'Tis God gives skill, But not without men's hands : He could not make Antonio Stradivari's violins Without Antonio.*
(2) The other road of progress is the spiritual. On that road the pace is slower, the results more unequal, and there are intervals of heart-breaking failure and retrogression. The spiritual pro- gress has never preserved in past centuries a steady and equal pace. No period of twenty years has ever equalled the grand outpouring of life of the first twenty years after the Eesurrection. But the law has always been the same. Churches have pros- pered when peopled by faithful men; they have languished or died when faith has languished and sin has paralysed the will. " The river of grace," says E^nelon, " never runs dry, it is true ; but it often changes its course to water new districts, and leaves in its old channel nothing but arid sands. Faith will never be extinct ; but it is not tied to any of the places which it enlightens,
^ F. G. Peabody. ' Arch. Alexauder.
ROMANS VIII. 19 41
it leaves behind it a frightful night to those who have despised the day, and it carries its rays to purer eyes."
*Tis weary watching wave by wave,
And yet the tide heaves onward; We climb, like corals, grave by grave,
That pave a pathway sunward. We're driven back, for our next fray
A newer strength to borrow; And where the vanguard camps to-day,
The rear shall rest to-morrow.
Though hearts brood o'er the past, our eyes
With smiling features glisten; For, lo ! our day bursts up the skies !
Lean out your souls, and listen ! The world is following freedom's way,
And ripening with her sorrow. Take heart! Who bears the cross to-day
Shall wear the crown to-morrow.^
IL
The Eevbaling of the Sons of God.
1. Who are the sons of God ? The Apostle has just told us : " As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." The sons of God, then, are simply the people led by God's Spirit — people lifted by God, that is to say, into the higher capacities of their own spiritual life; and for such people, he announces, the whole creation waits. Without them the universal evolution pauses in its course. So runs his extraordinary state- ment of the method of creation. When we translate it into our ways of speech, the point seems to be this : the movement of the universe goes on its way from the beginning to a certain point under mechanical laws, fit for material things. Causes and effects, attractions and repulsions, heat and light and the rest — these have their way in moulding the world. But at a certain point the elements of evolution become changed; they become human, spiritual, personal. The problem of the universe is no longer to mould and harden a world — it is to unfold and quicken the higher faculties of man ; and for this new work of God a new
* Gtonld Mwaej.
42 AN EXPECTANT CREATION
necessity appears — the help of man. Not God Himself can develop the possibilities of human institutions and human characters except through the instrument of human beings themselves. It is through them that God, in the higher ranges of His method, works. His ends are not reached by such laws as could create or maintain the world ; they are reached through His sons.
^ Of all luggage man is the hardest to move. He won't move unless he will.^
^ Our natural Will is to have God, and the Good Will of God is to have us ; and we may never cease from willing nor from longing till we have Him in fulness of joy ; and then we may no more desii^e.*
2. And what does St. Paul mean by the revealing or manifestation of the sons of God ? He explains this in the 23rd verse. It is their adoption, or rather the perfecting of then* adoption, their being clearly proved the sons of God by the redemption of their whole nature. The inner Divine Life must grow within, and transfuse and shine through their earthly life by the sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost, as the flame shines through the slides of the lantern. " Add to your faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to knowledge temperance ; and to temperance patience ; . . . and to brotherly kindness charity " (2 Pet. i. 5 ff.). Christlike graces are to be cultivated, a Christ- like character is by obedience and by Divine help to be formed, until the sonship to God is clearly manifested, the transfiguration of human nature from glory to glory completed. This, then, is the end for which creation waits, earnestly expecting man's growth in holiness, or, in other words, his being shown forth in fact as a true son of the Heavenly Father.
I saw thee once, and nought discern'd
For stranger to admire ; A serious aspect, but it burn'd
With no unearthly fire.
Again I saw, and I confess'd Thy speech was rare and high;
And yet it vex'd my burden'd breast. And scared, I knew not why. * S D. Gordon. * Julian, the Ancliores*.
ROMANS VIII. 19 43
I saw once more, and awe-struck gazed