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The unfolding of the race, taken as a whole, is like the building of an organ. There is no single pipe in an organ that is not made in the shop. Every little flute-stop, each particular note, is made and perfected there, and is tried on a machine kept for the purpose, to see how it sounds. And when all the various mechanical parts have been constructed and tested, they are carried to their destination and set up. There are things in an organ of which you have no conception. To you, when you look at it, there is a case outside. That is about what men see when they look at an organ. But to one who knows how it was built, it is a multitudinous mass of stops. When this organ was set up, all these stops could not be put in at once. Stop by stop, department by department, was put in separately. There are three or four organs in this organ. They took one of them and began with one stop or department of pipes, and put each in its place, and tried to see how it sounded relative to itself. Then they put in another stop, and tried to see how it sounded relative to itself. Thus they put in the different stops, and each one had to be in accord with itself. Not only that, but each stop had to be in accord with every other stop that was added. And there was a great deal of tinkering, of opening and shutting, of fixing of the reeds. Little by little each stop was put in accord with itself, and with its neighbours; and at last the complex whole stood complete. But the amount of groaning, and whining, and screaming, the amount of tapping, and cutting, and driving up, and driving down, that was required before we got this noble organ in tune, no man could imagine who did not make the instrument, or who did not stand by and see the process by which it was brought into harmonisation. The whole creation groans and travails in pain until now. You are not the whole of it. You are single pipes in one stop — in a family. You are to be attuned, each in himself — voiced; and you are to be attuned with each other. You are to be brought into accord with your neighbours. They, again, are to be brought into accord with the whole state. The state is to be brought into accord with the neighbouring states. The globe is yet to be touched by the hand of God; and every pipe in the vast multitude is to stand out with beautiful voice, and in absolute harmony with every other voice. We are in that process of upbuilding.

(H. W. Beecher.)

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KJV: For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

WEB: For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.