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You have all experienced the difference between a sunny and a foggy morning. When you have risen and beheld the sun shining in its strength, have you not felt an irrepressible emotion of joy? But when the fog has begloomed your atmosphere a shadow has been cast over your very mercies.

1. There is a foggy side morally over which broods "blackness of darkness"; where hope refuses to take root; where all happiness is evanescent or imaginary. This foggy side is owing to sin. Upon it, we admit, there are clouds which promise much, but they have no water; trees, but they bear no fruit — "having no hope, and without God in the world."

2. From this fog there is a way of escape. Just as your lungs were not framed for fogs, so your spirits were not framed for moral gloom. God is light, and coming to Him, instead of darkness earth shall smile with the foretastes of heaven.

3. Let us, then, turn to the sunny side. The hope of the Christian respects —

I. THAT WHICH IS GOOD. And this in common with the world. No man hopes for sickness, failure, misery, death, but the opposite. All men hope good for themselves, even the worst, which shows that God has lodged in the common heart a buoyant hope. Hence hope is opposed to fear. But all hope and no fear would not do. We fear evil while we hope for good. Noah feared as well as hoped when he built the ark. nevertheless, excessive fear kills hope, and unfits man for duty. How delightful to feel that we hope for nothing but good for ourselves and others! This is to be in sympathy with the mind of God.

II. THAT WHICH IS FUTURE. "Hope that is seen is not hope." Here is a vast difference between the good and the godless man, who is all for the present. Well may our hope respect the future when we consider the promises relating thereto. There may be hope in heaven. How do we know that God will not give us another revelation and roll of promises, and enter more fully into the details of eternity. Anyhow, if we have hope only in this life, if it do not carry us beyond, we are of all men the most miserable.

III. THAT WHICH IS POSSIBLE. Worldlings often hope for the impossible — without any foundation for what they wish. Hence their "expectation is cut off." But the Christian says, "All things are possible to God," and therefore to him that believeth in God. If God has said a thing we may confidently expect it.

IV. TRIALS AND TRIUMPHS. Every grace is tried in this world of trials; so hope. David, looking at the foggy side, said, "I shall one day perish." Looking on the sunny side he exclaimed, "Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him." So Abraham, "in hope believed against hope, and became the father of many nations." "Experience worketh hope," for having gone through six trials we may confidently expect victory in the seventh. Consequently "hope maketh not ashamed." The worldling is often ashamed because of the failure of his hopes; but the Christian's hope moderated by the Divine promises cannot fail.

V. THE SUPPLY OF ALL TEMPORAL NEEDS: light in darkness, strength in weakness, sufficiency in indigence, ballast in pros. perfidy.

VI. A GLORIOUS RESURRECTION. When the wicked man comes to die there is an end of all his hopes, but "the righteous hath hope in his death," because Christ hath abolished death, etc. Hence, when bereaved, "we sorrow not as those who have no hope."

VII. EVERLASTING LIFE.

(Mortlock Daniell.)

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KJV: For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?

WEB: For we were saved in hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for that which he sees?