sions 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 corroborative 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. It points us to some specific promise made by the Saviour, while on earth, and a general expectation as the result of that promise. Here is no evidence of a state of prophetic rapture, but a declaration of a universally pervading belief, founded on the explicit testimony of Christ himself. But, even conceding the representation to be a μʊoos, and that they had no expectation of a literal renovation of the heavens and earth, still, inasmuch as Peter has employed this mode of representation, why may not Paul have done so, when treating of the same subject? Especially as it is in connection with this general topic, that Peter quotes Paul, as having treated largely upon these subjects in his epistles. But this general view receives still further confirmation from a right understanding of the clause contained in the parenthesis. We have connected ên' éλatdı, in hope, not with Sлɛrún, was subjected, but with unendinɛTα, is awaiting. It thus introduces the reason of the anxious longing of the xrlois, 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 lois, 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. We give to S, its ordinary meaning, with the accus., viz., in consequence of, on account of, and thus refer the to úлоτúžaνíα, him who subjected it, to man, as it seems difficult to see in what sense it could be referred to Jehovah. If we give to did, the signification of vло, by, with the gen., thus representing Jehovah as the agent, a meaning sufficiently correct is, indeed, made out, but one having no obvious relevancy to the design of the apostle. That of the other is clear and striking. 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. idea might receive a much more extended elucidation than we can now 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 final 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 hand of its 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 night 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 earth, also, from the evils which it shared, in common with its guilty inhabitants. We have dwelt so long upon the main topics involved in the passage, that we have room but for a brief comment upon a few of the particular words that have not been already noticed. 4oyouai, I reckon, compute, estimate, a weighty term, and peculiarly forcible, where the writer is about to balance the future glory of_the_saints against their present sufferings. rag, for. Prof. Stuart translates it, in this case, moreover. We see no reason, here, for departing from the ordinary import of the particle. Indeed, we can scarcely conceive a case, in which the English word, for, is more appropriate and exact as a particle of connection. A лоxáhvчiv-εоũ, the manifestation, not of the glory of the sons of God, but the manifestation of the sons of God; that is, the public recognition of their relation. See Matt. 25: 31, seq. Col. 3: 4. Maraónti, emptiness, vanity, frailty, as appears from the δουλείας φθορᾶς, to which it is equivalent. Αὐτὴ κτίσις, Avtois, We should not notice this simple phrase, but for a mistranslation of Prof. Stuart, who renders it "the same creation," as if the reading were avrǹ xılois, and proceeds to urge against Prof. Tholuck,* an objection, whose force depends entirely on his erroneous rendering. Tholuck infers justly, "that auxilis indicates a descent from the noble to the ignoble part of creation," as much as to say, that the tiσis longs for the full deliverance of the children of God, in the hope that even the Tiσis itself may share in the same glorious freedom. To this, Prof. Stuart replies, "that such an exegesis would necessarily imply that a higher and nobler xti'ois had been already mentioned, in the preceding context, with which the inferior one is now compared." This would be true, were the reading av xi'ois, but as it stands, "even the 'σis itself," the very form of expression, implies that no other xos had been mentioned, but some other object, for which the T'as regards the event as principally to take place, while itself shall have a subordinate and humble share in its results. Ilava xois, the whole creation, all nature, an expression, * Bib, Rep, Vol. I, No. 2, p. 38. rising in emphasis, and perhaps more extensive in signification than los alone. We submit the question to those whose more immediate province it is to decide, whether, while rois generally, in the New Testament, refers to the material creation, nãoa xriais, comprehends also sentient beings. There is nothing in the present passage to oppose this view. The лãoαxti'ois, is not represented as looking forward to the resurrection, but only as involved in common pain and anguish; nor will any one who knows the force of the connective, où uóvov dè, draw from them an opposite conclusion. Αὐτοι τὴν ἀπαρχὴν τοῦ πνεύματος ἔχοντες, that is, not the apostles, it would seem, but Christians generally. Christians are all alike partakers of the Spirit, and yet alike groaning in their present state of imperfection and suffering, and looking forward to the period of their complete emancipation. As at the commencement of the passage, the apostle couples himself with his brethren,* so he does at the close. 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 lois 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 violeσlav, the public and solemn ceremony of affiliation, into a something or a 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 allusion would have been wholly inappropriate. True, * συμπάσχομεν, συνδοξασθῶμεν. 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 to them of superlative wo,-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 unutterable 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 |