with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God?"

And what, still further, is our present service of God, but mingled effort and disappointment? True it is that in that service the Christian finds his greatest happiness; that it is perfect freedom; that God's law is his delight; and that in keeping of his commandments there is great reward. The exhilaration that accompanies activity, the glow of successful effort, the quiet sense of inward harmony; the delight of testifying our gratitude to God; and the thrilling consciousness of his complacency towards us; all combine to shed an inexpressible blessedness through the heart, and to make us cry with David, "Great peace have they which love thy law, and nothing shall offend them!" But then, what Christian is there who has not to mourn the hourly interruption of this holy service? Who does not confess that in many things we all offend? Who does not bitterly bewail that the things that he would he does not, and the things that he would not those he does, and there is no health in him? O if our happiness were to depend exclusively on what we have actually acquired of holiness, if only according to the precise measure of our righteousness could be the measure of our peace, no peace could there be for fallen man; neither in this world, for he has not attained to righteousness; nor in the

next, for never can he hope on this condition to attain it. All hope would be smothered under the burden of despondency; all power for holiness crushed under the oppressive sense of impotency. To the future therefore we must look for the full happiness of holiness, that by the vigour which that future rouses in us we may achieve the holiness which is happiness. By Hope alone can we begin to work. The command of the compassionate Saviour must itself convey the life by which we may stretch forth the withered arm. By Hope alone can we continue to work, amidst temptation without and treachery within. And blessed be God! such Hope is ours, through the knowledge of Him that hath called us to glory and virtue. By him are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these we may become partakers of the divine nature. And from such promises we may derive a daily joy, at once consolatory under disappointment and productive of success. "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled." 'We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." "And the work of righteousness shall be peace: and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever."

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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 of the Epistle 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 that 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 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 we are, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the Hope firm unto the end." "If we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it." "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 who 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 about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin" (that is, of want of hope)" 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 dependence on the promises and the 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