There is no jointer between them and Christ. They shall have no share in any priestly or kingly dominion here with Him. Every man in his own order, that is, in his own division or band. The figure is a military one. "Only they that are Christ's at His coming "-the heirs of the kingdom. It is of the heirs alone he is speaking--the redemption of believers from the grave and the second coming of Christ.

Now, then, what comes next? What is associated with the final redemption of the heirs at the resurrection? Clearly the redemption of their estate, the dominion of the world, cursed and lost in the first Adam, and left a ruined legacy to his ruined children, but restored and blessed in the second Adam, and given back to man, redeemed from ruin-an inheritance of glory, to the perfect man in Christ Jesus, the justified man raised from the dead. Both fell together, the earth and man. Both rise together, the earth and man. This is Paul's great thought, and the only logical and theological end of his noble argument. The interpenetrating efficacy of the resurrection life of Christ, the power of his all glorifying Spirit, brooding in a regenesis of all things, and mingling with cosmical convulsions at the resurrection, will begin a restitution of all things that will put the vaunted triumphs of science to shame. What culture cannot do, this will do. It will emancipate the earth from the repressive curse that so long has held in check its vital forces and laws, and blasted its most generous endeavours after perfect development. The earth will be regenerated-born again. This is the sublime order and progression of the great thought struggling for utterance in the mind of Paul; first the spirit of the believer, next his body, next the earth, each in order, all the subjects of the same redeeming power.

Why is it the sufferings of believers are not worthy to be compared with the glory ready to be revealed in the last day? Is it because at the death of the bodies, their souls pass immediately to the glory of heaven, the intermediate state between death and the resurrection? Not at all. Is it true that the curse is lifted off from nature, progressively, in proportion to the death of believers ? Not at all. If so, how blessed had earth been ere this! No. It is because something unutterably grand is to occur at the resurrection of the saints, when Christ comes to re-unite the heirs and the inheritance and glorify both together. What is it? It is what the apostle calls the deliverance of the creature or the created thing. (1.) The term creature cannot mean believers, for the two are expressly contradistinguished in the text. (2.) It cannot mean unbelievers, or all mankind, as the great Augustine, betrayed by a false theory, supposed, for the Apostle nowhere teaches Universalism. Unbelievers, and all mankind, are not joint-heirs with Christ, nor will all mankind share in the first resurrection of which Paul is here speaking, the resurrection of the just. (3.) It cannot mean fallen angels, for such have no love for God, nor long for the manifestation of the sons of God. It is the day of their shame and confusion, and of their binding and sealing in the abyss with Satan, their Prince. (4.) It cannot mean unfallen or holy angels, for they never were made subject to vanity, nor have ever been in the bondage of corruption. What then? If neither believers nor unbelievers, fallen nor unfallen angels are the creature, but by these excluding tests are ruled out from the Apostle's thought,

what remains for the definition? Clearly, just what the great Irenæus, Justin, Tertullian, Lactantius, Chrysostom, all the Greek fathers of the church, and most of the Latin, and all the best expositors of the Scripture to-day, hold-the world itself, including (1) the material earth, (2) the atmospheric heavens, (3) the vegetable kingdom, (4) the animal kingdom, the whole reasonless, animate and inanimate creation, or what the Apostle expresses by the equivalent term, "the whole creation," or what we would call "nature." It is the interpretation of the ablest expositors-all substantially one, declaring that, by the creature and the whole creation here is meant the whole creation animate and inanimate, in opposition to humanity, an interpretation held by the early church in its purest days.

And what is the present condition of the morally blameless creation? It is one of involuntary subjection to vanity and the bondage of corruption-subjected not willingly, but by reason of Him who subjected it; not Adam, not Satan, but God-subjected by a divine ordination, and not only on account of man's transgression, but for the benefit of fallen man. Present human toil is a part of the curse, and yet that toil is, under the circumstances, for the benefit of man. Still, it is no less a part of the curse, for nature's energies are perverted and repressed. "Cursed is the ground, for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth unto thee. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground out of which thou wast taken, for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." Thus was the earth condemned. Thus did "Vanity" smite through Cosmos, which, but shortly before was Chaos, only to reduce it to Chaos again, from which a regenesis shall at last recover it to more than pristine beauty.

"Subject to vanity" is creation's present law. Held in the "bondage of corruption" is creation's present doom. And both on account of man's sin. The curse has struck through the whole framework and vitals of Nature, entailing the untold sufferings and groans of the whole animal creation, its mutual ferocity and slaughter, the stinted and thwarted development of the vegetable kingdom calling on every side for human help and culture, the pestilence of the air, the convulsions of sea and land. In the eloquent words of Ellicott, creation is subjected "to purposelessness, to an inability to realise its native tendencies and the ends for which it was called into being, to baffled endeavour and mocked expectation, to a blossoming and not bearing fruit, a pursuing and not attaining, a searching and never finding"-and all on account of man's sin. Science, in the hands of some men, alleges, in disproof of the great truth here affirmed, the evidence of destruction and death among the inferior orders of creation, written in the rock ages before man's creation, and exults in the supposed demonstration of the operation of ruin prior to the inspired date of the earth's subjection to vanity. Granting the scientific fact, has science won a victory over revelation? Not at all. The Bible is still true. For the inspired declaration as to the earth's subjection to vanity by reason of man's sin relates to nothing anterior to the fall of man, while, at the same time, the Bible leaves room for the operation of destruction and death ages before man was

created or fell. It tells us of a chaos out of which cosmos came. It describes a genesis of the present order and constitution of things, and it is to this present order alone the doctrine here discussed refers. It describes a new creation from the ruins of a previous world-ruined for what cause we are not told-a creation effected by the same Spirit that one day hence will restore the world again. It tells of a superadded calamity that followed the reconstruction of the world after chaos had become cosmos-a 66 vanity," a "bondage," judicially inflicted for man's sin, and whereby the fair fabric was marred, and all its energies paralysed after it had risen to beauty from the hand of God, and been pronounced "very good." Science and Nature, alike, confirm the Bible declaration that ever since the last genesis, vanity, disease, and death have reigned. It is only the Bible, however, that can explain to us why it was that a new and fair creation has been so degraded. Nor may we ever allow any science to contradict the clear averment of the Scriptures, or assume that man, in his holy estate was planted in the region and shadow of death, or that human death is a natural law and not a judicial inffliction, or that the curse now resting on earth, in the present order of things, is without a moral cause, and only the effect of an unutterable, primal law ingrained in the very texture of all existence; and so rob "the whole creation" of its expectation of deliverance and enjoyment of future glory. I read, in the Scriptures, that the date of creation's present disaster coincides with the solemn hour

"Of man's first disobedience and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe."

That fatal hour, when

"Earth felt the wound, and Nature, from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe
That all was lost."

Since then, what land has not borne thistles and thorns; what soil has not been filled with the graves of men and beasts? What signals of distress has not the world displayed? Through all its veins the effect of human transgression has gone, by no fault of its own, but by a divine ordination, binding the guilty tenant and his mansion to the same doom. It is precisely here is found the secret of that repressive and negative power which cripples all its heaven-born energies and baffles all its best endeavours, so that, even under the best culture man can give, the result is only imperfection and decay. An incubus sits upon its bosom, a deadly vampire, a nightmare, troubling its dream. It cannot awake. It is doomed to perpetual inability, effort without power, the victim of bondage, aiming to realise its inborn virtue, yet never succeeding, reattempting to rise after a thousand defeats, yet always falling, struggling for a fairer bloom, and more luxuriant and undying verdure and fruitage, yet perishing in corruption and death. "Vanity of vanities!" "The creature was made subject to vanity."

(To be concluded.)

TRADITION VERSUS THE BIBLE.

"In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men."-MATTHEW XV.

"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."-1 THESS. v. 21.

NOTE. This Word of Man teaches that death means kept alive in torments; that destruction means endless preservation; that burnt up like chaff means being kept unconsumed; that devoured means being kept entire and alive; that to perish is to be immortal; that to be destroyed like brute beasts and pass away into smoke means—well, it does not mean what it says, as God, according to this new Bible of man's tradition, often says a thing and means something else-for instance, to be cast into the lake of fire, the second death, and burnt up like grass means to live for ever. I have not seen this new Bible, but as so many good Christians assure me that their Bible certainly teaches these doctrines so contrary to my old Bible, I am bound to believe that it exists, or else God's spokesmen have again, as in our Lord's day, made the Word of God of none effect by their traditions.

BELIEVERS IN THE WORD OF GOD-Is there not a screw loose somewhere ? Search the Scriptures daily-like the noble Berean Christians to see if these things are so. (Acts xvii. 11.) Honour God by taking Him to mean what He says and say what He means; follow truth wherever it may lead, even though it may cause you to say with Paul, "After the way that they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets." (Acts xxiv. 14.) "To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them." (Isa. viii. 20.) A wonderful and horrible thing is committed in the land, the prophets prophesy falsely-and God's people love to have it so -and what will ye do in the end thereof?" (Jer. v. 30.) What a mercy it is that God's providence has kept from the fables of men the way of salvation!

Reader, life and death (existence and non-existence) are set before you; therefore, choose life; it is freely offered as a gift-gratefully take it, and you are saved-removed from under the death penalty-for the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. JOHN STEVENS.

ERE

THE EPISODE OF EVIL.

FIRST PART.

RE Adam was created, or Eden's glades were gay,
The Episode of Evil had started on its way;
Among celestial beings rebellion reared its head:
The leader of the treason a host of spirits led.