l be Delivered from the Bondage of Corruption and Transformed
into the Paradise of God

WHEN man fell creation fell.

It fell because creation in respect to this earth was headed up in
him.

God placed a ban upon it, a restraint of its fruitfulness.

Instead He gave liberty to thorns and briars and poisonous, creeping
things.

You may plant your garden, you may plant your orchard, set your
vines and sow your fields. You may go to sleep and rest and think
your work is done, that nothing remains but to awake again and
receive the looked-for fruit and harvest.

When you do awake you will find the poisonous, creeping things have
climbed over your wall and fence, have glided in among the good
seed, flung their tentacles of death about them and are slowly,
surely strangling the life out of them.

If you would have your garden to grow, your orchard to yield its
fruit, your vineyard to hang out its purple clusters, your harvests
to ripen in the kiss of sun and developing touch of caressing winds,
then you must rise early and toil late. For every acre of worthful
land you must crown your brow with the sweat of unceasing and
exacting toil.

The earth is in bondage. It is held in the close, the gripping and
relentless bonds of corruption.

Everywhere and in all things is the corruption of the dead.

The very air you breathe is dust from the mingled bones of the dead.
The earth is crammed with the dead of man and beast. The grain that
is reaped and the flowers that bloom grow forth from the fatness of
the grave and the impulse of corruption, watered by tears distilled
from the heartache of the generations old who have sorrowed above
that grave and wept and hoped in vain.

Put your ear to the bosom of old mother earth and you will hear a
moaning and lament like unto women in travail who seek to bring to
the birth.

I am told the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
together until now; that it is on the tiptoe of expectation with
neck and head stretched out waiting for the Coming of the Son of God
and all the sons of glory.

O yes! creation in all her borders is crying out for the Son of God
to come.

It is crying out from all its rivers, from the moan of the sea, in
the shiver of earthquake and the rush of the lava tide from the red
throat of the flaming volcano. It is crying out in the heat of
burning deserts, in every pain that is felt, in every tear of
anguish that stains the face and speaks the a