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We are told that in these countries where the night lasts for many months the inhabitants, when they conclude that the dayspring is at hand, climb the loftiest mountains, and there wait and watch the first streak of returning day. That streak is the signal for gladness and melody. Such was the attitude of those who "waited for the consolation of Israel" before the Son of God came, and such ought to be our attitude who look for Christ's second coming. Note —

I. THE MOURNFUL CONDITION OF CREATION SINCE THE FALL.

1. It is in the "bondage of corruption" through the iniquity of its inhabitant man, The mansion has been spotted and stained by the leprosy of him that dwells in it. Before man fell the whole creation, as it came from God, was "very good"; but when man became corrupt and turned the good creatures of God into occasions of sin and idolatry, the whole creation, in a sense, became partaker of the defilement of its rational inhabitants. Drunkenness and debauchery have been made to find their fuel and their food in the good things that God had made for man's good and for His own glory.

2. And, being thus enthralled by corruption, it is made "subject to vanity." It is a peculiarity in the Divine government that things should partake in each other's weal or woe. "A fruitful land maketh He barren, because of the wickedness of them that dwell therein." Think of Sodom and Palestine. And what God has thus, in a smaller measure, done in individual instances, He has, in the grand scale, in creation. God brought vanity on His beautiful works, and marred, though He did not wholly deface, the lovely structure He had built and furnished.

3. To complete the dark picture, "the whole creation travaileth and groaneth in pain together until now." What a grandeur there is in this personification of the whole visible universe! The Psalmist thus made all nature, animate and vocal, to praise her Creator, and await her Deliverer's coming, and it is by a similar bold flight of imagination that the apostle personifies all creation as wearied with the bondage of corruption, mourning through the continual vanity, waiting for the wondrous transformation that is in store for her, and striving after it as a woman drawing near to her delivery longeth for the hour when it shall be said, "a man is born into the world." And it is not mere fancy that we may seem at times to hear, in the moaning of the tempest, the roar of the storm, the dashing of the billows, the sounds and the sighings that we may often hearken to from troubled, tempest-tossed nature, to construe these into the "groaning and travailing of creation," after that great redemption and deliverance that the Redeemer hath in store for her.

4. Must we not be arrested with the lesson thus taught us? What a fearful thing is sin, that it casts its dark shadow over the whole universe of God! When we make light of sin, let us look around us, as well as look within us, that we may be humbled, and cry, "God be mericiful to me a sinner!"

II. THE HOPE THAT ANIMATES CREATION in her mournful and fallen state (ver. 19).

1. That is the great epoch to which creation turns her anxious eye, anticipating her glorious deliverance. For we are hid; "our life is now hid with Christ in God." The world knoweth us not, and we sometimes know not one another. But a day of manifestation cometh — a day of public adoption in the presence of the whole intelligent universe, a day of adoption in the day of "the redemption of the body," when, invested with the similitude of their glorious Head, they shall stand forth, confessed of all to be the sons of God. Then creation shall find her glorious deliverance. This is that bright epoch foretold by the prophets, the time of the restitution of all things, when the Creator shall say, "Behold, I make all things new."

2. Behold the hope of the creature. It shall be "delivered out of the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God!" This cannot be annihilation. Would it be deliverance to creation, any compensation for its involuntary suffering, to be blotted out? The very fact that creation has suffered with man is in itself strong presumption that it shall triumph and be exalted with man. And so we look for "new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." The whole visible creation is anticipating this blessed hope, when, with in its renewed inhabitants, it shall undergo renovation, and shall receive perfection.Conclusion:

1. The subject is fitted to alarm every one who is making earth his portion. They that corrupt the creature and defile themselves therewith shall never know the creature's promised bliss.

2. For those that profess to be waiting for Christ's coming, this contemplation is fitted to impart exalted hope. "Eye hath not seen," etc.

(Canon Stowell.)

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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.