God's glory and
for the fulfilment of great and universal purposes, which are to
radiate out even from us? Wherever St. Paul sees the hand of God in
present experience, at once his mind works back to an eternal will and
therefore also {88} forward to an eternal and adequate result. And
this backward and forward look transfigures the present with a new
glory and a fresh hope. So will it be with us if this same
characteristically Christian way of looking at any apparent movement of
God in the present, in our own souls or in the world outside us,
becomes habitually and instinctively ours. God never acts on a sudden
impulse or without purpose of continuance. Certainly He can be trusted
not to stop and leave things unfinished. When He hath begun any good
work He will assuredly perfect it, if we will let Him.

[1] i. 8.

[2] See Col. i. 19; ii. 9; cf. ii. 3, 'in Christ are all the treasures
of wisdom and knowledge hidden.'

[3] Eph. iii. 19; iv. 13. It is not certain that by Him 'who filleth
all in all' St. Paul does not mean the Father rather than the Son. But
iv. 10 supports the interpretation given above.

[4] Col. i. 19; Phil. ii. 9-11.

[5] And the word rendered 'filleth' may have a middle and not a passive
sense, the idea being perhaps suggested that God 'fills all things for
his own purpose.'

[6] That is, they were 'predestined to an adoption' (Eph. i. 5) which
it is implied they have already received.

{89}

DIVISION I. Sec. 3. CHAPTER II. 1-10.

_Sin and redemption._

[Sidenote: _The depth of sin_]

In the first chapter of the epistle, St. Paul has had before his eyes
the glory of God's redemptive work--the wonder of His purpose of pure
love for the universe through the Church. His imagination has kindled
at the thought of the length, the breadth, the height of the divine
operation:--the length, for it is an eternal purpose slowly worked out
through the ages; the breadth, for it is to extend over the whole
universe; the height, for it is to carry men up to no lower point than
the throne of Christ in the heavenly places. But now he stops to call
the attention of his converts to what we may call a 'fourth dimension'
of the divine operation--its depth. How wonderfully low God had
stooped, in order to reach the point to which man had sunk! The
Asiatic Christians are bidden to ponder anew, and by {90} contrast to
their present experience, the life which they had once lived before
t