Esperanza

“ For that piety which has humanity for its object—must not that heart feel most of which tenderness has become the element? Must not the spirit which is most exercised in hope and fear be most familiar with hope and fear wherever found? ”

“ Wherever there is progress there must be hope. And thus the fair form, which has so often danced before us elusive, and has led us into bogs and miry places and then faded away, will move before us through all the long avenues of an endless progress, and will ever and anon come back to tell us of the unseen glories that lie beyond the next turn, and to woo us further into the depths of heaven and the fulness of God. Hope ‘abides.’
Love ‘abides.’ I need not, I suppose, enlarge upon that thought which nobody denies, that love is the eternal form of the human relation to God. ”

“ Hope when regarded as objective, as the substance of our experience, is full of promise, on which the believer fixes his faith. Hope when regarded as subjective, as the possession of the soul, is full of inspiration, as it encourages and confirms belief that “He is faithful that promised.” Hope as an objective reality is fixed on Christ, and since God has a purpose in calling us, we can exercise hope. ”

“ The wretch condemned with life to part, Still, still on hope relies; And every pang that rends the heart Bids expectation rise. Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light, Adorns and cheers our way; And still as darker grows the night, Emits a brighter ray. ”

“ I am a seeking spirit who beholds, in hope, one who embraces the cross and trusts in Him who there, amidst life's deepest sufferings, revealed to us the Father; I rest in Him, waiting for the perfecting of my sight. Though life's dark phenomena operate overpoweringly for a time, yet, no sooner is the conflict over, than my true sight, my hope, and my faith return. ”

“ Wishing to hope without a hope, some fears
About my future worldly maintenance,
And, more than all, a strangeness in the mind,
A feeling that I was not for that hour,
Nor for that place. But wherefore be cast down?
For (not to speak of Reason and her pure
Reflective acts to fix the moral law
Deep in the conscience, nor of Christian Hope,
Bowing her head before her sister Faith
As one far mightier) , hither I had come,
Bear witness Truth, endowed with holy powers
And faculties, whether to work or feel. ”

“ It is hope—often, indeed, founded on the dictates of piety, or the whispers of reason, but still hope—hope that we may yet, with all our afflictions, rely for aid on the presiding hand of Providence, or that we may find circumstances more supportable than we had thought—it is still hope, in whatever form, that lends the soothing balm to every sorrow, and the first breath of buoyancy to every sinking heart. ”

“ Reluctantly and gradually her ardent mind, by nature ever either buoyant in the heaven of assured hope or cast down to the depths of despair, bowed to the middle conclusion, and consented to look through the eyes of wisdom and experience. ”

“ Our hopes disappointed,—our plans thwarted and overthrown; but out of that disappointment a richer good evolving than we had conceived; something that tends more than all our effort to produce the real object of life. My friends, what do we make out of this fact? Why, surely this, that life is not our plan, but God's. Consider what we, often, would have made out of life, and compare this with what Providence has made out of it. ”

“ But we have also a hope that is born of the day, the child of sunshine and gladness; and that is set before us in the second of the two verses which we are considering, ‘The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope.’
So then, ‘the darkness and the light are both alike’ to our hope, in so far as each may become the occasion for its exercise. It is not only to be the sweet juice expressed from our hearts by the winepress of calamities, but that which flows of itself from hearts ripened and mellowed under the sunshine of God-given blessedness. ”

“ That expectation brings its own fulfilment, and is always God's way of preparing the path for His own large gifts, like the strange, indefinable attitude of expectation which we know filled the civilised world before the birth of Jesus Christ—like the breath of the morning that springs up before the sun rises, and says, 'The dawn; the dawn,' and dies away. The expectation is the precursor of the gift, and the prayer is the guarantee of the acceptance. ”

“ This is the lesson left us by our Blessed Father, and we ought, indeed, to hope with that lively hope animated by love, without which none can be saved. And this lively hope, what is it, but a firm and unwavering confidence that we shall, through God's grace and God's mercy, attain to the joy of heaven, which, being infinite, is boundless and unmeasurable. ”

“ The trouble which we bear rightly with God's help, gives new hope. If we have made our sorrow an occasion for learning, by living experience, somewhat more of His exquisitely varied and ever ready power to aid and bless, then it will teach us firmer confidence in these inexhaustible resources which we have thus once more proved, 'Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope.' That is the order. You cannot put patience and experience into a parenthesis, and omitting them, bring hope out of tribulation. ”

“ Hope in the covenant; or, God's promise and truth unchangeable, Heb. 6. 17 18 19.
1 How oft have sin and Satan strove
To rend my soul from thee, my God,
But everlasting is thy love,
And Jesus seals it with his blood.
2 The oath and promise of the Lord
Join to confirm the wondrous grace;
Eternal power performs the word,
And fills all heaven with endless praise.
3 Amidst temptations sharp and long
My soul to this dear refuge flies:
Hope is my anchor firm and strong,
While tempests blow, and billows rise. ”

“ There would be hope there instead of despair,—expectancy of better things would give a glow of cheerfulness to their countenances. There would be a light in their eyes which never was there before. Working in the spirit of hope and expectancy of better things instead of that of discouragement and the fears of even greater poverty, they would forge ahead in a way that would astonish themselves. ”

“ For his hope is intended to cover all the future, the next moment, or to-morrow, or the dimmest distance where time has ceased to be, and eternity stands unmoved. The attitude of the Christian mind ought to be a cheery optimism, an unconquerable hope. ‘The best has yet to be’ is the true Christian thought in contemplating the future for myself, for my dear ones, for God's Church, and for God's universe.
And the truest basis on which that hope can rest is the experience granted to us, on condition of our faith, of a present, abundant possession of the joy and peace which God gives. ”

“ Believing reader, do you really mean to say that you have no desire to exchange hope for confidence, trust for persuasion, uncertainty for knowledge? Because weak faith will save you, will you therefore rest content with it? Because assurance is not essential to your entrance into heaven, will you therefore be satisfied without it upon earth? ”

“ And so let us not fill our minds with vain hopes which, whether they be fulfilled or not, will not satisfy us, but lift our eyes to and stay our anticipations on those glories beyond, as real as God is real, and as certain as His word is true. Let these hopes concentrate and define for us the aims of our life; and let the aims, clearly accepted and recognised, be pursued with earnestness, with 'diligence,' with haste, with the enthusiasm of which they, and they only, are worthy. ”

“ It is enough they believe a resurrection and that with a glorious and incorruptible body, for that was the ancient hope. Now, as to eternal rewards, they not only believe in them, but as the Apostle says of old, have the most reason to do so. It is their faith, their hope, their interest, and what they wait and have suffered for, and press, as an encouragement to faithfulness, upon one another. ”

“ Hope, if it is certain, will gladden, and if our Christianity grasps, as it ought to do, the only hope that is absolutely certain, and as sure as if it were in the past and had been experienced, then our hearts, too, will sing for joy. ”

“ The Apostle, in an earlier part of this same letter, defines for us what that hope is, which thus is the secret of perpetual gladness, when he speaks about ‘rejoicing in hope of the glory of God.’ Yes, it is that great, supreme, calm, far off, absolutely certain prospect of being gathered into the divine glory, and walking there, like the three in the fiery furnace, unconsumed and at ease; it is that hope that will triumph over temperament, and over all occasions for melancholy, and will breathe into our life a perpetual gladness. ”

“ For He willeth that we be as assured in hope of the bliss of heaven while we are here, as we shall be in sureness while we are there. And ever the more pleasance and joy that we take in this sureness, with reverence and meekness, the better pleaseth Him, as it was shewed. ”

“ Thus love, in its first soul-exciting contact, abiding attraction, and finally complete union, strikingly corresponds to the external sense of feeling. Faith is the inner ear of the spirit which is open to, catches up, and retains the imparted word of a higher revelation. Hope, however, is the eye, whose clear vision discerns, even in the remote distance, the objects of its profound and ardent longing. ”

“ Hope, which catches up the brush as it falls from the narrator's hand, adds yet another scene, in the faint, hazy, indistinct hues of a distant horizon, to the picture at which we have been looking for awhile. ”

“ I have not heard from other mortal lips—I do not hope to hear again—such an expression of humble hope and doubt, such a tone of complete abasement before the Divine Ideal, such a final triumphant note of praise in the far-off haven to which creation moves. ”

“ One delusion and temptation must be spoken of, which I hardly know how to describe, as I never read or heard of anything like it. By the stress of my many temptations I was driven—though by God's grace I was never utterly torn from faith and hope of heavenly aid—to doubt as to Holy Scripture and the essence of God himself. In the struggle with the other temptations there was some respite, and a refuge of hope remained. ”

“ Philosophy comes with another hope. “Drink deeply,” she counsels, “at the spring of wisdom, and fear not God nor man; believe and trust in me, and I will steal away the sting of sorrow and pain; I will restore you to man's primeval state and land you safe on the shores of rest.” ”

“ On the contrary, even in a highly-finished picture of some actual and present scene, this idea of hope, as the soul which animates the whole, may be present, and like an invisible thread of higher life, be interwoven in it. ”

“ But if, according to my text, we set our hopes on God, then we shall have a certainty absolute. What a blessing it is to be able to look forward to a future as fixed and sure, as solid and as real, as much our possession, as the irrevocable past! The Christian man's hope, if it be set on God, is not a 'may be,' but a 'will be' ”

“ And lo, she found that the gods had imprisoned one good gift only in this Inferno of horrors and of ugliness. In the world there had never been any need of Hope. What work was there for Hope to do where all was perfect, and where each creature possessed the desire of body and of heart? ”

“ Neither is life "false to hope." He who trusts the divine Source of Life, shall find his hopes more than realized here upon earth. I but voice the knowledge of thousands of souls, when I make this assertion. I know whereof I speak.
All that our dearest hopes desire will come to us, if we believe in ourselves as rightful heirs to Divine Opulence, and work and think always on those lines. ”

“ The more vivid our anticipations and the more steadfast our hopes, and the more our spirits reach out to that future redemption, the more are we bound to discern something more than human imaginings in them, and to be sure that such visions are too good not to be true, too solid to be only the play of our own fancy. ”

“ Then, the second step in this tracing of the origin of the hope which has the brighter source is the consideration that the joy and peace which spring from faith, in their turn produce that confident anticipation of future and progressive good. ”

“ He will give them, not the expectations of their fears, nor the expectations of their fancies, but the expectations of their faith, the end which he has promised and which will turn for the best to them. ”

“ They whose hopes are set on God have a certain hope, a sufficient one, and one that fills all the future. All other expectations are fulfilled, or disappointed, as the case may be, but are left behind and outgrown. ”

“ Those who expect a gracious reward for the labour of love must continue in it as long as they have ability and opportunity: You have ministered to the saints, and you do minister; and we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence. 3. Those who persevere in a diligent discharge of their duty shall attain to the full assurance of hope in the end. Observe, (1.) Full assurance is a higher degree of hope, is full assurance of hope; they differ not in nature, but only in degree. (2.) Full assurance is attainable by great diligence and perseverance to the end. ”

“ But the Christian revelation not only shed a sudden splendor upon the awful futurity, but brought its revelations to bear upon the minds of men, with all the pressure and intensity of palpable facts. The long slumbering sentiment of immortal hope—a sentiment natural to the human constitution, and chief among its passions—instead of being deluded, as heretofore, by dreams, was thoroughly aroused by the hand and voice of reality; and human nature exhibited a new development of the higher faculties. ”

“ Instant are its dawn, its noon and its accomplishment! Hope, if it is true hope, fills the mind, affording malice and deceitful dread no room. Hope lives in action. All the elements of hope are deeds done now!
“Deeds—the very echoes are the fruit of deeds! One stone laid on another in Hope’s name is greater service to the gods than all the pomp of conquest and the noise of prayer! A deed—who measures it? Who knows the limits of a mended wheel or reckons up the leagues it shall lay underfoot?—what burdens it shall bear?—whose destiny it shall await and serve? ”