Universal experience tells us that hope means an anticipation which is less than sure. Hopes and fears are bracketed together in common language, as always united, like a double star, one black and the other brilliant, which revolve round a common axis, and are knit together by invisible bands. But if we avail ourselves of the possibilities in reference to the future, which Christianity puts into our hands, our hope may be no less certain than our memory, and even more sure than it. For the grounds on which Christian men may forecast their future as infinitely bright and blessed, as the possession of an inheritance incorruptible, as absolute and entire conformity to the likeness of God, which is peace and joy, are triple, each of them affording certitude.
The Christian hope is builded on no mere projection of our longings into a hypothetical and questionable future. It is no mere deduction from probabilities, from guesses. It is no mere child of a wish, but it rests, immovable, on these three solid pillars--an eternal God to whom all Time is subject, a past fact and a present experience.
It rests upon the eternal God to whom all the future is certain and upon His faithful word, which makes it as certain to us. In the Old Testament God is the Hope of Israel,' and the devout heart's language is,' I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait; and in His word do I hope.' In the New, Christ is our hope; and, as the context here tells us, the two immutable things, God's promise and His oath, lay the foundation for unshaken confidence.
And not only so, but our hope further rests on a past fact: He hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.' The one real proof that when we paint heaven we are not painting mist and moonshine is the fact that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. Men before Him have hoped and feared, and said: Perhaps it may be; "I am afraid it is,"or "I hope it is "; but there is all the difference in the world between saying, A man can possibly live again'; or he may probably live again'; or he will, I believe, live again'; and saying, a Man has lived again, and having died has risen.' There were many reasons for believing in America before Columbus came back and said, I have been there.' And there are many reasons, no doubt, that may incline sanguine spirits and wearied spirits and desiring spirits, and even sin-stricken and guilty spirits, to anticipate a life beyond, which shall he a hope or a dread; but there is only one ground upon which men can say: We know that it is not cloud-land, but solid earth'; and that is, that our Brother has come back from the bourne from which no traveller returns'; that He thereby has shown us all, not by argumentation but by historical fact, that to die is not to cease to be; that to die draws after it the resurrection of the body. We lift our eyes to the heavens, and though the cloud receive Him out of our sight,' hope, which is better than vision, pierces the cloud and travels straight on to the throne whilst He bends from His crowned glory and says: Because I live ye shah live also.'
Our everlasting hopes arise
and they are built upon no dreams of our own, nor is the music drawn from the lyre by our poor fingers, but they are built on the steadfast word of the eternal God, to whom past, present, and future are one; and they are built on the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And then, still further, the Christian hope is based, not only on these two strong pillars, but on a third--namely, on present experience.
The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, has, in two different places, a very interesting and instructive genealogy, if I might so call it, of Christian hope; and in both places (the fifth and the fifteenth chapters) he traces the hope of the Christian to a double and apparently opposite source. He says: Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.' And in the similar passage, in the other chapter, he speaks about being filled with joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope.' So then, there he traces the Christian hope to the present experience of forgiveness, and of access by faith into present grace; or, as he puts it in briefer words in the other place, to the present experience of joy and peace in believing.'
But there is another side to our experience which likewise issues in hope. And not only so, but we glory in tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience,'--brave endurance, and that brave endurance of ours, inasmuch as it is something beyond our own reach and strength, works in us the proof of a divine power operating upon us; and that proof of a divine power operating upon us produces in us hope, and hope makes not ashamed.' That is to say, the dark as well as the bright side of the Christian experience, its sorrows as well as its joys, the burdens which have been borne, the trials which we have survived, demonstrate to us that we are not left to fight alone, but that a mighty hand is ever around us, and a gracious arm holding us up, and therefore all these darker and sadder moments of the Christian life do likewise tend towards the enkindling in the spirit of a hope that maketh not ashamed.'
So, both by reason of what we experience of peace and joy, and by reason of what we experience of trial, disaster, difficulty borne, and unwelcome duties done, in the might of God, we are entitled to say--we know that a rest remains, where trouble is done with, and all that was here tendency shall be perfected, and the divine and immortal elements of joy and peace shall enfold themselves completely in our happy experience. You can tell a cedar of Lebanon, though it is not yet bigger than a dandelion, and know what it is coming to. You can tell the infant prince. And the joy and peace of faith, feeble and interrupted as they may be in our present experience, have on them the stamp of supremacy and are manifestly destined for dominion over our whole nature. They are indeed experiences whose very sweetness yieldeth proof that they were born for immortality.' I have often seen in rich men's greenhouses some exotic plant grown right up to the roof, which had to be raised in order to let it go higher. The Christian life here is plainly an exotic, growing where it cannot attain its full height, and it presses against the fragile over-arching glass, yearning upwards to the open sky and the throne of God. So, because we can love so much and do love so little, because we can trust thus far and do trust no more, because we have some spark of the divine life in us, and that spark so contradicted and thwarted and oppressed, there must be somewhere a region which shall correspond to this our deepest nature, and the time must come when the righteous, who here shone but so dimly, shall blaze forth like the sun in the Kingdom of the Father.'
Blessed it is that this guiding torch of Christian hope can be kindled from both of these sources. We can light it both with the sunbeams of joy and peace, focused in the burning glass of faith, and with a spark struck by the sharp collision of the hard steel and flint, in the night of sorrow. Thus all the experience of a believing soul is evidence of the certainty of the Christian hope.
Brethren! do not trust yourselves to a hope that is less than certitude, nor grovel along these low levels, concerning which the warning is always to be repeated: Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what the day may bring forth,' but aspire and lift your hope to heaven, then you may be sure that To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.'
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