on of 'the earnest expectation' of
'the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body'; and he says that
that longing will be the more patient the more it is full of hope.
This, then, is Paul's conception of the normal attitude of a
Christian soul; but that attitude is hard to keep up in one's own
strength, because of the distractions of time and sense which are
ever tending to disturb the continuity and fixity of that onward
look, and to lead us rather to be satisfied with the gross, dull
present. That redemption of the body, with all which it implies and
includes, ought to be the supreme object to which each Christian
heart should ever be turning, and Christian prayers should be
directed. But our own daily experience makes us only too sure that
such elevation above, and remoteness from earthly thoughts, with all
their pettinesses and limitations, is impossible for us in our own
strength. As Paul puts it here, 'We know not what to pray for'; nor
can we fix and focus our desires, nor present them 'as we ought.' It
is to this weakness and incompleteness of our desires and prayers
that the help of the Spirit is directed. He strengthens our longings
by His own direct operation. The more vivid our anticipations and the
more steadfast our hopes, and the more our spirits reach out to that
future redemption, the more are we bound to discern something more
than human imaginings in them, and to be sure that such visions are
too good not to be true, too solid to be only the play of our own
fancy. The more we are conscious of these experiences as our own, the
more certain we shall be that in them it is not we that speak, but
'the Spirit of the Father that speaketh in us.'

III. These divinely-inspired longings are incapable of full
expression.

They are shallow feelings that can be spoken. Language breaks down in
the attempt to express our deepest emotions and our truest love. For
all the deepest things in man, inarticulate utterance is the most
self-revealing. Grief can say more in a sob and a tear than in many
weak words; love finds its tongue in the light of an eye and the
clasp of a hand. The groanings which rise from the depths of the
Christian soul cannot be forced into the narrow frame-work of human
language; and just because they are unutterable are to be recognised
as the voice of the Holy Spirit.

But where amidst the Christian experience of to-day shall we find
anything in the least like these unutterable longings af