"_To whom be the glory, unto the ages. Amen._" The advancing "ages," αἰῶνες, the infinite developments of the eternal life, what do we know about them? Almost nothing, except the greatest fact of all; that in them for ever the redeemed creature will glorify not itself but the Creator; finding an endless and ever fuller youth, an inexhaustible motive, a rest impossible to break, a life in which indeed "they _cannot_ die any more," in surrendering always all its blissful wealth of being to the will and use of the BLESSED ONE. In these "ages" we already are, in Christ. We shall indeed grow for ever with their eternal growth, in Him, to the glory of the grace of God. But let us not forget that we are already in their course, as regards that life of ours which is hid with Christ in God. With that recollection, let us give ourselves often, and as by the "second nature" of grace, to adoration. Not necessarily to frequent long abstractions of our time from the active services of life; we need only read on into the coming passages of the Epistle to be reminded that we are hallowed, in our Lord, to a life of unselfish contact with all the needs around us. But let that life have for its interior, for its animation, the spirit of worship. Taking by faith our all from God, let us inwardly always give it back to Him, as those who not only own with the simplest gratitude that He has redeemed us from condemnation and from sin, but who have seen with an adoring intuition that we and our all are of the "all things" which, being "of Him," and "by Him," are also wholly "unto Him," by an absolute right, by the ultimate law of our being, as we are the creatures of the eternal Love. [198] Such is the normal meaning of μυστήριον in the N. T. It is a thing which in itself may or may not be what we mean by "mysterious." But it is a thing which mere observation and reasoning cannot _à priori_ arrive at; God must disclose it. [199] Πλήρωμα is the practical realization of an ideal. [200] So we paraphrase αὕτη αὐτοῖς ἡ παρ' Ἐμοῦ διαθήκη. [201] The aorist εἰσέλθῃ may rather gather up the great ingathering into one thought than mark a narrow crisis in it. [202] Ἀμεταμέλητα: literally, "_unrepented-of_," and so, "_admitting no repentance_," μεταμελεία, "_change of mind_." This is fairly represented by "_irrevocable_." [203] See above, p. 19. [204] It is possible to render here: "_they did not obey your mercy_"; _i.e._, they refused submission to that Gospel in which you found embodied the mercy of God. But the balance of thoughts and sentences is in favour of the rendering above. [205] He quotes nearly verbatim from Isai. xl. 13. Cp. Jerem. xxiii. 18. [206] Τὰ πάντα: the Greek gives us at once the items and the sum of the "_all_." CHAPTER XXV _CHRISTIAN CONDUCT THE ISSUE OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH_ ROMANS xii. 1-8