What can be more inspiring and strengthening than to believe that there is an eternal purpose of God working itself out in the universe through all its stages and parts; that this eternal purpose includes us, and has fastened upon us individually and brought us into Christ and His Church, to make true men of us; and that it has done all this not for our own sakes only, but to disclose something more of God's glory and for the fulfilment of great and universal purposes, which are to radiate out even from us? Wherever St. Paul sees the hand of God in present experience, at once his mind works back to an eternal will and therefore also forward to an eternal and adequate result. And this backward and forward look transfigures the present with a new glory and a fresh hope. So will it be with us if this same characteristically Christian way of looking at any apparent movement of God in the present, in our own souls or in the world outside us, becomes habitually and instinctively ours. God never acts on a sudden impulse or without purpose of continuance. Certainly He can be trusted not to stop and leave things unfinished. When He hath begun any good work He will assuredly perfect it, if we will let Him.
[[1]] i. 8.
[[2]] See Col. i. 19; ii. 9; cf. ii. 3, 'in Christ are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden.'
[[3]] Eph. iii. 19; iv. 13. It is not certain that by Him 'who filleth all in all' St. Paul does not mean the Father rather than the Son. But iv. 10 supports the interpretation given above.
[[4]] Col. i. 19; Phil. ii. 9-11.
[[5]] And the word rendered 'filleth' may have a middle and not a passive sense, the idea being perhaps suggested that God 'fills all things for his own purpose.'
[[6]] That is, they were 'predestined to an adoption' (Eph. i. 5) which it is implied they have already received.