ll be content to
live, as unknown by the princes of this world as was the Lord of
glory, whom they slew because their dim eyes could not see the
flashing of the glory 'through the veil, that is to say, His flesh.'
But no consciousness of imperfection in our revelation of an
indwelling Christ must ever be allowed to diminish our efforts to
live out the life that is in us, and to shine as lights in the world;
nor must the consciousness that we walk as 'veiled,' lead us to add
to the thick folds the criminal one of voluntary silence and cowardly
hiding in dumb hearts the secret of our lives.

II. The unveiling of the sons of God.

That unveiling is in the text represented as coming along with the
glory which shall be revealed to usward, and as being contemporaneous
with the deliverance of the creation itself from the bondage of
corruption, and its passing into the liberty of the glory of the
children of God. It coincides with the vanishing of the pain in which
the whole creation now groans and travails, and with the
adoption--that is, the redemption of our body. Then hope will be seen
and will pass into still fruition. All this points to the time when
Jesus Christ is revealed, and His servants are revealed with Him in
glory. That revelation brings with it of necessity the manifestation
of the sons of God for what they are--the making visible in the life
of what God sees them to be.

That revelation of the sons of God is the result of the entire
dominion and transforming supremacy of the Spirit of God in them. In
the whole sweep of their consciousness there will in that day be
nothing done from other motives; there will be no sidelights flashing
in and disturbing the perfect illumination from the candle of the
Lord set on high in their being; there will be no contradictions in
the life. It will be one and simple, and therefore perfectly
intelligible. Such is the destined issue of the most imperfect
Christian life. The Christian man who has in his experience to-day
the faintest and most interrupted operation of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus has therein a pledge of immortality, because nothing
short of an endless life of progressive and growing purity will be
adequate to receive and exemplify the power which can never terminate
until it is made like Him and perfectly seeing Him as He is.

But that unveiling further guarantees the possession of fully
adequate means of expression. The limitations and imperfections of