of forbearance yield ;
Who would not lightly violate the grace
The lowliest flower possesses in its place;
Nor shorten the sweet life, too fugitive,
Which nothing less than Infinite Power can give.*
ii. Nature sharing the Suffering and the Glory.
1. Creation is represented as waiting in earnest expectation for the revelation of the sons of God, that is for their manifesta- tion in glory, as the previous verses show, in which the Apostle speaks of their being glorified with Christ and of the glory that is to be revealed in them ; in comparison with which, he says, present sufferings are of no account. The time of this revelation of the sons of God in glory is the advent of Christ, as explicitly stated in Col. iii. 4: "When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory." The same is indicated also in 1 John iii. 2 : " Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him ; for we shall see him even as he is." Well, for this revelation of the sons of God in glory. Creation, i.e. all nature animate and inanimate, as distinguished from mankind, waits in expectation.
^ Some of you may remember at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our College, how the students marched in a great torchlight procession, with many original transparencies and banners, and how the Freshman Class, then only a month old as students, carried at their head this motto : " The University has been waiting two hundred and fifty years for us." That was very amusing ; but to any one who could read the deeper facts of the University the motto conveyed a profound and solemn truth. All this great, historic, institutional life had been indeed slowly evolved for the sake of these newly-arrived light-hearted boys, and now on their conduct were resting the destinies of the future, and out of their wise uses of their student life were to come our later blessings.^
2. No man will deny that there is a sense, a true and a weighty sense, in which all the lower creation is involved in the Fall of man. Who is there that does not know how much suffering
1 Wordswortli. a F. G. Peabody (Harvard).
ROMANS VIII. 19 ^^
man's sin, man's cruelty, and man's thoughtlessness inflict day by day upon the poor dumb lower animals ? For this is a case in which it is eminently true that " evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart." Who is there that does not know that the dumb creatures suffer because man fell ; that the fact that man is cruel, impatient, thoughtless — in short, sinful and fallen — is the cause of incalculable anguish and suffering to these guiltless beings ? The over-driven horse, urged beyond its speed and strength ; the starved and tortured dog or cat, are witnesses to us, as we walk the streets of any city, that creatures which could not sin are yet involved in that suffering which is sin's sad result.
^ A man got up in a meeting to speak. It was down in Ehode Island, out a bit from Providence. He was a farmer, an old man. He had become a Christian late in life, and this evening was telling about his start. He had been a rough, bad man. He said that when he became a Christian even the cat knew that some change had taken place. That caught my ear. It had a genuine ring. It seemed prophetic of the better day coming for all the lower animal creation. So I listened.^
^ One would almost think that Nature is obliged, by man's sin, to do many things which she would not do if she could help it. Noble means and instruments are perverted to base and sinful ends. The atmosphere is constrained to carry from the speaker's lip to the listener's ear words which are false, which are impure, which are profane. Surely that beautiful, liquid ether was never made for that ! Cannot you almost personify it, and think of it as rebelling against the base use to which sinful man turns it ? Food is constrained to strengthen for sinful deeds. Is it not hard, so to speak, upon the innocent grain, upon the generous grape, that they should be compelled, whether they will or not, to yield their energy to the arm of the midnight murderer, as readily as to the hand that does the deed of mercy ? ^