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Let us look at hope.

I. IN ITS RELATION TO HOME AND PRESSING WORK.

1. The nurse and loving friend who watch by the sick say, "While there is life there is hope." It is curious to see how God, who puts us here as mere strangers and pilgrims, mere grubs, about to burst into the beauty of the heavenly life, should implant in us a keen and obstinate love of life such as we see it here. But so it is. We cannot bear the idea of being dead, and fly for medical help directly there is danger to health. No doubt this is right. Jesus raised bodies to toil a few years more, to die a few years later.

2. But God reverses the saw of the nurse and says, "While there is hope there is life." When we can look onward in our work, and believe in progress, then we work with life. Even the sluggard is inspired by results. Thorwaldsen was once found deeply dejected, if not in tears. On being asked why, he confessed that he was satisfied with the work he had in hand; that he accepted this satisfaction, which he had never felt before, as a sign that his powers were decreasing, that he had no higher aim, that the turning moment of his decline had come. So it is in the commonest handicraft. He who hopes to see shoes made better will always work with a reserve of energy and enjoyment. But the moment a man loses heart, i.e., hope, his value is diminished in the labour market; he is merely writhing in the clutch of death, and unless rekindled by the fire of God, will before long disappear vauquished. Hope is the sun, and when it sets the night creeps on from place to place in the soul.

II. IN ITS HIGHER ASPECTS. The constant looking forward to victory is the secret of the Christian life.

1. Life in the Psalms is the confidence of help, David rises before us inspired, irresistible, when he looks beyond the years of guilt and persecution. When he had eaten and was full, when his course was nearly done, there was much in his history we do not like to dwell on.

2. When we turn to the New Testament our eyes are drawn at once to Jesus. In the judgment hall He looks beyond the mob, the scourge, the shame, and thinks aloud, "Hereafter ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God." More or less this spirit inspires all true disciples. Hope is the true elixir which confers perpetual renovation.

III. A MYSTERIOUS INCOMING SPIRIT IS THE GIVER OF THIS HOPE. "We have received the firstfruits of the Spirit... for we are saved by hope." Have we realised the existence of such a Spirit? or do we look for mere spiritual luxuries which will help us to say a "Nunc dimittis"? Do we look merely to a calm, comfortable ending of all desires, or to a growing power to take in the things of God?

(Harry Jones, M.A.)

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KJV: For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?

WEB: For we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which he sees?