good,
_even_ to them that are called according to _his_ purpose. For whom he
foreknew, he also foreordained _to be_ conformed to the image of his
Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren: and whom he
foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also
justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

i.

There are passages in the New Testament which are unique. Such is the
passage in St. Peter's epistle about Christ preaching in His
disembodied human spirit to other spirits in Hades--a passage vaguely
suggestive of wide thoughts and hopes, and leading us to suppose {303}
that the ideas which it contained were familiar in the apostolic
circle, but standing alone, with practically nothing to elucidate it
from outside. And the passage just read about the groaning of creation
in travail-pains is unique, not because there is not a good deal to
elucidate it in other parts of the Bible, but because St. Paul in his
treatment of common material strikes a note of sympathy with nature
from nature's point of view, which is heard nowhere else in the Bible.

In Genesis we read that 'the ground was cursed[1]' because of man's
sin, in the sense apparently that, as the penalty of his sin, nature
was to be made a rougher home for him, and he was to extract his food
from it only with pain and sweat. Isaiah is perhaps interpreting this
primitive lesson in more modern tones when he cries that 'the earth is
polluted under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed
the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the ever-lasting covenant.
Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell
therein are found guilty: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are
burned, and few men left. The new wine mourneth, the vine
languisheth[2].' In this sense certainly, if not in some more
recondite {304} sense also, the ground is stricken with a curse as a
result of human sin. And there are parts of the world where no lesson
seems more patent. At any rate, whatever be the interpretation given
to it, it was part of the common Jewish teaching that 'though all
things were made very good, yet when the first man sinned they were
corrupted, and shall return no more to their proper state until the son
of Pherez[3] shall come[4].' For the curse was not to be for ever.
There was a good time to come--a new heaven, a new earth, wherein
righteousness should dwell--'A restoration of all things,' an