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I. WE CAN TRACE SOME ILLUSTRATION OF THIS GREAT GENERAL LAW IN OUR OWN LIVES. "Saved by hope." Upon how many lives, how many works, might that be written!

1. One man is saved by hope from indolence: a poor form of hope it may have been, but it kept the life in him till the worthier motive claimed him.

2. Another is saved by hope from the insanity of self-satisfaction: hope startled him with the challenge of a hero's life or the pathos of a hero's death, and the snare was broken and he was delivered.

3. Another may have been drifting towards the utter loss of self-respect: drunkenness or impurity may have been quenching all the light out of his soul, but hope came to him — the hope of a noble love — and his chains fell off. Yes, hope is the spur of every effort — the strength of every enterprise — the stay of all endurance. As one may go round a garden after winter and there mark the signs of lingering life, and say, "Ah! that may come right after all": so may God look into unnumbered hearts, wintry and dull as death itself, and see the half-conscious germ of hope, and know that there is that whereby they may be saved. Aye, and as in the individual life, so also in the whole race of man, hope wields its saving energy. It is the great impulse of all onward movement: the mainspring of progressive civilisation: the instinct of mankind towards the amendment of every circumstance of life. Any hope that is not sinful is better than no hope at all. St. Paul puts terribly near to one another "having no hope" and "without God in the world.". Even a hope which could never call out all the power that is in a man may yet serve to keep his head above water till better help comes.

II. IF HOPE IS TO HAVE ITS PERFECT WORK, THEN IT MUST FULFIL AT LEAST TWO CONDITIONS — it must rest on a sufficient ground, and it must point to a sufficient object.

1. The hope that leads us on must not be like a will-o'-the-wisp, hovering over dangerous ground, and vanishing altogether where we thought we must come up with it. Many such hopes there are: e.g., of a startling career, of brilliant originality, of large but vague philanthropy; hopes, hazy and delusive, corresponding to no solid reality, marking out for us no clear course.

2. Other hopes there are which will direct us definitely enough: the hope of money, of success, of power; we may follow them with confidence, but it is like walking down a street that leads us nowhere; we may reach the end, but only to find it as dull and disappointing as a blank wall. In regard to one such hope, the commonest perhaps of all, the hope of wealth, a working-man said to me once, "I suppose no one is rich till the day when he's got a little more than he has." His paradox exactly told the truth: the clearest of worldly hopes are at the same time most disappointing.

3. The hope that really saves, and maketh not ashamed, is a hope which points with clearness to an aim which cannot prove inadequate; a hope which will not halt till every power and energy of our life has found its rest, its joy, its perfect and unwearied work. To such a hope hath God begotten us by the resurrection of Christ. It is an infinite enrichment of all human life that we commemorate at Easter; even the gift of one steadfast, serious, sufficient hope.

III. THERE IS NO DEPARTMENT OF LIFE WHICH MAY NOT BE LIBERATED AND UPLIFTED BY THE HOPE WHICH THE RISEN LORD REVEALS. Some seem to shrink from laying stress upon the future life lest it should be used to disparage or obscure the duties of the present. But was it so when the living hope was freshest and strongest? Who, for instance, in those first Christian days, really made the most of the great trust of this life? The heathen poet, laughing at the idea of being serious when you have but a few years in which to enjoy yourself? The philosopher, inculcating suicide whenever the pains of life outweighed its pleasures? The heathen emperor, leaving the vast duties of his position to plunge more freely into every phase of vice? Or Paul, the slave of Christ? In all the change that came with the faith of Christ few things are more remarkable than the advancement of hope from the place of a weaknes to the power of a great motive for a good life. And we need never fear that a man will grow careless or halfhearted about the concerns of time, because in and through them all he seeks those things which are above. Much rather does the saving hope that firmly rests on Christ's resurrection avail, as nothing else avails, to give steadiness and calmness and confidence to every worldly hope which can be pursued in this life.

1. What a change, e.g., passes over the hope of the student when, beside the empty tomb, he begins to discern the true vocation of the intellect, the range, the use it may hereafter have. In Christ the human intellect has passed to the sphere of its perfect and unending exercise.

2. But what shall we say about that other sphere of effort where the real crisis of our life must find its issue; how can we measure the moral life the saving power of the Easter hope? Here we renew the experience of the Psalmist, "I should utterly have fainted; but that I believe verily to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

3. Let us see whether the words have not a bearing also upon the life of nations. Is it not to be feared that many cherish less reverently than of old the salutary grace of a true hope? Hope, as we have seen, is essential to the vigour, the harmony, the welfare and happiness of each separate human life. If we were to give up hoping, how would for us the sun be darkened, and desire would fail and purpose falter, and all joy and courage and helpfulness fade out of our life. Must it not be so, in some degree, if the temper, the character, the current literature of a nation begins to discard or trifle with the duty and the strength of hope? Oh! if this be so, then there are two things at least that we can do for England now. Let us see to it that, by the grace of God, we stand sure and steadfast in that only hope which maketh not ashamed, which is nothing else than faith in the omnipotence and in the love of God. And then let us humbly and constantly pray to Him who spanned with an unfailing hope the interval of earth and heaven that He may renew and purify with the knowledge of His truth the heart and thought of England.

(Dean Paget.)

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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?