Tf The characteristic of waning life is said to be disenchantment. Old men in general are inclined to check the zeal and damp the ardour of their younger followers. A shrewd observer of life has said that youth is an illusion, manhood a struggle, old age a regret. " How many young men," says a great idealist, " have I not hailed at the commencement of their career, glowing with enthusiasm, and full of the poetry of great enterprises, whom I see to-day precocious old men, with the wrinkles of cold calculation on their brow ; calling themselves free from illusion when they are only disheartened; and practical when they are only commonplace." But believing men experience no disillusionment. The leaves of hope never wither on souls that are rooted in God. Joseph when dying looks forward with calm and perfect confidence, knowing that glorious things, and ever more glorious, must be, because God is. " What is this Better, this flying Ideal, but the perpetual promise of the Creator ? " God lives though a hundred Josephs die. The two characteristics of the Hebrew mind were the up- ward and the forward look, the one directed to God in the present,
i CORINTHIANS xin. 13 409
the other to His coming in increasing power and grace in the future. Optimism was the distinction of the Hebrews. " In the absence of Hope and of an ideal of progress, we strike upon one great difference between the classical Greeks and the Hebrews." Among the ancient races the Hebrew was like a watcher standing on a high mountain top, scanning the horizon and catching the first beams of coming day, while others were still hidden in dark- ness. The very heart-cry of the Hebrew race is heard in such words as these —
My soul looketh for the Lord
More than watchmen look for the morning;
Yea, more than watchmen for the morning.1
6. Our hope is for others and for ourselves.
(1) It is for ourselves here and now. — There must often be much to distress and alarm us in the course of things which interest us now — evils which seem without remedy, defeats which seem final, perplexities through which we cannot see our way, dark and gloomy clouds rising in menace over our familiar world. To hope seems to us then like deluding ourselves; we call it optimism, and instinctive dislike to pain, a determination not to see the cruel truth. And yet how often has it appeared in the upshot of things that if in the darkest times any had been bold enough to hope he would have been amply justified ?
What must have been the feelings of Christians in the fourth and fifth centuries, when, just as Christianity seemed to have won its way into the Eoman Empire, they saw the fierce northern barbarians break into it, and the heathen triumph over religion and civil order ? Which would then have seemed the judgment of sober good sense — the despondency which saw only the fright- ful mischief, or the bold hope which saw in the barbarians the seed of a great Christendom ? Yet, who would have been right and who wrong ?
"It has come," wrote the soberest and also the loftiest of Christian thinkers in the last century, " I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious." The ominous symptom has certainly not grown less ominous ; but could even the calm and large mind
1 J. Strachan, Hebrew Ideals, ii. 1G5.
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of Bishop Butler have embraced the thought that with this, not diminished, perhaps aggravated, there might also come a steady growth of energy and fervour and deepening practical purpose in the Church and religious men, such as he had certainly not seen, and could not look for ?
If Hope about ourselves should be encouraged. It is no proof of devoutness to be always shedding penitential tears, or to be so sensible of our own weaknesses as to be despondent about our future. Victory is generally the guerdon of those who expect it, confident in the Tightness of their cause, and the help of omnipo- tence on the side of right. When King Eamirez, in the year 909, vowed to deliver Castile from the shameful tribute imposed by the Moors of one hundred virgins delivered annually, he collected his troops and openly defied their King Abdelraman.
The king called God to witness, that come there weal or woe, Thenceforth no maiden tribute from out Castile should go, — "At least I will do battle on God our Saviour's foe, And die beneath my banner before I see it so."
He fought with courage but without hope of victory, and after a furious conflict was defeated on the plain of Clavijo. But that night (the legend says), while he was sleeping, St. Jago appeared to him in vision, and promised him the victory. Next morning he called his officers about him, and told them his dream ; inspired them also with hope of heavenly aid; and that day the enemy was overwhelmed by the Christian warriors, and ever since the war-cry of Spain has been " Santiago." l
If The worst of all the woes that trouble faithful hearts is despair of ever conquering our sins, of ever becoming what the Lord Christ would have us be. The modern man, Sir Oliver Lodge tells us, is not troubling much about his sins. I do not know about that. This I am sure of, that earnest Christians trouble about nothing so much. While we are young, while we are yet in the glad spring-time, the hope of victory is ever present. When we have entered upon the dull, dusty paths of middle age, there comes a horrible weariness of the conflict. Disappointment, disillusionment of ourselves, drag us down. Like the Celtic race, we are always setting forth to the war, always to return vanquished. Year by year our hearts grow harder and seem to ossify. The old sins we loathe are with us still; new sins that we never dreamt of assault us. Character seems not to advance, but to retrograde, and the enthusiastic impulses of youth have fled,