We introduce our remarks on this passage with the following translation: For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy of comparison with the glory which is about to be revealed to us. For the longing desire of the creation is awaiting the manifestation of the sons of God (for the creation was subjected to frailty, not of its own will, but on account of him who subjected it,) in the hope that the creation itself, shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth, and are in pangs together, until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan in ourselves, awaiting our filiation, (the sonship,) the redemption of our bodies. We do not propose to comment separately upon all the words and phrases of the passage, but to touch lightly upon those on which there is no difference of opinion. We shall aim rather to dwell upon those portions which are essential to a right apprehension of the general scope of the passage. It will be obvious to all, that the key-note of the passage is struck in the verse immediately preceding that with which our translation commences. "And if children, then heirs: heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him." Thus bringing the sufferings of Christians into immediate contrast with their future glorification, the mind of the Apostle instantly takes fire. In a manner strikingly characteristic, he proceeds to give utterance, as far as he is able, to the conceptions by which his soul was filled and overwhelmed. But what is the point of view, from which he contemplates the glory that is to be revealed to the sons of God? On what stage in the career of the sons of immortality does he fix as furnishing the most full and perfect contrast to the weight of suffering, that bows them in this vale of tears? In other words, what is the period referred to, when they were to be glorified together with Christ? For, that one and the same period is indicated by this and the following expressions—the glory which is about to be revealed to us—the manifestation of the sons of God—the glorious freedom of the children of God—and finally, the sonship—the ransom of our body—that all these expressions, we repeat, point to one and the same occasion, does not, we think, admit a doubt. And what is that occasion? Are we not pointed, most distinctly, to the resurrection? Overlapping all the intervening periods, and overlooking, as it were, all preceding and minor displays of the Christian's glory, does not the mind of the Apostle fasten upon the time when the glorified body, shall be raised from the dust of the earth to reign in renovated youth and beauty, and the relation of the children of God shall be recognized and announced before an assembled universe? Let us recur, for a moment, to the expressions as they occur;—when, according to the representations of the New Testament, are Christians to be glorified together with Christ? When, in the only sense, acknowledged by the Scriptures, is to take place the manifestation of the sons of God? Compare here, Col. iii, 4, "When Christ, our life, is manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory." Compare, 1 Thess. iv, 13, a passage directly relevant to our subject. And to what portion, again may we so justly refer the glorious freedom of the sons of God, as to that which witnesses their triumph over death, the last enemy, and emancipates their entire nature from the thraldom to which sin had subjected it? But if the above expressions left any doubt, it is dissipated by the final, most explicit statement of the Apostle himself, in which he couples the filiation (evidently another expression for the manifestation of the sons of God—the full and public recognition of their relation, and their investiture with the glory which belong to it) with the redemption of the body, making the two circumstances, if not identical, at least coincident in time. Here, then, it seems to me, is an important clew to guide us in the interpretation of the passage. And we cannot avoid the conviction, that here all the interpreters, whom we have seen, have more or less failed. Some throw the resurrection entirely out of view. Others, who admit a reference to it, fail to give it due prominence—to make it the fore-ground of the picture—to let it occupy that place which it manifestly occupied in the mind of the Apostle. We think the phraseology of the passage, especially taken in connection with the general tenor of the New Testament representations, forces upon us the conviction, that the Apostle here refers definitely to the period of the resurrection, and that, not so much because this was the most advantageous view from which to draw the contrast, but because this was ever uppermost in his mind, when he reflected on the future glory of the people of God. Indeed, it cannot have escaped the attentive reader of the apostolic writings, how frequent and striking are the allusions to that period, and how it pervaded and colored all their religious hopes. The passage which we have quoted from Col. iii, 4, is full of significance, and furnishes a striking commentary on that under consideration. "Ye are dead," says the Apostle, "and your life is hid with Christ in God." The Christian life is now hidden, concealed. In his separate existence, and real character, he is scarcely recognized. When, then, is he to be manifested? When honored with the title, and clothed with the glory, that belong to his station? When, in other words, is his manifestation—his filiation—to take place? "When Christ, our life," proceeds the Apostle, "is manifested, then shall ye also be manifested with him in glory." In 1 Cor. xv, this topic furnishes the theme of one of the most animated and eloquent discussions found on the pages of this always animated writer. He shows how it follows from and pre-supposes the death of Christ, how it involves the very cardinal doctrines of the gospel, and is a vital element of the Christian's faith and hope. He dwells upon its proofs, its scenes, and its practical uses, with a minuteness, a variety, and a fullness, which show that it absorbed the energies and interests of his soul—that it was with him an ever-present and inspiring truth, held not merely as a tenet, essential to the completeness of a scheme of doctrines, but as a truth fruitful of practical influences, and heavenly consolation—pressing on his heart with the might of a new and overwhelming reality—the consummation, and the glory of the gospel—the grand object of Christian hope—the grand incentive to Christian faithfulness. It will not, we trust, be irrelevant in this connection, to present a passage of some length, from 2 Pet. iii, 10-16. We shall give it nearly in the words of the common version. "But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and the works in it, shall150be burnt up. Since, then, all these things must be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness—looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of God, in which the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements melt with fervent heat. But we, according to his promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless, and consider the long suffering of the Lord's salvation. As also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you, as also in all his epistles speaking concerning these things." This interesting passage needs no comment; compared with Rom. viii, 19; 1 Cor. xv; 1 Thess. iv, 13-18, it sheds a flood of light upon the uses which the apostles made of the doctrine of the resurrection. If we have succeeded in settling this point, the way is opened for deciding, satisfactorily, upon the meaning of the much contested ktisis. We need not dwell upon the origin and possible signification of this word. Derived from ktizein, to create, it denotes primarily the act of creating; secondly, as synonymous with ktisma, the thing created, the creation. It has, we believe, in its ordinary use, about the same latitude as the word creation, and may, according to its connection, refer chiefly to inanimate nature, or include sentient beings. That it is ever, or could be without the utmost harshness, employed to denote Christians, there is no evidence. The expression kaine ktisis, a new creature, or a new creation, furnishes no ground for such a supposition. The question then, is between that view of it which includes and refers chiefly to sentient beings, and that which refers exclusively to inanimate nature. Does it, in other words, in the passage under consideration, denote men in general, mankind, or inanimate existence in nature? If the view which we have taken above be correct, the question is easily, nay, already decided. The ktisis is introduced as looking with earnest longing for the period when the sons of God shall be manifested, in hope of showing them their glorious deliverance. Is this true of the world of unconverted men? Could the heathen, of or before the age of the Apostle, be said in any possible sense, to be anticipating the resurrection period, with the hope of being themselves participators of its benefits? This point is too plain to need argument. Of all the doctrines or facts unfolded in the word of God—of all the truths, undiscoverable by reason, of which the gospel is the depository; and which none, perhaps, bears so decidedly as this the impress of its superhuman origin—none is so far from having visited the loftiest visions of the sublimest speculators. The Pythagorean metempsychosis bears to it no analogy. Theologians have fancied, that in the Platonic triad, they could discover the germ of even the mysterious doctrine of the trinity. The sacrifices of the pagan world have been regarded as embodying a dim conception of the atonement. But the resurrection of the dead is, we had almost said, the one great fact that belongs exclusively to Christianity. The only meaning then, which remains for ktisis, in the present case, is the inanimate creation—nature. By an animated, we do not say bold—prosopopoeia, the writer introduces universal nature as longing for the period of the complete emancipation of the sons of God. The argument then—for it contains the substance, though not the form of an argument—is used a fortiori. It reasons from the less to the greater. If the benefits to be reaped by irrational existence from the scenes of that day are so great as to justify it in earnestly expecting them, what shall be its results to the immortal intelligence—the sons of God—who are to be the principal participators in its glories? If its subordinate and incidental results are so unspeakably desirable, what may they anticipate on whom it shall confer its "weight of glory"? The sentiment derived from this interpretation is amply sustained by other declarations of Scripture. We will not go back to the prophetic writings, although it is certain that among the Jews there existed a belief in the future renovation of the earth. Neither would we lay much stress on the "renovation," of Matt. xix, 28, or the restoration of all things, of Acts iii, 21, as these expressions are too general to be a safe foundation for argument. When, however, the fact is clearly made out from other sources, they may justly be regarded as corroborated evidence. We need but appeal to the passage already quoted from Peter, in a similar connection, to place the matter beyond a doubt. "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." The words, "according to his promise," decidedly oppose our interpreting this as the mere figurative language of prophecy. But this general view receives still further confirmation from a right understanding of the clause contained in the parenthesis. We have connected, in hope, not with, was subjected, but with, is awaiting. It thus introduces the reason of the anxious longing of the creation, for the period in question. The construction seems thus more simple and unembarrassed, and will, we think, commend itself to the judgment of the reader. The clause in the parenthesis, then, intimates the reasonableness of the expectation entertained by the creation. The reason is that it had no agency in the act which subjected it to its state of bondage, but guiltless itself, was so reduced solely on account of another. The earth was not brought into subjection on its own account. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake," is the emphatic declaration of the Judge, to guilty man, and one which sets in a striking light the truth of the passage before us. As it was not then, by its own agency, or for its own guilt that it was subjected, but solely as the innocent participator in the punishment of another; the creation may rationally hope (such is the tacit implication) that when the last vestiges of the curse are removed from the offender, the unwilling and unoffending sharer in the curse shall receive a like liberation. There is a tacit appeal to the justice of the Deity—an implied assertion that he will not suffer the innocent victim to remain involved in evils from which their guilty author has been liberated. This idea might receive a much more extended elucidation than we now can give it, and one which would go far to establish, on independent grounds, the probability of the future restoration of the material world. And the natural period of such a renovation would be the time when it had ceased to be the repository of the sleeping dust, of sin ruined, but ransomed man—when death, the fatal enemy, was utterly annihilated by the resurrection of the bodies of the believers to life and glory. What we repeat, more natural, what more consonant with all we know of the divine economy, than that, in that moment even physical nature, which was moulded by the plastic hands of the Creator into innumerable forms of beauty and perfection, and scanned by the Omniscient eye, was pronounced "good," shall spring forth from the bondage of its corruption, be freed from the stains of sin, and renovated and beautified, become the meet abode of righteousness? Christ was revealed that he might destroy the works of the devil. One of these works was the subjugation of the natural world to natural, as a faint type of moral evil. The curse, which was laid upon the earth, was as much a result of the malignant efforts of the great adversary as the death, temporal and spiritual, inflicted on Adam and his posterity. And does not, we ask, the full accomplishment of the avowed purpose of the Son of God's appearing—his complete triumph over death and him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, require that he rescue the world, also, from the evils which it shared, in common with its guilty inhabitants? We have thus given our general view of this difficult, interesting and sublime passage. We willingly leave it to be compared with that which makes ktisis refer to mankind in general. It is readily seen what a stoop this latter requires us to make from the elevation to which we are raised on the glowing wing of apostolic faith and hope. It in fact perfectly unchristianizes the whole passage. It degrades "the manifestation of the sons of God—their glorious deliverance from bondage—their huiothesian, the public and solemn ceremony of affiliation into something or nothing, which has been anticipated with earnest longing by the whole heathen world! Tell us not that the Apostle brings forward such a view to cheer his Christian brethren in their state of trial and infirmity. Ask us not to believe, that he has led their minds away from their own glorious resurrection—a reality with whose truth and importance his mind was all imbued and glowing—to a heathen expectation which never existed, and which, if it had existed, was never to be realized! Not only is there no inexplicable "lacuna" in the omission of the heathen world, or the race of men in general, but such an illusion would have been wholly inappropriate. True, they are no less in bondage to frailty and corruption, than the natural world; but it is not true that they, like that, can with any propriety be represented as looking forward to the resurrection as their period of deliverance. And why? Because it will bring no deliverance to them. The world of mankind, so far from welcoming the gospel intelligence of a general resurrection and judgment, shrink from it as a period of superlative woe, in which wrath is to come upon them to the uttermost—which while it consummates the blessedness and glory of the righteous, shall fill the measure of their misery and ruin. On the contrary, there is the utmost propriety in asserting this of inanimate nature. And why? Simply because it is a fact—at least because it was the current opinion of Christians of that age, an opinion sanctioned or rather originated by the express promise of the Messiah himself. No good reason, then, can be shown for denying to Paul the license employed by his colleagues in composing the sacred canon. With those who regard the figure as unwarrantably bold, there will be, we believe, few to sympathize. We will not dwell upon the accustomed boldness of oriental and prophetic imagery, in which the sea, the earth, the mountains, the valleys, are made not only fraught with intelligence and emotion, but by a still greater stretch of imagination, are endowed with hands, eyes, feet, and made to perform acts corresponding to these endowments. The figure in question hardly allies itself in this respect, to oriental imagery. It is a figure, such as in every nation and age would spontaneously suggest itself to a vivid and powerful imagination, in the contemplation of such facts. Whose bosom does not thrill with the conception—what taste does not readily admit, at once, the propriety and awful grandeur of the figure, in which Robert Hall represents creation as clothing herself in sackcloth, and a shriek of innumerable agony rending the frame-work of universal nature over the perdition of a single soul? But when the theme is the general resurrection—with all the weight of glory which will be bestowed on the people of God—when Omnipotence itself shall lavish its treasures of grandeur and of glory, how immeasurably greater the propriety of representing universal nature as instinct with life, and awaiting with earnest longing the happy period, in whose results, in themselves inconceivably glorious, it is so largely to participate. Bold as the figure seems, to a superficial contemplation, it sinks into tame propriety by the side of the mighty subject which it is designed to illustrate. And finally, may we not find in this passage another instance of the use which the primitive Christians made of the doctrine of the resurrection? With what vital energy and animating power, it came home to their hearts—how it prompted them to labor, supported them in trial, and consoled them in affliction? May not the modern church inquire how far, in this respect, she has partaken of the apostolic spirit? The doctrine of the resurrection is, indeed, occasionally dwelt upon, as a sublime truth and a glorious reality. But has it due prominence in our reflections? Do we look and "hasten forward" to the coming of the Lord? Does the Christian preacher avail himself of the utmost efficiency of this instrument, as a means of keeping alive and spreading a deep-toned and active piety? Does it press upon Christians in general its motives to obedience? Is it cherished as a vital, cordial doctrine of the gospel intimately connected with the resurrection of our Lord, livingly entwined with all our hopes of future blessedness, and animating us to be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, inasmuch as it conveys to us the assurance and the pledge, that our labor is not in vain in the Lord?—Christian Review, March, 1839.