Hebrews 6:17-20 Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath:… Hope is one of the noblest of the natural instincts. It is, as the poets say, the sunshine of the mind. Like the old sun-dial of Saint Mark's at Venice, it marks only the cloudless hours. It has a lifting power which raises and carries life on. The boy hopes to be a man, and you see, in his thoughtful moments, the dignity and energy of a man, so that you say, "He will be a credit to his family. He will conquer Silesia." The man looks through the years, bearing up Under their burdens, to the honours and rest of old age. Old age, stript of all else, ought at least not to live on the past, as is often said, but to be waiting in joyful expectation of something better that is beyond. There is this quality of hope in us which is the spring of our courage and of the capacity of recovery from disappointment and defeat. Prince Eugene was always more terrible in defeat than in victory. Hope, "the nerve of life," as Thackeray calls hope, without which man would lose half his happiness and power, and power of growth, making him "a man of hope and forward-looking mind even to the last," is that which gives life its impetus; but which native quality, strong though it be, ends in human nature and what it can do and compass. It is, like human nature itself, a thing of earthly uncertainty whose grounds are ever shifting; while the hope which is spoken of in the New Testament, or that which may be called Christian hope — even if it use the beautiful natural instinct while transforming it. into something spiritual — is a more enduring principle, partaking of the eternal state of being. If we look at the reasons why Christian hope, as distinguished from the natural or instinctive quality, is likened to an anchor that enters into the veil and is sure and steadfast, the chief reason of it we will find to be that it is a hope which is fixed upon God and His truth, where alone is stability. God's being is that which "is," not that which "becomes." Nothing can add to or take from the perfect One in whom all fulness dwells: though let us fairly understand that God is not unchangeable in the sense that His nature is one of immovable hardness like a rock; for His heart is touch,-d by the most delicate emotions that the purest spirit is capable of feeling; but He is unchangeable in the immutability of those moral qualities which form His character and upon which the government of the world rests secure. If we see the proofs of God's firmness in the unalterable operations of His physical laws — a principle on which all science is founded — so we may believe that the blessed promises of God will come true, and that He who brings forth the spring violets from under the snows of winter, rejoices to bring out from the most rugged and unpropitious circumstances the blossoming of every hidden seed of hope; and the rugged circumstances form a factor in the Divine plan. In God's wisdom misfortune is a blessing, and compels men t, use their powers boldly, and to do things that they could not possibly have done in prosperous times. And God does not desert a soul in misfortune. When we seem to be entirely hemmed in He makes a way of escape for the soul. In the dear immensity of the Arabian desert where nothing else grows you will find minute sand-flowers too small even for fragrance, and yet that cheer the wanderer and say, "Up, heart, there is hope for thee t " Another reason why Christian hope has in it the principle of stability is because it has a source of strength in the perfect character of the spiritual work which Jesus Christ has done for and in the soul. Not only the Divine, but even the human part of Christ's work, from His birth to His resurrection, gives no signs of failure or imperfection. Christ became true man that He might redeem man, and His human nature was that of one "made perfect through suffering," approaching the cross with slow and steady step. Christ went through what man goes through, or can go through, touching every human part, relation. and need, preserving His obedience to the end, doing all the will of the Father, and righteously triumphing for and in weak humanity, and then, stretched on the shameful tree, as He was about to yield His spirit, could He cry with a loud voice, "It is finished!" An offering for human sin was made by that strong and tender love, and nothing was incomplete. As even the clothes in the sepulchre were rolled up and laid by themselves when Christ arose, nothing was left undone. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the confirmation, and, as it were, celestial touch, or crown, put on Christian hope, that carries it across the confines of death into the worlds beyond. Christian hope may be seen to be something sure and stable in its nature, lastly, because as a matter of experience there is a strong and indestructible expectation the fruit of the spirit of Christ, which is awaked m the Christian soul and the Christian church, and has always been so in every age and every believing mind. There is nothing more inspiring in the study of history than to trace the beginnings of this new hope in Christian civilisation, and its ennobling influence in public morals, law, and government, the treatment of oppressed classes, the social elevation of woman, the higher uses of property, in art, science, literature, politics, and every phase of human life, forming the spring of progress, and having in it a certain faculty of prophecy, in which, as a German writer says, "the longing heart goes forth to meet beforehand great and new creations and hastens to anticipate the mighty future"; above all, making the soul invincible to evil, come in whatever shape it may, in poverty, old age, sickness, prison, wreck, war. the contempt of the world and the violence of active persecution; or whether it come in the more hidden trials and struggles of the spirit. There can be no delusion here. There is a hope which comes into the mind, however inexplicable, which was not there before — a new instinct of a new nature. It is, as the Scriptures call it, "a living hope," — an active principle working by love and purifying the heart. "He that believeth hath the witness in himself;" for it is faith in eternal things which is at the bottom of this hope, and it is the outcome of a new spiritual life within. He who has this hope enjoys a communion with the Divine. He wins the blessed unity which is in God. A " new marvellous light" arises in him and spreads through his being. There is a letting in of the love of God to the soul which expels its gloom and selfishness; and selfishness must be pressed out of true hope. Such pleasure experienced here in God, such openings of the soul into His love, must look forward at some time to a blissful enjoyment of Him — to the great vision of God and His eternal peace. It is this simple fact which makes Christianity, notwithstanding its solemn truths, a cheerful religion, and which gives it a quality of joy that fills it with a perpetual sunshine. In the apostolic church this awoke the voice of song and brought to the world the life of a new blossoming springtime rich in its promise of great things — its true golden age, not past but present and to come. This hope of the Christian, then, is a great hope. a bright, clear, and steady hope, surpassing all the vague desires of the natural heart, beautiful as the poetry of the heart sometimes makes these to appear-yet earthly and evanescent, like the painted clouds that pie up in the western sky of a summer's sunset turning ashy and deathly pale when the light fades out of them. But the "things hoped for" are too fair, too high, too pure, even to be conceived. The prayer, indeed, of thin hope is not for a life without trials, but, with the apostle, the believer would fight that he might win; he would endure self-denial that he might rise above the sensual into the spiritual; and while the hope sustains and cheers, he would also "know Christ " and the fellowship of His sufferings, and sound the depths of Christ's holy life and perfect victory. Is your hope thus ,veil-grounded? When the storm comes, does the anchor hold? When a strong and unexpected temptation fall- like a sudden blast on you, does the anchor hold? In the face of real affliction — of death — would it hold? Does your hope take hold of the unchangeable love of God? If so. when tempted, "rejoice, and show the same diligence, with the full assurance of hope unto the end." Armed with a hope which has in it this sure promise, go forth to a life of goodness. Expect to achieve great things. (J. M. Hoppin.) Parallel Verses KJV: Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: |
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