nature
of some of them. But what Christian will dare to say that God does not
care about them?--and he knows them as we cannot know them. Great or
small, they are his. Great are all his results; small are all his
beginnings. That we have to send many of his creatures out of this phase
of their life because of their hurtfulness in this phase of ours, is to
me no stumbling-block. The very fact that this has always had to be
done, the long protracted combat of the race with such, and the
constantly repeated though not invariable victory of the man, has had an
essential and incalculable share in the development of humanity, which
is the rendering of man capable of knowing God; and when their part to
that end is no longer necessary, changed conditions may speedily so
operate that the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie
down with the kid. The difficulty may go for nothing in view of the
forces of that future with which this loving speculation concerns
itself.

I would now lead my companion a little closer to what the apostle says
in the nineteenth verse; to come closer, if we may, to the idea that
burned in his heart when he wrote what we call the eighth chapter of his
epistle to the Romans. Oh, how far ahead he seems, in his hope for the
creation, of the footsore and halting brigade of Christians at present
crossing the world! He knew Christ, and could therefore look into the
will of the Father.

_For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the
manifestation of the sons of God_!

At the head of one of his poems, Henry Vaughan has this Latin
translation of the verse: I do not know whether he found or made it, but
it is closer to its sense than ours:--

'Etenim res creatae exerto capite observantes expectant revelationem
filiorum Dei.'--'For the things created, watching with head thrust out,
await the revelation of the sons of God.'

Why?

Because God has subjected the creation to vanity, in the hope that the
creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of God. For this double
deliverance--from corruption and the consequent subjection to vanity,
the creation is eagerly watching.

The bondage of corruption God encounters and counteracts by subjection
to vanity. Corruption is the breaking up of the essential idea; the
falling away from the original indwelling and life-causing thought. It
is met by the suffering which itself caus