And with this spirit in prayer patience under trial will not be denied. " At this season the sun enters into the sign of Libra, for the day and night are equal, and light and darkness evenly balanced. Even so for the resigned soul Jesus Christ is in the sign of Libra ; and whether He grants sweetness or bitter- ness, darkness or light, of whatever nature His gift may be, the man retains his balance, and all things are one to him, with the exception of sin, which has been driven out once for all." And the more steadfast the prayer the more will the link be strengthened which binds our soul to God, and the more grace we will receive to meet each need of life.
* R. L. Stevenson, Crabbed Age aiid Youth.
' Maurice Maeterlinck, Euysbroeck and the Mystics, 135.
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All trouble and anguish, loss and pain, When they've done their task appointed,
Vanish and fade ; it is joy that lasts. The seer, with vision anointed.
Beholds the flash of a rising dawn, Though the midnight skies are gray.
Patience, poor soul, with the present pain- There Cometh a better day.
Eejoicing in Hope.
There are those who stigmatize Christianity as a religion of sorrow. They tell us that, like a bitter wind, it withers the flowers, that it says of laughter, It is mad, and of mirth, What doeth it? They contrast it, still ignorantly, with the gay and careless humanism of the ancient world. They dare to say —
Thou hast conquered, 0 pale Galilean; the world has grown
grey from Thy breath. We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness
of death.
But this is not Christianity after the mind of the Apostle Paul. " Eejoice in hope," he says to the Eoman Christians. It would be difficult to find a more decided expression of optimism. The cheery tone is never absent from St. Paul's speech. The buoyant and "springy" movement of his life is never changed. The light never dies out of his sky. Even the grey firmament reveals more hopeful tints, and becomes significant of evolving glory. The Apostle is an optimist, "rejoicing in hope," a child of light, wearing the " armour of light," " walking in the light," even as Christ is in the light.
Nor was this Apostolic optimism a thin and fleeting sentiment begotten of a cloudless summer day. It was not born of sluggish thinking or of idle and shallow observation. The first chapter of this Epistle to the Komans contains as dark and searching an indictment of our nature as the mind of man has ever drawn. Let us rehearse the appalling catalogue, that the radiance of the Apostle's optimism may appear the more abounding : " Senseless
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hearts," " fools," " uncleanness," " vile passions," " reprobate minds," "unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, hateful to God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant- breakers, without natural affection, unmerciful" With fearless severity the Apostle leads us through the black realms of midnight and eclipse. And yet in the subsequent reaches of the great argument, of which these dark regions form the preface, there emerges the clear, calm, steady light of this optimistic text. What was the cause of this courageous and energetic optimism ? What can we do to imitate it ? We can choose what we will look at. We can choose our atmosphere like the people of Italy who in frosty weather will be seen sitting in the market-place by their stalls with a dish of embers, which they grasp in their hands, and so make themselves comfortably warm on the bitterest day.
St, Paul looked at three things : —
1. He fixed his eyes on the Redemption of Christ. — In all the spacious reaches of the Apostle's life the redemptive work of his Master is present as an atmosphere in which his thoughts and purposes and labours found their sustaining and enriching breath. Redemption was not degraded into a fine abstract argument, to which the Apostle had appended his own approval, and then, with sober satisfaction, had laid it aside, as a practical irrelevancy, in the stout chests of mental orthodoxy. It became the very spirit of his life. To him it was not a small device, an afterthought, a patched-up expedient to meet an unforeseen emergency. The redemptive purpose lay back in the abyss of the eternities ; and in a spirit of reverent questioning the Apostle sent his trembling thoughts into those lone and silent fields. He emerged with whispered secrets such as these : " fore-knew," " fore-ordained," "chosen in him before the foundation of the world," "eternal life promised before times eternal," " the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord."
^ What a wonderful consciousness St. Paul has of the sweep and fulness of redemption. We know the variations of the glorious air: "the unsearchable riches of Christ"; "riches in ROMANS — 20
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glory in Christ Jesus " ; " all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ " ; " the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering." And what is the resultant enfranchisement ? Eecall those wonderful sentences beginning with the words " But now." It is a phrase that heralds a great deliverance. "But now apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been manifested." " But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God." " But now are ye light in the Lord." These represent no thin abstractions. To St. Paul the realities of which they speak were more real than the firm and solid earth. And is it any wonder that a man with such a magnificent sense of the reality of the redemptive work of Christ, who felt the eternal purpose throbbing in the dark backward and abyss of time, who conceived it operating upon our race in floods of grace and glory, and who realized in his own immediate consciousness the varied wealth of the resultant emancipation — is it any wonder that for this man a new day had dawned, and the birds had begun to sing and the flowers to bloom, and a sunny optimism had taken possession of his heart which found expression in an assured and rejoicing hope ? ^