The Hopefulness of St. Paul

Romans v. 4 v.
11 Experience worketh hope,”

Does it? I would have expected Paul to say just the contrary. If this is a world of sin and misery, ought it not to seem blacker as we pass through it? And yet the facts appear to make for Paul. Who are they that take the gloomiest view of life? Is it the aged, the infirm, the wayworn? No; it is the young — the men who are setting out upon their journey. Youth is e 2 called the age of hope — and so it is; but it is not hope for this world. It is the dream of a fairy scene far away. For things as they are, youth has no mercy; they are too prosaic, too common, too unclean. Paul himself was a pessimist in youth; his hopes were for other worlds than ours. To be with Christ was to be “caught up in the air” — borne beyond the scene. But, as the road advanced, the shadows faded. The song of the earth-birds became beautiful with the winding of the way. The fields of time grew greener with the westering of life’s sun. The light of Damascus left the air and began to illuminate the housetops, and the experience that threatened to work despair became the parent of hope.

And so, my Father, Thy world is not so bad a place after all. It looks gloomier at the entering, than at the ending, gate. Thou hast a special harp for those that have walked upon the sea. In the days of my youth I sang to the scenes of fancy, but my latest harp shall be for reality. I shall sing to the praise of the six days’ creation when I have reached the Sabbath. Put Thy new song in my mouth, oh! my Father — the song of Moses and the Lamb, the song of the desert and the Cross. Reveal to me the gold beneath the dust, the fire within the flint, the Howers around the clay. Reveal to me the beauty of common things, nay, of painful things. Reveal to me the romance of real life, the heroism of daily toil, the power of prosaic sacrifice. Show me the prospect from the west gate of the temple — the gate near to the setting sun. I have looked long enough from the east — the delusive light of morning. I have been seeking a heaven beyond experience, and the chords of my harp have been broken; they shall be strung to a nobler strain when experience itself worketh hope.