f corruption into the
glorious liberty of the children of God. Dead, in bondage to
corruption, how can they share in the liberty of the children of Life?
Where is their deliverance?

If such then be the words of the apostle, does he, or does he not, I
ask, hold the idea of the immortality of the animals? If you say all he
means is, that the creatures alive at the coming of the Lord will be set
free from the tyranny of corrupt man, I refer you to what I have already
said of the poverty of such an interpretation, accepting the failure of
justice and love toward those that have passed away, are passing, and
must yet, ere that coming, be born to pass away for ever. For the man
whose heart aches to adore a faithful creator, what comfort lies in such
good news! He must perish for lack of a true God! Oh lame conclusion to
the grand prophecy! Is God a mocker, who will not be mocked? Is there a
past to God with which he has done? Is Time too much for him? Is he God
enough to care for those that happen to live at one present time, but
not God enough to care for those that happened to live at another
present time? Or did he care for them, but could not help them? Shall we
not rather believe that the vessels of less honour, the misused, the
maltreated, shall be filled full with creative wine at last? Shall not
the children have little dogs under the Father's table, to which to let
fall plenty of crumbs? If there was such provision for the sparrows of
our Lord's time of sojourn, and he will bring yet better with him when
he comes again, how should the dead sparrows and their sorrows be passed
over of him with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning? Or
would the deliverance of the creatures into the groaned-for liberty have
been much worth mentioning, if within a few years their share in the
glory of the sons of God was to die away in death? But the gifts of God
are without repentance.

How St Paul longs for and loves liberty! Only true lover of liberty is
he, who will die to give it to his neighbour! St Paul loved liberty more
than his own liberty. But then see how different his notion of the
liberty on its way to the children of God, from the dull modern fancies
of heaven still set forth in the popular hymn-books! The new heaven and
the new earth will at least be a heaven and an earth! What would the
newest earth be to the old children without its animals? Barer than the
heavens emptied of the constellations that are c