Now it seems to me that the very figure requires us to suppose that hope here means, not the emotion but the object on which it is fixed. The same interpretation is necessarily suggested by the context; for the previous verse speaks about a hope set before us,' and about our laying hold upon it.' So that here, at all events, the hope is something external to ourselves which is proposed to us, and which we can grasp.
An anchor is outside the ship; and that which steadies us cannot be a part of ourselves, must be something external to us, on which our fluttering and mutable emotions can repose and be still.
Nor is it at all unusual, either in Scripture or in common speech, that we should employ the name of the emotion to express the object which the emotion grasps. For instance, people say to one another, my love,' my comfort,' and we talk about God as our fear' and our dread,' and Scripture speaks of Christ as our hope; in all which phrases the person who excites the emotion is described by the name of the emotion.
And so, I take it, is the case here. The hope which we possess, and which, outside of us, we being fastened to it, makes us steadfast and secure, is, at bottom, Jesus Christ Himself. This hope, says my text, has entered within the veil.' Well! read on. Whither the Forerunner is for us entered.' When He passed within the veil our hope passed within it, and went with Him. For He is not only the foundation, but He is the substance of our hope. He is the thing hoped for, and in the deepest interpretation, all our future is the personal Christ; and every blessed anticipation that can fill a human heart with gladness is summed up in this, that I may be found in Him,' and made partaker of that Saviour whom to possess is fruition and eternal life. He is the anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, and entering within the veil.
Notice further the characteristics ascribed to this anchor and hope. Sure and steadfast.' These two words express diverse qualities of the hope. A sure anchor is one which does not drag. It is not too light for the ship that rides by it. It has found a firm ground, its flukes are all right, and it holds. It does not deceive. The ship's crew may trust to it.
An anchor which is steadfast, or, as the original word might be rendered, firm,' is one that will not break, but is strong in its own substance, made of good tough iron, so that there is no fear of the shank snapping, whatever strain may be put upon it. We may then say, generally, that this object of the Christian hope is free from all the weaknesses and imperfections which cleave and cling to other objects. Take just a sentence or two in illustration of that.
Our earthly hopes, what are they? Only the products of our own imaginations, or the reflection of our wishes projected on the dim screen of the future, with no more substance in them than the shadows from a magic-lantern thrown on to the sheet. Or even if they be the reasonable result of calculation, they still have no existence. But there, says my text, is a hope which is a real thing, and has a present existence. It has entered into that within the veil,' as the literal anchor is dropped through the depths of the sea and lost to. sight, so by an incongruous and yet forcible blending of metaphor the text tells us this anchor is carried aloft, into the azure depths, and there lost to sight, is fastened as it were to the very throne of God. All the universe being the temple, and a thin veil being stretched between us in the outer court and that Holy of Holies, the Christ, who is our hope, has passed within the veil, and is verily there, separated from us and yet close by us. A veil is but a thin partition. We can hear the voices on the other side of a woollen curtain, we can catch the gleams of light through it. A touch will draw it aside. So we float in the midst of that solemn unseen present which is to us the future; and all the brightest and grandest objects of the Christian man's anticipation have a present existence and are real; just on the other side of that thin curtain that parts us from them. A touch, and it rattles on its rings and we stand in the blaze of the fruition. This hope is not an imagination, not the projection of wishes upon the dim curtain of the future, not the child of calculation, but a present reality within arm's length of us all.
Then, again, earthly hopes are less than certainties. This one is a certainty, We may make the future as sure as the past. Hope may be as veracious as memory. It is not so with our ordinary anticipations; we all feel that when we say we hope we are admitting an element of dread as well as of hope into our anticipations. And so, however hope may smile there is always a touch of terror in her sweet eyes. As one of our great poets has described her, she carries a jewelled cup of richest wine, but coiled at the bottom of it a sleeping serpent. Possibilities that it may be otherwise are an integral part of all the uncertain hopes of earth, make it a torture often, and always dim its lustre and its gladness.
But certitude is a characteristic of the Christian hope. It is sure,' as my text has it, and we can say, not, I trust it may,' but, I know it will.' Is it not something to be able to look forward into the dim unknown, and to feel that whilst much there is mercifully hidden, far more and that the best in the future is manifest as history, and certain as the fixed past. To the Christian resting upon Christ it is no presumption, but the simplest duty to feel to-morrow,' and the to-morrow after that, and all the to-morrows, including the unsetting day of eternity' shall be as yesterday, and much more abundant.'
Then again, earthly hopes, whether disappointed or fulfilled, betray, or rather, I might say, are disappointed even whilst they are fulfilled. We paint the future as if it contained but the one thing on which for the time being we have set our hopes. And we do not remember that when we reach the accomplishment of the expectation, life will have a great many other things in it than the fulfilled expectation, and all the old commonplaces, and annoyances, and imperfections will still be there. So ever, the thing chased is more than the thing won. Like some bit of sea-weed, as long as it lies there in the ocean moving its filmy fronds to the wave, it expands and is lovely. Grasp it, and draw it out, and it is a bit of ugly slime in your hand. So possession never realises the dream of hope.
But here, the half hath not been told us. Eye hath not seen it, … neither hath entered into the heart of man,' in his loftiest anticipations, the transcendent realisation of the things that God hath prepared for them that love Him.
