The faculty is inseparable from man's consciousness of immortality and of an indefinitely expansible nature which ever makes him discontented with the present. It has great purposes to perform in strengthening him for work, in helping him over sorrows, in making him buoyant and elastic, in painting for him the walls of the dungeon, and hiding for him the weight of the fetters.
But for what did he receive this great gift? Mainly that he might pass beyond the temporal and hold converse with the skies. Its true sphere is the unseen future which is at God's right hand.
We may run a series of antitheses, e.g.--Earthly hope is so uncertain that its larger part is often fear.
Earthly hope realised is always less blessed than we expected. How universal the experience that there is little to choose between a gratified and a frustrated hope! The wonders inside the caravan are never so wonderful as the canvas pictures outside.
Heavenly hopes ever surpass the most rapturous anticipation. The half hath not been told.'
Earthly hopes are necessarily short-winged. They are settled one way or another, and sink hull down below our horizon.
Heavenly hope sets its object far off, and because a lifetime only attains it in part, it blesses a lifetime and outlasts it.
