Proud of the form thou hadst given thy vessel, Proud of myself, I forgot my donor; Down in the dust I began to nestle, Poured thee no wine, and drank deep of dishonour! Lord, thou hast broken, thou mendest thy vessel! In the dust of thy glory I nestle. O Lord, the earnest expectation of thy creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. _THE HOPE OF THE UNIVERSE._ For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.--_Romans_ viii. 19. Let us try, through these words, to get at the idea in St Paul's mind for which they stand, and have so long stood. It can be no worthless idea they represent--no mere platitude, which a man, failing to understand it at once, may without loss leave behind him. The words mean something which Paul believes vitally associated with the life and death of his Master. He had seen Jesus with his bodily eyes, I think, but he had not seen him with those alone; he had seen and saw him with the real eyes, the eyes that do not see except they understand; and the sight of him had uplifted his whole nature--first his pure will for righteousness, and then his hoping imagination; and out of these, in the knowledge of Jesus, he spoke. The letters he has left behind him, written in the power of this uplifting, have waked but poor ideas in poor minds; for words, if they seem to mean anything, must always seem to mean something within the scope of the mind hearing them. Words cannot convey the thought of a thinker to a no-thinker; of a largely aspiring and self-discontented soul, to a creature satisfied with his poverty, and counting his meagre faculty the human standard. Neither will they readily reveal the mind of one old in thought, to one who has but lately begun to think. The higher the reader's notion of what St Paul intends--the higher the idea, that is, which his words wake in him, the more likely is it to be the same which moved the man who had seen Jesus, and was his own no more. If a man err in his interpretation, it will hardly be by attributing to his words an intent too high. First then, what does Paul, the slave of Christ, intend by 'the creature' or 'the creation'? If he means the _visible world_, he did not surely, and without saying so, mean to exclude the noblest part of it--the sentient! If he did, it is doubly strange that he should immediately attribute not merely sense, but conscious sense, to that part, the insentient, namely, which remained. If you say he does so but by a figure of speech, I answer that a figure that meant less than it said--and how much less would not this?--would be one altogether unworthy of the Lord's messenger.