estation of the sons of God.'--ROMANS viii. 19.

The Apostle has been describing believers as 'sons' and 'heirs.' He
drops from these transcendent heights to contrast their present
apparent condition with their true character and their future glory.
The sad realities of suffering darken his lofty hopes, even although
these sad realities are to his faith tokens of joint-heirship with
Jesus, and pledges that if our inheritance is here manifested by
suffering with him, that very fact is a prophecy of common glory
hereafter. He describes that future as the revealing of a glory, to
which the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared; and then, in our text he varies the application of that
thought of revealing and thinks of the subjects of it as being the
'sons of God.' They will be revealed when the glory which they have
as joint-heirs with Christ is revealed in them. They walk, as it
were, compassed with mist and cloud, but the splendour which will
fall on them will scatter the envious darkness, and 'when Christ who
is our life shall appear, then shall His co-heirs also appear with
Him in glory.'

We may consider--

I. The present veil over the sons of God.

There is always a difference between appearance and reality, between
the ideal and its embodiments. For all men it is true that the full
expression of oneself is impossible. Each man's deeds fall short of
disclosing the essential self in the man. Every will is hampered by
the fleshly screen of the body. 'I would that my tongue could utter
the thoughts that arise in me,' is the yearning of every heart that
is deeply moved. Contending principles successively sway every
personality and thwart each other's expression. For these, and many
other reasons, the sum-total of every life is but a shrouded
representation of the man who lives it; and we, all of us, after all
efforts at self-revelation, remain mysteries to our fellows and to
ourselves. All this is eminently true of the sons of God. They have a
life-germ hidden in their souls, which in its very nature is destined
to fill and expand their whole being, and to permeate with its
triumphant energy every corner of their nature. But it is weak and
often overborne by its opposite. The seed sown is to grow in spite of
bad weather and a poor soil and many weeds, and though it is destined
to overcome all these, it may to-day only be able to show on the
surface a little patch of pale and struggling growt