Augury

“ What is the perfection of hope? Two qualities, certainty and continuity. Certainty; the definition of earthly hope is an anticipation of good less than certain, and so, in all the operations of this great faculty, which are limited within the range of earth, you get blended as an indistinguishable throng, 'hopes and fears that kindle hope,' and that too often kill it. But the Christian has a certain anticipation of certain good, and to him memory may be no more fixed than hope, and the past no more unalterable and uncertain than the future. ”

“ Why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure,—worldly, social, amorous, ambitious, or even avaricious,—does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow—a fear of what is to come—a doubt of what is—a retrospect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the future? ”

“ 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. ”

“ This has been allowed to take place, O ye men of the present day, to bring you to your senses, and to remind you of what you ought to be. If the future that is within you were revealed in its full light, who would turn his eyes towards the departing shadows of darkness and night? It is for you to find, and for you to make, the future. ”

“ Why dread the future, trembling one,
Since whatsoe’er the griefs it bring,
A Father’s voice pronounced the fate
It bears upon its rapid wing?
Canst thou not trust thy earthly hopes
To Him in whom thy soul confides;
Nor cast thy cares upon thy Lord
When angels whisper “God provides.” ”

“ That being the aim of the summons, that being the destiny that is held out before us all, ought not that destiny and the prospect of what we may be in the future, to fling some beams of guiding brightness on to the present? ”

“ Faith draws back the curtain, and Hope gazes into the supernal abysses. My hope, if it be anything else than the veriest will-o'-the-wisp and delusion, is the answer of my heart to the revealed truth of God. ”

“ Ignoring the shadow, seeking always to stand in the sunshine, we welcomed with yet unshaken faith the heavenly guest who stood in our midst, turning upon us almost for the last time an unclouded face, and eyes undimmed by doubt or pain,—the angel of Hope. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It rises, from memories of the past, and experiences of the present care of God, to hope for the future. 'The Lord is my Shepherd'—'I will fear no evil.' Then besides this progress from what was and is, to what will be, there is another string, so to speak, on which the gems are threaded. ”

“ I asked the Lord that I might grow In faith, and love, and every grace; Might more of His salvation know, And seek, more earnestly, His face. ’Twas He who taught me thus to pray, And He, I trust, has answered prayer! But it has been in such a way, As almost drove me to despair. I hoped that in some favored hour, At once He’d answer my request; And by His love’s constraining pow’r, Subdue my sins, and give me rest. Instead of this, He made me feel The hidden evils of my heart; And let the angry pow’rs of hell Assault my soul in every part. ”

“ Happy they whose forecasts of the future, nearer or more remote, are shaped by His word! Happy they who, in the triumphant energy of such a faith, can with dying lips proclaim that His promises overlap, and contain, all their salvation and all their desire! ”

“ Thus interpreted and yielded to, these impulses warrant unbounded hope for the future. “No star is ever lost we once have seen; We always may be what we might have been; The hopes that lost in some far distance seem May be the truer life, and this the dream.” ”

“ And so the whole creation aspires, out of the night of despair, into the cool freshness of dawn and on to the sun of noon. Let us be patient and follow each his path, waiting on the word of God till He be pleased to reveal it. For His way is not hard, it is joy and peace unutterable. And those who wait in faith He will bless with the knowledge of Himself. ”

“ More pleasing seems than all the past hath been,
And every form, that Fancy can repair
From dark oblivion, glows divinely there.
What potent spirit guides the raptured eye
To pierce the shades of dim futurity ?
Can Wisdom lend, with all her heavenly power,
The pledge of Joy's anticipated hour ?
Ah, no! she darkly sees the fate of man—
Her dim horizon bounded to a span ”

“ He pictured the world, on whose threshold he now stood, pictured it, not with a bold unhallowed hand, but as the completion, the consummation of all those dim whisperings of joy, and hope, and wisdom, which had engrossed him below—the perfection of that beauty, that loveliness, in the material and immaterial, he had yearned for in vain on earth. ”

“ Create in me a pure heart, O my God, and renew a tranquil conscience within me, O my Hope! Through the spirit of power confirm Thou me in Thy Cause, O my Best-Beloved, and by the light of Thy glory reveal unto me Thy path, O Thou the Goal of my desire! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Be not faithless, but believing, and though clouds and thick darkness surround you at present, a more auspicious day will dawn, and God will bring you safely to your journey’s end, and our reunion in heaven will be sweet. ”

“ To dispel these erroneous views,—to withdraw the clouds that hid the brightness of the bow of promise,—to reveal all the priceless tenderness and love of the divine nature,—to radiate the light of hope upon a darkened world, was a task as glorious as ever fell to the lot of man. ”

“ God left him hope to save him from despair. 64When man’s night was blackest, God sent into his sky a star, a star that was the promise of a day to come. In pronouncing doom upon disobedient man, God also gave him a promise as if to say, “It shall not always be midnight and deep despair with thee. Thy dayspring shall again arise.” That note of hope, struck even in the story of the tragedy of the fall, is the key-note of the Bible. ”

“ You live, let us say, among those who doubt God, doubt whether there is any redemption, whether the whole Christian gospel and hope are not in the air, dreams, possibilities, rather than facts of the Eternal Will. The storm-wind blows and you hear its roaring: that is palpable fact, divine or cosmic. Its errand will be accomplished. Great rivers flow, great currents sweep through the ocean. Their mighty urgency who can doubt? But the spiritual who can believe? ”

“ Even its marvellous beauty was less striking than the sweet and holy calm that dwelt in every line of it, and the strange, solemn, almost prophet-like depth of earnestness in the large, lustrous eyes, which seemed to look beyond and above all the sorrows and perils of earth, with the quiet confidence of one over whom neither peril nor sorrow had power any more. ”

“ Where a glaring optimism prevails, and the future is preached with a loud assurance, where many find their only religious enthusiasm in the resurrection of mediæval ritual or the singing of stirring and gorgeous hymns of second-hand imagery, how needful to be recalled to the earnestness and severity of life, to the simplicity of the conditions of salvation, and to their ethical, not emotional, character! ”

“ From every corner of the civilized globe, and in its differing languages, they came to me—entreaties, outpourings, cries of agony, mutterings of despair, breathings of the gentle hope by which despair may be superseded; appeals for help which only the Almighty could have given; demands for light which only eternity can supply. ”

“ 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' ”

“ Erring in our plans and purposes, frail in our vows and resolves, we do not quite know, we cannot clearly make out, the marvels and the mercies which Thy divine design seeks to disclose even through our erring ways and our wasted days. For the advancing years unfold the guidance of Thy spirit in the life of every man and reveal the triumph of Thy grace over all human temptations. ”

“ For moral miracles the time is never past. Neither is it a new or unexampled work of grace for which we ask: we have but to pray with the prophet, "Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord! awake as in the ancient days, in the generations of old;" for our faith and hope have the encouragement of experience, the experience of ages, to the power of the grace of God. ”

“ Wasn't it certainly, for instance, no mere illusion that there is no appreciable future left for such manners--an urbanity so comprehensive, a form so transmitted, as those of such a hostess and such a host? The future is for a different conception of the graceful altogether-- so far as it's for a conception of the graceful at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We expect, and we anticipate, and how often, during the flow of buoyant thought, we map out the way to future greatness. My feelings are so fluctuating, my anticipations so frequently unrealized, that no result can be very unexpected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The fleshly character of your hope is evident from your fancies about the kingdom of God, and from your paying homage and devotion to the light of the sun, which the carnal eye perceives, as if it were an image of heaven. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will vanish, and all separate thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God.
Let us today behold earth disappear, at first transformed, and then, forgiven, fade entirely into God's holy Will. ”

“ Oh, ye suffering, sorrowing children of earth! turn your affections and hopes from the fleeting things of time; from the outside-world, to the beautiful inner spirit-life, where eternity develops ever new and varying joys. Then only can the day dawn upon the human soul, and the midnight darkness be dissipated by boundless effulgence of light.
MINISTERING ANGELS. TIME and Patience! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus one may await the future without undue excitement and with unshaken confidence. Whether the hues of sunrise are angry or benign, gorgeous or sinister, we shall always have the same sky over our heads. ”

“ Driven on by the mad imaginings of a heart hovering between life and death, we fancy that the visible frame of things is replete with oracles. Or is it true; and do air and earth, divined by the sorrow-tutored spirit, possess true auguries? ”

“ At some turning point of your life, when some great joy flashed, or some great shadow darkened upon you all at once; when some crisis that wanted an instantaneous decision appeared—why, what regions of thought, purpose, plan, resolution; what wilderness of desolate sorrow, and what paradises of blooming gladness, your soul has gone through in a moment. Well, then, take another illustration: A sleeper, feeling a light finger laid upon his shoulder, does not know what it is ”

“ 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. ”

“ The lustre of the present hour is always borrowed from the background of possibilities it goes with. Let our common experiences be enveloped in an eternal moral order; let our suffering have an immortal significance; let Heaven smile upon the earth, and deities pay their visits; let faith and hope be the atmosphere which man breathes in;—and his days pass by with zest; they stir with prospects, they thrill with remoter values. ”