(2) It must have an element of recovery in it. How we crave the recovery of lost friends ! Is it all over when they leave us ? The heart refuses to think so. It clings to the thought of reunion. Christ is the pledge of that — Christ the Uniter, who as on earth at the house of Jairus, at the bier of Nain, at the grave of Bethany, is the Joiner of parted hands and sundered lives, delivering divided ones to each other. We crave also the recovery of lost energies. Capacities that are checked by its ungenial conditions, aspirations that are thwarted by its narrow limits,
^ Francis Beaumont.
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expenditures of effort and affection that are made void by its thankless receptions, we think of them all. Has God created them only that they may be thrown away ? Shall He not rather have respect to the work of His hands, and perfect that which concerneth us? Our hope is in Christ, who not only pledges their recovery, but promises that they shall be recovered by us, as the ultimate witnesses of His faithfulness, the ultimate sharers of His joy.
(3) It must have an element of catholicity in it. Hope, if it is to be true and complete, must embrace in its comprehensive sweep not only good for ourselves, in the attainment of a personal immortality and the re-establishment of personal ties, but good for the whole wide creation. It must include the purifying and the rectifying of society, the evangelizing of the nations, and the transforming of nature itself. No expectation would be perfect which does not blend with its pictures of individual and mutual blessedness the picture of a regenerate world, free from the curse and crowned with the blessing, bathed in the glory of God most precious, ihe brightness of His perfect purity, the beauty of His finished plan.
Lo ! crowned with unutterable calm And robed in light, came up the day-star Hope, The vii'gin mother of the Christ of Joy. Clear were her eyes with innocence, and deep With dreams. Her lips were full with mysteries. A crystal globe she held, wherein were seen New vistas unimaginably fair. Her presence seemed a kiss of God, which all Kose up to take. In the diffused light Of her adorable simplicity Each man threw down his habit of disguise And stood before his fellows, candid, brave. Yet wearing weakness meekly, as a babe Will wear it.^
II.
Patient in Teibulation.
St. Paul is his own best commentary on his own counsels. His purposes were frequently broken by tumultuous shocks. His ' Anna Bunston, The Porch of Paradise, 12.
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plans were destroyed by hatred and violence. His course was twisted here, diverted there, and wrenched a hundred times from its appointed goings by the mischievous plots of wicked men. The little churches he had founded were in chronic disturbance and unrest. They were often infested with puerilities, and some- times they were honeycombed by heresies which consumed their very life. And yet how sound and noble his patience ! With what fruitful tenderness he waits for his lagging pupils! His very reproofs are given, not with the blind, clumsy blows of a street mob, but with the quiet, discriminating hand of a surgeon. This man, more than most men, had proved the hygienic value of endurance, and he, more than most men, was competent to counsel his fellow-believers to discipline themselves to patience in
tribulation.
i. Tribulation.
What is tribulation ? Tribulation is comprehensive enough. It denotes every possible loss, cross, trouble that can enter into the mind of man; whatever we passively suffer, whatever we actively endure.
Let us look at tribulation, then, in some of its different aspects. " Patient in tribulation " ? Yes. But make sure first of all that the tribulation is real, not fancied. Did we ever try to estimate the proportion in which the fanciful, the fictitious, the imaginary ills in life stand to the actual ? Is it not the case that many a man makes his own sorrows, and that the things we anticipate, but which never happen, have more in them of calamity and burden than what we are forced in Providence to endure? Real tribulation we can divide into two kinds — that which comes to us from others, and that which comes from ourselves.
" 1. Tribulation from without. — This kind of tribulation has both a positive and a negative side. Take the positive first — that is, actual suffering caused us by others. This kind of tribulation was most immediately in the mind of the Apostle Paul when he wrote the words first to the little Eoman Church. Dark clouds were gathering, threatenings of coming trouble. Days of persecution were at hand. Nero, hardening himself in vice, would soon need some one upon whom he could charge his guilt,
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and wreak his spite ; no suffering would be too cruel with which to afflict the Church of God. To-day persecution does not take the same form. It is not so much bodily as mental persecution. The young man of to-day who follows Christ has no fear of death, imprisonment, or injury in any way to his body, but if he be thoroughgoing he is still persecuted — persecuted by jeers and laughter and even by calumny.