44 A LIVING HOPE
millions. Once more, let it be repeated that it is belief in the literal physical resurrection which has immensely strengthened and confirmed men's hope in immortality. It was not in the least that as men looked on Jesus' grave their instincts told them that such human goodness had only been transplanted and must flourish elsewhere. It was not a mere faith that the good cannot really die. It was literally the reappearance in human form of Him who was dead and is alive again which wrought this mighty advancement in the hopes of the human race. ... It is because we are persuaded that a Person literally Divine has already immortalized our human nature in the precincts of light that we are also persuaded of our own immortality.^
While Christ lay dead the widowed world
Wore willow green for hope undone : Till, when bright Easter dews impearled
The chilly burial earth, All north and south, all east and west,
Flushed rosy in the arising sun ; Hope laughed, and Faith resumed her rest,
And Love remembered mirth.^
(3) It is contrasted with Jiopes that are dead. — Many once- fondly cherished hopes are to be found withered and strewn on life's pathway. How many a man has " made gold his hope, and Baid to fine gold thou art my confidence," and has " rejoiced because his hand had gotten much," who found out when too late that he had been building his life on a foundation of sand. " What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " How many have made pleasure their hope, who, when they had squandered all their life and soul forces, found that " the world passeth away and the lust thereof " — the power to enjoy. How many have made ambition their hope, who have found out what a poor pillow popularity makes for a dying head, what a wretched salve for a smiting conscience, and how empty it is, too, when its highest pinnacle is reached. " The expectation of the wicked shall perish." "Their hope shall be as the giving up of the ghost." " What is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away his soul ? " But " blessed is the man . . . whose hope the Lord is ! " It is a living hope. It shall never
^ W. J. S. Simpson, Our Lord's Eesurreciion, 277. 2 C. G. Rossetti, Poe^ns, 168.
I PETER I. 3 45
perish, for God has pledged its realization under the seal of His own oath. "Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, con- firmed it by an oath : that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us : which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus."
^ Dead hopes are like dead children, beautiful, it may be, even in death, but how sad and heart-breaking to look upon. Every one, as he passes through the pilgrimage of life, has to leave behind him dead hopes which he buried with tears ; the fortune which he was going to win, and which failed ; the ambition which he was going to realize, and which eludes his grasp ; the human love which was going to be his possession for life, and which deserts or betrays him ; the child, that was going to be the strength and joy of his old age, and that death snatches from him.^
2. But besides being a living hope in these special ways, the hope to which we are begotten by the Resurrection has three characteristics.
(1) It is a hope that recognizes the presence of God in Christ. — Who among the most favoured of Prophets could have raised their souls to the hope that the day would come when God should be made known to mefi, as God was made known in the Person of Jesus Christ — that what their prophetic words signified was such a manifestation of God to man as the Gospels record ? Who among them could have imagined that He who came and disclosed to men that mystery and nature of the Godhead which had been veiled to Moses and Isaiah, was to abide with those whom He had redeemed, till He returned to judge the world ? And yet this is the " living hope " to which the successive generations of Christian people are heirs, by virtue of that great change in their condition made by the Eesurrection of Jesus Christ,
^ " Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself," was the awe- struck reflection of the Prophet, even while recounting the power and providence of the " God of Israel, the Saviour " ; and nature and conscience, His witnesses throughout all the earth, yet echoed the confession — "A God that hideth Himself." This
^ J. G. Greenhougli, Ohrisiian Festivals and Anniversaries, 77.
46 A LIVING HOPE
hidden God made known, made certain, this was what man sought after — this was the " Desire of all nations." And this was given. God came forth from the depths and uncertainties of nature, from the clouds and terrors and enigmas of Providence, from the veil and mystery behind which Israel worshipped Him, from the silence in which He was yet the dim hope of all the ends of the earth — He came forth and showed Himself, He came forth and gave Himself to the love and hearts of men. He taught with human words ; He healed. He forgave. He blessed ; He drew souls to Himself with new and Divine affections ; loith men and for men, He passed from this life through that dark gate of fear and humiliation which we call Death. And if this had been all — if He had passed at once from the grave which could not hold Him to His glory above — who among us knows enough to dare to ask why He should have stopped at this, why He should have vouchsafed no more, whether with only so much His promise could have been fulfilled and His work accomplished ? But this, as we know, was not all. On earth itself He was again, alive from the dead. On earth again, as He had been before, and yet not as He had been before : passing across the scene of life, yet no longer mortal — conversing, walking, eating with men, but vanishing the next moment from their sight ; in form, in love, in power the same, but no longer bound by the body of humiliation which He had worn with His brethren; lifting their thoughts above all that is natural, carnal, earthly in the body, fixing them on all in it that is real and personal. And this was the beginning of a Presence of God which was nevermore to be withdrawn from the sons of men.i