' B. M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion, 14.
COLOSSIANS I. 27 445
tranquil hours should produce it, but also the times when all we can do is to endure, and when all our comfort comes to us from God's Word.i
^ Dean Stanley used hopefulness as a test of all systems of truth. Kightly so. God is the God of hope, and His truth, like Himself, carries the atmosphere of good cheer. The falsity of mediaevalism appears in this — it robbed men of joy and gladness. God was the centre of darkness. His throne was iron. His heart was marble. His laws were huge implements of destruction. His penalties were red-hot cannon balls crashing along the sinner's pathway. Kepentance toward God was moving toward the arctics and away from the tropics. Christianity was anything but " peace on earth, good will to men." Philosophers destroyed God's winsomeness. The Eeformers came in to lead men away from mediaevalism back to God Himself. Men found hope again in redemptive love. They saw that any conception of God that dispirited and depressed men was perverted and false. No man has done more to establish this fact than he who long ago said : "Any presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that does not come to the world as the balmy days of May comes to the unlocked northern zones ; any way of preaching the love of God in Christ which is not as full of sweetness as the voice of the angels when they sang at the Advent ; any way of making known the proclamation of mercy which has not at least as many birds as there are in June and as many flowers as the dumb meadows know how to bring forth ; any method of bringing before men the doctrine of salvation which does not make every one feel, ' There is hope for me in God — in the Divine plan, in the very nature of the organization of human life and society,' is spurious — is a slander on God and is blasphemy against His love." ^
2. What, then, does the Bible say about hope ? It speaks of " the full assurance of hope." Is that the same as " I hope so " ? It says that " hope is an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast." Ask the seaman as he throws his anchor overboard if it will hold. Does he say, " I hope so " ? He looks at the great iron claws of it and he answers that he is sure it will hold, if there is anything to hold by. "We have a hope which is placed on that Saviour and Lord who has ascended to the right hand of the Father. It " entereth within the veil." There is something to hold by there. Our hope is an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast.
^ Dr. M'^Laren of Manchester, 246.
' N. D. Hillis, The Investment of Infltience, 290.
446 CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY
^ Mr, Watts some time before received a letter which had moved him profoundly. It was written by a stranger to tell him in the simplest language that in a dark hour of life in a grimy northern town a photograph of his picture of " Hope " had arrested attention at a moment of extreme crisis. The photograph had been bought with a few remaining shillings and the message pondered, and so for one life the whole course of events had been changed. The letter concluded with these words : " I do not know you, nor have I ever seen the face of him who gave me my ' Hope,' but I thank God for the chance of that day when it came to me in my sore need." I read some of these simple words to Mr. Cecil Ehodes, and when I next looked up I saw in his moistened eyes how deeply they had touched him.^
^ When God, of His own determinate counsel, willed to clothe His thought in a human race, and willed to train His human thought-children by the drastic process of exposure to evil, that out of the bitterness of contrast they might ultimately choose and tenaciously cleave to the good, He did it, Paul says, in hope. " The creature," says the Apostle, " was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope." Does that imply uncertainty ? No. God's hope is a " shall." " Therefore," he continues, " the whole creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God." ^
^ Of all the virtues, hope is the most distinctively Christian (it could not, of course, enter definitely into any pagan scheme) ; and, above all others, it seems to me the testing virtue, — that by the possession of which we may most certainly determine whether we are Christians or not ; for many men have charity, that is to say, general kindness of heart, or even a kind of faith, who have not any habitual hope of, or longing for, heaven.^
The hailstorm and sunshine contended,
As I sheltered beneath the broad tree; *
Each its claim to be master defended, With furious persistency;
And so fierce was the challenge, So even the balance, I could not the issue foresee.