ing effect stage by stage in the case of
each one of us whom God has made members of His elect body. The
following is a paraphrase.

{299}

The sufferings in which this present situation involves us Christians
are quite inconsiderable by comparison with the heavenly glory which is
destined to be disclosed and to include us. The sense of this glorious
future pervades the whole creation. Nature is like some on-looker at a
spectacle craning the neck to see what is coming. She is waiting for
the final disclosure of the children of God in their true position;
knowing that she too--as a new heaven and a new earth--will share that
glorious future. At present her powers are continually frustrated;
failure is everywhere; the law of corruption is upon her like a
bondage. This curse she was subjected to, through no will of her own,
by the simple fiat of her Creator--but not for ever: she was left to
hope for deliverance from this bondage into a state of freedom--a
share, that is, in the freedom which is to belong to the final glory of
the children of God. With this in mind we can bear the universal
spectacle of pain. What we have always heard hitherto, wherever we
have lent our ear all through nature, has been groans; but they are the
groans as of a woman in travail: and in these groans we, God's chosen
people, though we already possess the first instalment of the divine
Spirit, {300} the pledge of what is yet to come--in these groans we
bear our part, and also in the hope that accompanies the groaning. We
groan expecting to realize our sonship, as that can only be realized
when body as well as soul is redeemed from all evil. Hope is thus the
very condition on which we received our spiritual deliverance when we
became Christ's. And hope means nothing else than a condition of
expecting good things not yet in sight. It means the readiness to
endure till they come.

And there is another reason why we should be glad to bear our present
sufferings. It is because, though we are weak in ourselves, we are not
left alone. Of ourselves we should be bewildered and not know even
what we ought to ask God to give us. But we have in the Spirit who
dwells in us a divine advocate and intercessor. His intercession makes
itself perceptible to us in groaning desires after a better condition,
desires which cannot be put into words, but which are intelligible
enough to God. He who searches the hearts interprets the longings we
cann