(3) Hope is not to be regarded as an unnecessary grace. St. Paul says that there are three things which abide — three things,
» J. M'Leod Campbell. a?. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.
6o THE SAVING GRACE OF HOPE
that is, which last under all the changes of fashion and of custom, and of the varying schemes of different generations — three things which remain as the abiding strands of the human character — and of those the first is faith and the second is hope. Now when we turn to consider hope we are brought face to face with this — that hope suffers from not being taken seriously, as faith is. Even those who feel most their lack of faith know that faith is essential ; they know that " without faith it is impossible to please God," and that those who come to God "must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." But with hope it is all different. We look upon hope, do we not, as a kind of beautiful fairy queen ; and where hope is so beautiful we are apt to think she can do no useful work. She is like a beautiful woman whom people think to be above doing strong and useful work ; but those who know her best, those who have seen the most tragic sides of life, know that although she is bright and beautiful on the bridal morning as the young couple come forth, and think that they are going to tread a path of flowers, yet it is on the tragic side of life that hope is at her best.
'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.
I met a preacher there I knew, and said :
" 111 and o'er worked, how fare you in this scene ? " —
" Bravely ! " said he ; " for I of late have been
Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living Bread."
O human soul! as long as thou canst so Set up a mark of everlasting light, Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,
To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam — Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night! Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.
Thus Matthew Arnold. But what did he mean ? He meant that Hope, the beautiful queen we think her, too beautiful to soil her hands or mar her face with work, goes up and down the
ROMANS VIII. 24, 25 61
slums of East London with the worker as he toils on through all his difficulties, and that from the worst disappointment he is saved in Hope.
^ A young man is working in his study. All the glamour of scientific discovery is sweeping over him, and his one great thought is to follow and back up his great master, Darwin. He is studying science, and he makes some of the most original experiments that have ever been made. But the exclusive use of the analytical reason, as in the case of his master, Darwin, clouds his faith. The boyish essay on Prayer is withdrawn from publication, and for years there rests upon his mind a cloud of awful doubt. But he had in his study, at his work, as his constant companion, something that never left him, something that always told him that truth could be learned, that some day his boyish faith would come back to him, something that kept him perfectly honest, perfectly sincere, perfectly true to himself through it all, and that thing was Hope. And when only a week before he died he walked up the Latin Chapel at Oxford, and as a firm believer received the Holy Communion in full possession of his magnificent faculties, it was Hope that walked in front of him, very reverently, having done her work. George Eomanes was saved in Hope. It is a calumny, then, on Hope to look on her as a merely beautiful fairy queen. Hope is a nurse, Hope is a worker, Hope is a most delightful and sustaining intellectual friend.^
iii. The Power of Hope.
St. Paul places hope as the second of the Christian graces. It is a tremendous thing to be placed between faith and love. What is the magic power of hope which places her in such a position in the Christian life ?
1. The first thing which we notice about hope — and it wants watching to find out the peculiar magic of its power — is that it purifies the human character. " Every man that hath this hope in him," says St. John, " purifieth himself, even as Christ is pure." It would be weary dismal work indeed to mark, year after year, our little growth, our frequent failure ; to find the same tempta- tions still assaulting us, the same meanness or vanity or envy lurking in our hearts. At times, it may be, we have been half inclined to put up with a lower standard, and to come to terms with our sins ; to acquiesce in their occupying some portion of
* Bishop Winniugton Ingram,
62 THE SAVING GRACE OF HOPE
God's territory. But of His mercy, we are saved by hope. We renew the experience of the Psalmist, " I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." To see His goodness ; yes, and to be like Him. For we shall sefe Him as He is. There is the hope which from the triumph of the risen Saviour breaks out upon our souls even in the darkest moments of their self-reproach ; we are not fighting only to make the best we can out of fifty or sixty years. We could hardly bear to think what we have wasted and misspent if that were all ; we could hardly hold on with the knowledge of the failures that we are. What changes everything for us is that through the often baffled hopes, through the fearful resolutions of our faltering hearts, there comes the thrill of that surpassing, saving hope that by His grace we shall one day be brought where sorrow and sighing flee away ; where there shall be no more curse, and no more failure; where the storm of temptation shall be utterly forgotten in the " peace of G-od, which passeth all understanding."