The apostle says they are to share in the liberty of the sons of God:  will it not then be a liberty like ours, a liberty always ready to be offered on the altar of love?  What sweet service will not that of the animals be, thus offered!  How sweet also to minister to them in their turns of need!  For to us doubtless will they then flee for help in any difficulty, as now they flee from us in dread of our tyranny.  What lovelier feature in the newness of the new earth, than the old animals glorified with us, in their home with us—­our common home, the house of our father—­each kind an unfailing pleasure to the other!  Ah, what horses!  Ah, what dogs!  Ah, what wild beasts, and what birds in the air!  The whole redeemed creation goes to make up St Paul’s heaven.  He had learned of him who would leave no one out; who made the excuse for his murderers that they did not know what they were doing.

Is not the prophecy on the groaning creation to have its fulfilment in the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness?  Does not this involve its existence beyond what we call this world?  Why should it not then involve immortality?  Would it not be more like the king eternal, immortal, invisible, to know no life but the immortal? to create nothing that could die; to slay nothing but evil?  ’For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him.’

But what is this liberty of the children of God, for which the whole creation is waiting?  The children themselves are waiting for it:  when they have it, then will their house and retinue, the creation, whose fate hangs on that of the children, share it with them:  what is this liberty?

All liberty must of course consist in the realization of the ideal harmony between the creative will and the created life; in the correspondence of the creature’s active being to the creator’s idea, which is his substantial soul.  In other words the creature’s liberty is what his obedience to the law of his existence, the will of his maker, effects for him.  The instant a soul moves counter to the will of its prime cause, the universe is its prison; it dashes against the walls of it, and the sweetest of its uplifting and sustaining forces at once become its manacles and fetters.  But St Paul is not at the moment thinking either of the metaphysical notion of liberty, or of its religious realization; he has in his thought the birth of the soul’s consciousness of freedom.

’And not only so’—­that the creation groaneth and travaileth—­’but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for.... the redemption of our body.’—­We are not free, he implies, until our body is redeemed; then all the creation will be free with us.  He regards the creation as part of our embodiment.  The whole creation is waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God—­that is, the redemption of their body, the idea of which extends to their whole material envelopment, with all the life that belongs to it.  For this as for them, the bonds of corruption must fall away; it must enter into the same liberty with them, and be that for which it was created—­a vital temple, perfected by the unbroken indwelling of its divinity.