FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST.

Groaning and Travailing.

Rom. viii. 18-23. Luke vi. 36—42.

THE Epistle of this day brings before us two beings,each groaning and travailing with a present burden, each expecting a future and glorious deliverance. The one is the "creature"—that is, the world at large, animate and inanimate. The other is the company of those "which have the first-fruits of the Spirit "-that is, the Church of Jesus Christ.

And first, of the Church,-which is not a mere creature, but a begotten son. There is a glory yet to be revealed in us. As in our Lord, at His transfiguration, there shone out a glory hitherto veiled, so is it to be with His members. And as in His transfiguration was seen "the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father," so will ours be the "manifestation of the sons of God." "Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Now is the time of the mystery of God, which is eternal life. But when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed, then shall the mystery be finished. For now we are dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God.

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When Christ, Who is our Life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory."

This is one aspect of our present condition; but in another it is a state of imperfection from which we long to be delivered. "We which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." So in another place the same Apostle writes-"We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened." And as there it is" not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon with our house from heaven," so here it is not redemption from our body which we seek, but of our body. The body is in itself a very precious thing. Without it our minds could have no intercourse with God's universe; we could not see or hear or feel or taste or smell the delights wherewith He has furnished it for Without the body Art would not be, Science would not be; we should have no ideas of beauty, and no materials for knowledge. And so the future for which we look is not one of disembodied bliss. We believe in the resurrection of the body, and then the life everlasting. We seek not to be unclothed. But that with which we are to be clothed upon must be a house from heaven. Our bodies as we now have them are of the earth, earthy. They belong to the creature; and with the creature are subject to vanity, and to the bondage of corruption. Through them comes half the suffering of this present time, and much more than half its sin. The senses, so apt for pleasure, are no less ready for pain. The bodily needs and appetites, unless assiduously satisfied, become as devouring beasts: we dread them as hunger and thirst, cold and weariness. The mind may be stored with divine knowledge: but let the brain soften or harden, and

all is as if it were not. Nor is this the worst. The law of sin reigns in these members of ours. They are accustomed to have their own way, whether it be the way of God or not. So far as Christ is in us, so far the body is dead because of sin, and the spirit is life because of righteousness. But the flesh is jealous at being so thrust down, and is ever striving to assert itself, and to live its own life unhindered, careless that its life involves the spirit's death. And so, though we are called the sons of God, and have received in the Spirit of adoption a first-fruits of our future glory, yet we groan and are burdened. Until the day of the redemption of our body we cannot attain to the fulness of our adoption, nor be manifested as the sons of God.

As we listen

And now how is it with the creature? with the Apostle, we seem to hear the groaning, the travailing in pain, the sighing breath of earnest expectation: we realize the subjection to vanity, and the bondage of corruption. But what is it that feels these things? The creature itself cannot be conscious of them. It is the Creator in the creature. Man can himself feel bondage, and cry for deliverance: yet even in the Church "the Spirit helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." But in the creature He alone can be groaning: He alone can "long in hope": He alone can look to the manifestation of the sons of God as the signal for the creature's own deliverance into the liberty of their glory.

For this is the means, and the only means of deliverance for the groaning creation. With Man it lies low: in

Man's full restoration only can it be delivered and advanced. It is vain for men to think to relieve the earth of its burden by the exercise of their lordship over it, so long as they themselves are groaning under an unredeemed body. It is the blind leading the blind: it is in truth that of which our Lord speaks in the Gospel--a seeking to remove the mote out of their brother's eye, regardless of the beam that is in their own eye. For the bondage of the creature's corruption, compared with that of Man, is as a mote to a beam. "The creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly:" but Man willingly. First must the beam be removed from his own eye, ere he can see clearly to pluck out the mote from his brother's eye. But then, when the Second Adam with His Eve shall begin the New Creation, it shall not be long before all things shall be made new. They shall be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it. Creation, like a snake, shall cast her wrinkled skin outworn: and there shall be seen a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

So let us stand-or rather kneel-side by side with our brother the creature, groaning together, travailing in pain together, until the bondage of the present corruption be exchanged for the liberty of the future glory.

The Four Libing Creatures.

Ezekiel i.

We have already considered St. Paul's statement that when the Lord Jesus ascended on high, He gave gifts to men, and that the gifts He gave were Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, and Pastors and Teachers. It increases our sense of the weight of this saying of the Apostle, that we no sooner learn from him the fourfoldness of the ministry of Christ, than all Scripture is seen to contain types and symbols of the fact. The vision of the prophet Ezekiel, which is brought before us to-day, is an apt instance of what is meant. But before we dwell on it, let some earlier images of the same truth pass under our notice.

1. When God made man, He set him in a garden which He had planted in Eden. A river went out from Eden to water the garden, and parted itself for this end into four streams. The whole narrative of the Creation and the Fall is so full of typical meaning, that we cannot refuse to see a mystic significance in this part of it. And so from the beginning was God's purpose shewn, that His grace and blessing should flow to His creature from one source but through four channels. “There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God." When the Psalmist sings thus, we can hardly doubt but that the garden of Eden is in his mind, and that the streams he mentions are the four.

It is very noticeable in connection with this, that Babylon, which in the Revelation is used to symbolize