d perception of a triumph that is only
delayed. A reverent homage before the sublimities of yesterday is the
condition of a fine perception of the hidden triumphs of the morrow.
And, therefore, I do not regard it as an accidental conjunction that
the psalmist puts them together and proclaims the evangel that "the
Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his
mercy." To feel the days before me I must revere the purpose which
throbs behind me. I must bow in reverence if I would anticipate in
hope.

Here, then, is the Apostle Paul, with the redemptive purpose
interweaving itself with all the entanglements of his common life, a
purpose reaching back into the awful depths of the eternities, and
issuing from those depths in amazing fulness of grace and glory. No
one can be five minutes in the companionship of the Apostle Paul
without discovering how wealthy is his sense of the wealthy, redeeming
ministry of God. What a wonderful consciousness he has of the sweep
and fulness of the divine grace! You know the variations of the
glorious air: "the unsearchable riches of Christ"; "riches in glory
in Christ Jesus"; "all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places
in Christ"; "the riches of his goodness and forbearance and
long-suffering." The redemptive purpose of God bears upon the life of
the apostle and upon the race whose privileges he shares, not in an
uncertain and reluctant shower, but in a great and marvelous flood.
And what to him is the resultant enfranchisement? What are the
spacious issues of the glorious work? Do you recall those wonderful
sentences, scattered here and there about the apostle's writings, and
beginning with the words "but now"? Each sentence proclaims the end
of the dominion of night, and unveils some glimpse of the new created
day. "But now!" It is a phrase that heralds a great deliverance!
"But now, apart from the law the righteousness of God hath been
manifested," "But now, being made free from sin and become servants to
God." "But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh
in the blood of Christ." "But now are ye light in the Lord." "Now, no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." These represent no
thin abstractions. To Paul the realities of which they speak were more
real than the firm and solid earth. And is it any wonder that a man
with such a magnificent sense of the reality of the redemptive
works of Christ, who felt the eternal purpose throbbing