Hope
Let us begin, as usual, with a word or two about the connection. The three Christian virtues — faith, hope and love — are very intimately connected. Faith belongs more to the intellect, hope more to the will, and love more to the emotions. Faith is a vision of the spiritual and eternal world; hope is the effort of the will to secure the objects which faith reveals; love is the glow of desire for these objects, and sets the will in motion. In strict logic, love ought to be treated before hope, but we naturally reserve it for the last place, following the example of St. Paul, because it is the greatest.
Hope is with many people a matter of temperament. They have the temperament which is called sanguineous. This is attributable to a certain fulness of the blood, and is generally associated with fair hair and a florid complexion. Certainly there are some people that seem to see by nature the sunny side of things; they are always expecting good success, and they rise like a cork from beneath the attempts of misfortune to depress them. The opposite temperament is the melancholic. This is usually associated with dark hair and a sallow complexion. As the name indicates, it is disposed to gloomy views, it sees the seamy side of everything, and is always anticipating evil rather than good. As some one has wittily observed, if two men touch a bee, the one gets honey and the other gets stung; if two approach a bush, the one gathers a rose and the other is jagged with a thorn; if two men are gazing at the same quarter of the sky, the one remarks only the black cloud, the other only the silver lining.
Certainly it is a precious heritage to be born with a hopeful disposition. The man who, when it is midnight, always remembers that the dawn is coming, and in the dead of winter keeps his thoughts fixed upon the spring, is a wise man; and, in nine cases out of ten, events will justify his confidence, for the wheel of fortune turns round, and the part of it which is the bottom only requires half a revolution to be the top. The tide of opportunity rises at some time to every one’s feet, and the hopeful man is best prepared to take advantage of it.
Most people require a little bit of success to make them hopeful; a little encouragement, a little sunshine is all they need to cause all that is best in them to expand and to extract from them their best work. But there are those whose hopefulness is of such a buoyant order that they can go on hoping even when everything is against them, and obstacles and reverses appear actually to add to their good spirits. Such natures are invaluable to any cause; they carry a breeze with them wherever they go; the gloom passes from men’s faces at the sight of theirs and is succeeded by smiles; discouraged adherents rally again, and the impossible becomes easy. It was attributed to the late Earl of Beaconsfield, as a quality in valuable to the party he led, that his hopes rose in proportion to the difficulties he had to encounter, and that he was never so brilliant as when his back was at the wall; but everyone in any degree acquainted with the history of political parties is aware how rare is the power of maintaining a spirit of cheerfulness and steadiness in the cold shade of opposition.
Temperament may be the source of hope; but its origin may be deeper, namely, principle, and this is better. This is the peculiar quality of Christian hope, which is not the perquisite of those dowered with a certain temperament, but may, on the contrary, be the attainment of those most disposed to melancholy; for the reason of it is not in themselves, but in Another.
II
When the attitude of the mind to the future is spoken of with reference not to the individual but to the race, we call it by more high-sounding names; the hopeful state of mind is called Optimism and the reverse Pessimism. Philosophers are generally understood to have risen superior to such frailties of human nature as temperament, and to be able to contemplate truth with calm and unprejudiced eyes; but this supposed superiority may be an illusion, and the bias G of natural disposition probably asserts itself in them as in other people. At all events, among thinkers there have always been optimists and pessimists. In the ancient world one sage was called the Laughing and another the Weeping Philosopher; and these adjectives might be applied with equal propriety to rival schools of our own day.
Pessimism feels in the marrow of its bones
the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world.
It dwells, with an excess of sensibility, on the fortuitous and destructive element in nature — on the earthquakes and storms by which the intelligence of man is baffled and chaos brought back again; on the immeasurable con flict in nature between the strong and the weak, in which the latter must go to the wall; above all, on the misery and aimlessness of human life — on the prevalence of disease and the inevitableness of death; on the stupidity of the country and the depravity of the city; on man’s inhumanity to man, and on his still more appalling cruelty to womanhood and childhood. It is the mood of Hamlet when, smarting under
... the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s
contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law’s
delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy
takes,
he exclaimed,
O God, God,
How weary, flat, stale and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world.
It is the mood of the Ecclesiast, as he moves from scene to scene of human life, but can find nothing new under the sun — nothing to relieve the monotony of existence) — but declares that all is vanity) and vexation of spirit.
In most minds pessimism is only a mood, easily blown away by the zephyrs of enjoyment or the sturdy blasts of action; but some have allowed it to harden, till it has become a doctrine and a creed. There is a philosophical pessimism which maintains that the evil in the world so far outweighs the good, and that it is so hopeless to expect any real improvement, that the rational destiny of the human race would be to disappear by a simultaneous act of suicide. One would naturally suppose such notions incompatible with religion; and, in fact, those who hold pessimistic opinions in doctrinaire form are usually disbelievers in an overruling Providence; but, strange to say, one of the most widely diffused religions of the world is thoroughly pessimistic in spirit: Buddhism looks upon human existence as evil in itself, and as so great an evil that the true ideal of man is relief from the burden of personal existence through reabsorption into the formless All out of which he has come.
Optimism is the reverse of pessimism, and it is far more characteristic of the modern world. It is sometimes said that the golden age of the ancient world lay behind, whereas that of the modern world is in front. The golden age of the ancients was a scene of peace and plenty, produced without man’s aid and to be enjoyed without exertion; the golden age to which the modern man looks forward is to be the creation of his own foresight and industry, and idleness will be excluded from the earthly paradise. Whatever it may be due to — whether to an instinct of the more energetic races or to the wonderful improvements and progress witnessed in recent centuries — the belief is almost universal among the Western peoples at least, that there is a good time coming, and that the course of humanity will continue to be upward and onward. Philosophy has sometimes tried to find in human nature a reason to justify this belief; but the great majority concur in it with out any close inquiry into its grounds.
It is usually said that Christianity is optimistic. And this is true; but it might also be said that it is pessimistic. It does not believe in any inherent law of amelioration in this world. It looks upon human nature as fallen and incapable of its own salvation. Left to himself, man would grow worse, instead of better. But through this very pessimism Christianity is led to optimism; because, despairing of man, it lays hold upon God, and it cleaves to Him with all the more tenacity the more conscious it is of the gulf into which without Him it would fall.
in
Thus by two pathways we have been led to the conclusion that hope for man is not in himself, but out of himself. It is not subjective, but objective. Of course, as a feeling it is subjective, but that to which the feeling clings is not evolved out of man’s own interior, but presented from the outside: it descends from above; and hence its substantiality. A classical author says, ‘Hope is pursued by fear, and is the name of an uncertain good ‘; and this is profoundly true when it rests on nothing but temperament or sentiment. It is different, how ever, when what it clings to has a divine guarantee.
This Christian hope possesses. The objects to which it is directed are revealed in the Word of God. Thus, St. Paul says, ‘Through patience and comfort of the Scriptures we have hope.’ In fact, God Himself is both the inspirer and the object of hope. Hence He is called again and again in Scripture ‘the God of hope.’ So the Son of God is called ‘Christ our hope ‘; and in another place St. Paul denominates Him ‘Christ in you the hope of glory.’ These are sufficient indications of the source whence
Christian hope is derived, and of what imparts to it stability. The feeling in our breast may come and go, but the object outside remains the same yesterday, to day and for ever; and, the oftener we return to it, the more will doubts and fears fade away.
Whether it be the future of ourselves as individuals or the future of the world we are contemplating, it is equally true that Christ is our hope.
Consider, first, our own individual future. If our future is in our own hands or dependent only on other human beings, we must be in the greatest uncertainty about it; for who can tell what a day may bring forth? But, if it is out of our hands and in His, how safe it is, and how confident we may be about it! If He has begun a good work, He will complete it. As the arc of a circle, however fragmentary it may be, carries on the mind to the perfect whole, so Christ’s work, though now imperfect, always looks onwards, and contains the promise and the potency of perfection. Painful even as may sometimes be our depression on account of our failures, when we think of our lives as our own work, we have only to consider them as His workmanship, in order to be assured that our character will one day be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.
In the same way, when we are thinking of the world at large — of its condition and prospects — there is overwhelming cause for sadness as long as we regard it as of man’s making or of our own creation. But take in the fact that Christ has entered into human history, and that He is now controlling all events and guiding them to a foreordained issue, and then depression evaporates and we glory in the progress of the kingdom of God. The Father has given the kingdom to the Son, and the Son must reign till all enemies are put under His feet.
The little contribution which we call our life is taken up into this whole and glorified in it. So is the work of our Church, or the work of our generation. In itself it is trivial, but, in the place where He puts it, it is indispensable; for it is the link binding the past to the future. It is an arc of the circle of God’s purpose and Christ’s achievement; and the grandeur of the whole is in the fragment. I often think of the new consciousness of time imparted by Christianity. A Christian man thinks not only of what he is doing to-day, but of what that which he is doing to-day will be doing a hundred or a thousand years hence.
IV
Not only is Christ called our hope in Scripture, but the vitality of this virtue is specially connected with His resurrection, according to the saying of St. Peter, God ‘hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’ What is the reason of this? how does Christ’s resurrection specially kindle hope? It does so because it is the most authentic glimpse ever afforded to mankind into the eternal world. The instinct of immortality is innate in man; so much so that even pagans as early as Cicero and Seneca could argue for its trustworthiness from the fact of its universality; and other noble heathens, like Socrates and Plato, developed impressive arguments in support of the doctrine. It is a beautiful belief, and the best of human beings naturally incline to it. Yet in all ages, while so doing, men and women have been tormented with a doubt due to the fact that none ever actually came back from the other side of the gates of death. Why should not the gates of adamant be opened from within? why should not one at least be allowed to appear — even for an hour — a representative person, worthy to be the mouthpiece of all the dead? Such is the irrepressible longing of the human heart; and the answer to it is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. He was the representative man, worthy to appear and speak for all; and He showed Himself after His resurrection by many infallible proofs.
But the resurrection of Jesus is only like the claw of a pre historic specimen from which the skilful naturalist can construct the whole animal. If it be true, then immensely more is guaranteed; the life to come, in all its essential features, is rendered indubitable; and hope proceeds to fix its tentacles in it. In Scripture Christian hope is called by such names as ‘the hope of eternal life,’ and ‘the hope which is laid up for you in heaven ‘; and St. Peter, who has been called the apostle of hope, as St. Paul may be called the apostle of faith and St. John the apostle of love, speaks of ’ an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.’ Undoubtedly this future inheritance is the supreme, though not the exclusive, object of Christian hope; and in the apostolic age, at the commencement of Christianity, it laid extraordinary hold on the hearts of men. So occupied were the early Christians with the inheritance on the possession of which they were about to enter, and the splendour of which threw all earthly possessions and prizes completely into the shade, that they were in danger of neglecting their homes and their business, and St. Paul and others had to urge them to think with more moderation on the subject. So eager were they not to be kept away from it that they not only willingly faced the persecution and martyrdom by which they would be carried more quickly thither, but even courted them; so that their preachers had to warn them against rushing at their own will upon death.
All this is changed now. The world is too much with us, and it is so real to our apprehension that the other world appears shadowy. The hope laid up in heaven does not captivate us much. Why is this? Perhaps it is because we take our profession of religion too easily; we are too afraid of giving offence; we provoke no opposition; we do not take up the cross and follow Jesus. The result is, that we are comfortable and unmolested. Ay, but we pay the penalty of our comfort. Our spirits grow gross and vulgar; and our hope loses its intensity. When Christians were sacrificing everything in this world for Christ, the world to come was exceedingly credible and delightful; and I have no doubt the day may come when, Christians being persecuted for their faith, the hope of heaven will again be as great a power as ever.
It is a power when it is realised. It is no mere idle expenditure of emotion on distant objects, having nothing to do with the present. To think often of heaven breeds heavenly-mindedness. They who intensely desire to be in heaven instinctively make themselves ready to go there, realising that heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people. As St. John says, ’ every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.’ And St. Paul calls hope ‘the anchor of the soul.’ When the winds of passion are blowing, and the billows of temptation rising, and the darkness of doubt brooding, the soul is ready to drift on the hungry rocks; but the recollection of the immeasurable prize, to be won or lost in the hereafter, steadies it and enables it to avoid the danger, till the day break and the shadows flee away.