the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever."

Hope, then, is our only certain stay amidst the mental, spiritual, and moral imperfection of our present state. It is the under current of the renewed soul, which alone runs steadily while the surface is continually broken into eddies, and swept by the vicissitudes of cloud and sunshine. And hence it has ever formed the preserving grace of God's people through every age. In the long catalogue of faithful men set before us in the eleventh chapter to the Hebrews, the Faith which is extolled as having been their animating and sustaining principle is for the most part prospective is the assurance of blessings whose attainment was yet to come -is" the substance of things hoped for"-in short is Hope; - only not that Hope which rests on nothing more substantial than the airy visions of a sanguine imagination, but which is based and settled on the solid word of God, who cannot lie. It was by this Faith, which is Hope, that Abraham "sojourned in the land of promise as in a strange country; for he looked for a city which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God." It was by this Faith, which is Hope, that the patriarchs, "not having received the promises, saw them afar off, and embraced them, and confessed

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that they were strangers and pilgrims upon earth.” It was by this Faith, which is Hope, that Abraham, "when he was tried, offered up Isaac, accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead;" or, as St. Paul says in another epistle, against Hope believing in Hope, and being fully persuaded that what God had promised he was able also to perform." And all those other men of God who obtained a good report through faith, did so "not having received the promise," because God had "provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." By Hope, therefore, were they saved, and by Hope must we. "Christ's house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the Hope firm unto the end." "And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence unto the full assurance of Hope unto the end; that ye be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience* inherit the promises." "By two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we may have strong consolation which have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the Hope set before us in the Gospel; which Hope we have as an anchor of the soul sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil, whither the Fore-runner, Jesus, is for us entered." "Wherefore, seeing we are compassed

* Compare Romans viii. 25.

about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin, (that is, of Despondency,) which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith; who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds !"

And this Hope, remember, is no vain-glorious self-confidence, for the essence of it is dependance on the promises, and the continual help, of another than ourselves. It is no idle and unholy presumption, for it is limited and conditioned by the principles that we are holding fast, the dispositions we are cherishing, the path of conscientious obedience in which we are walking. It is a meek and quiet confidence in the faithfulness of God to those who love him, and an unpretending reliance on those assurances of Christ, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand;-yea, my Father which gave them unto me is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." Where the very form of the

Encouragement secures it from misapplication, and the very words that animate, must at the same time sanctify. The Christian's Hope is the hope of "Christ's sheep," not of the self-willed, the proud, and the presumptuous. It is the hope of those who "hear his voice," not who listen to

the syren song of Sin. It is the hope of those who "follow him," not who follow the devices and

desires of their own hearts. It is the hope, that "when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is," and therefore, " every one that hath this Hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure."

But to enjoy this Hope, in its full assurance, and to derive from it all the life and power which it can convey, we must recollect whence it springs, and how it is to be preserved from day to day.

It springs from dependance on the work that Christ has wrought for us on the cross. For it is only as we believe in God, that we can hope in God. Only as we trust to his assurances of forgiveness for the past that we can embrace his promises of safety for the future. 66 Being justified by his grace, we are made heirs, through Hope, of eternal life." We must enter into our relation with God as dear children before we can look forward with any feeling that deserves the name of Hope, to the inheritance of his children. The careless, worldly-mind

ed, unconverted man is without hope, because he is virtually without God; and a stranger from the covenants of promise, because in spirit an alien from the commonwealth of Israel. We have only to look round upon the general feeling of mankind in the thought of death and of another world,— the shrinking dread which betrays the utter emptiness of their expectations of eternity,—the clinging to this life, which shows that here only do they feel they have a solid footing and can grasp reality and substance; we have only to remark that almost universal substitution of the cold term " Resignation," a term of which Scripture actually knows nothing, for the animated Christian term, and the joyful Christian idea, of Hope-" lively Hope," "blessed Hope," Hope that maketh not

ashamed;"

in order to convince ourselves that

only from the Spiritual experience of the Gospel can spring the Spiritual hope of the Gospel. If we would have "everlasting consolation and good hope," it is "through grace," that we must have it

through the animating confidence that "our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God even our Father hath loved us and chosen us unto salvation, through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth." And therefore, St. Paul represents the hope of future glory as springing from the faith in past forgiveness, and sustained through every trial by