heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ :" but on this condition; “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him."

For (the apostle continues) this necessity of present suffering as a preparation for glory is nothing exceptional in the Universe of God. The whole Creation teaches the same truth: its present state is that of earnest expectation of a future day, when the sons of God shall be revealed. All nature is created subject to 'vanity," to an irresistible tendency to change, deterioration, and decay; and therefore is, as compared with things eternal, unreal and unsatisfying, "vanity and vexation of spirit."* The cause of this condition of all natural things is not through any will of its own, for nature itself abhors, and as far as possible resists and flies from death, and all the suffering and sorrow that accompany death. But God, the Creator, has Himself ordained this to be the present state of Nature, for the fulfilment of * cf. Eccles. i. et passim.

His own purposes; and, specially, in view of the hope that all creation will be in due time delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Meanwhile the creation is filled with this groaning under the bondage of decay, with pains and sorrows as of a woman travailing with child, till the hour of deliverance shall come. Nor are God's children, because they have received that Holy Spirit which is the first fruits of the inheritance of glory, exempt from the sorrows which fill all Nature with cries of distress. For besides the sufferings that proceed from the present condition of the natural world, they feel also (as the apostle explained in the preceding chapter), the heavy burden of a body which is dead by reason of sin, and in the members of which a law of sin is still working. And therefore they, above all others, feel painfully the misery of this present state, and look forward with earnest expectation to the time when their adoption as sons of God shall be made manifest, and this mortal body

transformed into the likeness of the glorious body of their Redeemer.

The apostle makes three comments on this exposition of the relation between present sorrows and future glory, each of which has great practical value in reference to our work for God being through suffering.

First, it is necessary that our future inheritance of glory through Christ should be obscured at present, because hope is that spiritual power in the soul by which we are saved; and who "hopeth for that which he seeth? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”

Again, although the Spirit which is given us as the earnest of our future inheritance, does not preserve us from the natural evils which there are in the world; but on the contrary rather increases our sense of its miseries, by making us feel the evils of sin in ourselves; yet He, who is the Spirit of God, Himself helps our infirmity. The groanings of the child of God under these burdens are the Spirit's own inter