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I. St. Paul says that "THE CREATION IS SUBJECT TO VANITY," AND IS UNDER "THE BONDAGE OF CORRUPTION." He sees in the creation a good deal of effort that comes to nothing, a waste of power, general imperfection, universal decay.

1. The apostle's description is confirmed by facts. There is an ideal form of beauty for the leaf and blossom of every plant; but no leaf or blossom is quite true to its ideal. The human eye is a very wonderful organ; but it is said that there are most curious faults in it. Man is not the only creature whose growth is often stunted, powers repressed, and glory obscured. Birds and beasts die of famine and in cruel conflict with each other. They are sometimes blind, deaf and lame. Epidemics sweep them away, They are tormented by diseases precisely analogous to our own. Flowers, plants, and trees, spring up in soil which gives them no food, and they die of starvation. They perish from want of rain. They are burnt up by heat. Their fruit fails to ripen for want of sun. They, too, are liable to diseases, which are curiously similar to ours. What makes all these facts the more appalling is that this apparent waste and suffering have been going on for millions of years. St. Paul might have read one of Mr. Darwin's books, for this is what Mr. Darwin has made certain: "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now."

2. But is not the creation God's own workmanship? Do not the heavens declare His glory, and all His works praise Him? Did not St. Paul say that "the invisible things of God," etc.? Yes; and it may be true that there has been more of happiness than of pain. There is "vanity" and "the bondage of corruption" everywhere; and yet Nature is fairer than the poets have ever sung; there are intricacies of skill which transcend all that genius has ever yet discovered; and there is an infinite wealth of goodness, in the presence of which our most fervent gratitude is cold.

3. You have listened to the work of a great master when it has been imperfectly rendered. The chorus just missed a sudden leap of exulting triumph, or they did not sink to the soft hush of harmony, or their voices were too coarse, or the instruments were not quite in tune, or the band and the voices parted company. And yet the genius of the composer shone through it all. Sometimes, too, you have seen on the walls of a church the work of a great artist. The frescoes are falling away from the wall; the canvas is rotting. And yet there are lines and colours which reveal the skill of the immortal painter. These illustrations fail to touch the mystery of the imperfection and pain of the universe; and yet they may suggest the blended dissatisfaction and rapture with which St. Paul thought of the works of God. The things that God has made reveal His eternal power and Godhead; but the creation is subject to vanity by the will of the Creator, and the bondage of corruption is upon all things.

II. BUT ST. PAUL DID NOT BELIEVE THAT THE IMPERFECTION OF CREATION IS TO CONTINUE FOR EVER. IT WAS MADE SUBJECT "IN HOPE," AND IT WILL BE "DELIVERED," etc.

1. As those that are in Christ are to inherit eternal glory, so all created things are to pass into new and higher forms of existence. Speculation, indeed, on this subject has no materials to work upon. "We know not what we shall be"; still less do we know what the glorified creation will be. We may dream of sweeter music, fairer flowers, and nobler fruits, etc., in the new creation than in the old. But all these are dreams. All that we can say is, that we have not seen the last and consummate manifestations of the power and wisdom of the Creator. The great "hope" of the creation has yet to be fulfilled. "Now is the winter of its discontent"; its spring has not yet come; the splendour of its summer is still far off.

2. The birth-throes of which the apostle speaks are an effort of imagination which closely touches some of the theories which we are asked to receive on the authority of scientific proof. We are told that the fierce struggle for existence is the condition of the development of higher and yet higher forms of life. By a law which could not be resisted, the feebler and the less perfect forms of life have been crushed whenever they have come in collision with the nobler and the more vigorous. The birth-throes of nature have extended through all time, and they are not yet over. Through how many more ages the suffering will last, whether it will ever cease, are questions upon which there is no general consent of scientific opinion.

(1) M. Renan dreams that through the operation of this law of development there will at last arise an intellectual aristocracy which will have absolute command of all the resources of the world; that in every country there may be a dozen or a score of men as superior in their intellectual force to the rest of the nation as men are now to brutes; and that, perhaps, eventually the whole force of the weed, all its knowledge, and therefore all its power, may even be concentrated in the hands of a solitary individual, who will have absolute control over the life and fortunes of the race — a god that the human race had developed for itself.

(2) There are others who tell us that the great movement must be at last arrested. The play of the mighty forces which sustain it will cease. There will be equilibrium. The anguish will be over, and with the anguish life, in all its forms, will be no more.

(3) Paul believed that the creation has a glorious future. Christ, "the brightness of the Father's glory," has become man, and has brought all the regenerate members of the race into immortal unity with Himself, so that His glory is certain to become theirs. Man, however, belongs to the visible creation. From the earth we sprang; and we are the children of the earth, though we have been made the children of God. As we are to share the glory of Christ because of our union with Him, the earth is to share our glory because of its union with us.

3. You see, therefore, at what points St. Paul is in agreement with the results of scientific observation, and where he is hostile to philosophical theories which have been hastily erected on a scientific basis.

(1) If the man of science maintains that he discovers signs of imperfection in every living organisation; that the organs of sense are imperfect; that in the lower types of life there are the mere rudiments of limbs which are found in a useful and complete form only in the higher; that in the higher there are survivals of elementary forms of structure which were useful only in the lower; that there is a universal waste of life; that there is an appalling amount of suffering — St. Paul is ready to accept all these facts. The creation is subject to "vanity" and is under "the bondage of corruption." But if the man of science goes on to argue from the imperfections, and failures, and waste in creation, that the universe had no intelligent Creator, St. Paul vehemently persists that with all the imperfection, failure, and waste, there are transcendent manifestations of the Creator's "eternal power and Godhead."(2) If the man of science maintains that all created things have gradually been developed by conflict and pain from lower forms of life, and that the history of the development has been a history of protracted anguish, St. Paul will find in the facts which illustrate this doctrine the most startling confirmation of his own statement that "the creation groaneth and travaileth together till now."(3) If the man of science maintains that the physical nature of man is the result of the same development, so that man on the side of his inferior life belongs to the inferior universe, St. Paul will listen with an open mind, remembering that his own sacred books had taught him that the physical nature of man came from the dust, though nothing had been said of the gradations by which the dust ascended to the dignity and power of the human form. But if the man of science further maintains that the history of man's physical development is a complete account of human nature, St. Paul will again protest vehemently. He will affirm — and the consciousness of the human race supports him — that there is a mysterious power in man which cannot be explained by this process of development. The ascending movement of physical life — if science can establish the reality of the movement — was met by the descent of the power of God, and the living creatures whose organisation had become capable of receiving inspiration from God received it.

(4) If, again, the man of science argues that the groaning and travailing of creation are to end in stagnation and despair, St. Paul protests again and exults in the certainty of the hope that the creation will be delivered at last from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

(R. W. Dale, D.D.)

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KJV: For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

WEB: For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.