CHRISTIAN
HOPE
By John Angell James, 1859
A GOOD HOPE THROUGH GRACE
"May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father,
who loved us, and has given us everlasting consolation and good hope
through grace." 2 Thes. 2:16
There is a richness of expression in these few words to
which no exposition or paraphrase can do justice. Every view we can take of
the Christian hope, entitles it to this description.
The Christian's hope is good
ABSOLUTELY.
Good in its foundation—which is Christ; good in its object—which is heaven;
good in its influence—which is holiness; good in its power to support and
comfort under all the trials of life; good for all people, from the prince
to the peasant; good for all occasions, for prosperity and adversity; good
through all the journey of life, and amid all the agonies of death. Whoever
tried it and found it otherwise than good? Was this adjective ever more
truly or more appropriately applied to any object? Will not the believer who
entertains it, and feels its blessed influence, joyfully exclaim, "Yes, if
there is anything good on earth, anything in me, anything in true
religion—it is this! Whatever good things I have—this is best. I would part
with all, rather than this; and if, on the deprivation of property, friends,
health, I were asked what I had left, I would answer from the midst of
surrounding evils, 'A good hope through grace!' and feel that, having
nothing else but this, I should account myself possessing all things."
What multitudes have experienced all this, and found that
Christian hope has stood by them, when everything else had fled. As the sun
converts clouds to a glorious drapery, painting them with gorgeous hues, and
arraying the whole horizon with its magnificent costumes—so a believing and
radiant heart lets forth its hope upon its sorrows, and all the blackness
flies off; and troubles, that seemed likely to extinguish it, serve only as
a theater to display its glory! Is not this good?
The Christian's hope is good
COMPARATIVELY.
"And this world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you
do the will of God, you will live forever." 1 John 2:17. How insignificant,
trivial, and paltry, are the objects of worldly desire and expectation! What
are wealth, rank, fame, pleasure—compared with the glory, honor,
immortality, and eternal life, which the believer looks for beyond the
grave? They are all of the earth earthly—this is heavenly; they are
human—this divine; they are transient—this everlasting; they are
unsatisfying, leaving the soul a void unfilled—this replenishing its vast
capacity; they are fleeting, shadowy, and precarious—this absolutely
certain; they are the toys of children, compared with the occupations of a
Newton, when handling his telescope, surveying the heavens, ascertaining and
contemplating the stars, with his bosom swelling with the hope of
discoveries that will instruct the world and immortalize himself; they leave
the poor, craving soul, exclaiming, "Who will show us any good?"—this
compels him, with rapture, to exclaim, "I have found it! I have found it!"
Compare this hope with that of the HEATHEN, and
see how good it, is. How dim and uncertain were the views of the wisest, and
best of these, as set forth in the doubting expectations of Cicero, the
loftiest speculations of Plato, and the dying prospects of Socrates. Were
these sages of Greece, these lights of the ancient world, to revisit our
earth with no more knowledge than they carried away with them, they might
thankfully sit at the feet of a heaven-taught Sunday-school girl, and from
her lips learn lessons of immortality, which their discoveries never enabled
them to reach.
As a proof of this, I refer to their sayings. The hope of
immortality is styled by Cicero—"A conjecture or surmise of future ages."
Seneca says—"It is that which our wise men only promise—but do not prove."
Socrates, at his death, said—"I hope to go hence to good men—but of that I
am not very confident; nor does it become any wise man to be positive that
so it will be. I must now die, and you shall live—but which of us is in the
better state, God only knows." Pliny says—"Neither soul nor body has any
more sense after death, than before it was born" Aristotle held "that death
was terrible, as putting an end to all things." Plutarch called it "The
fabulous hope of immortality." How evident is it, from the experience and
testimony of such men, that mere human reason is inadequate to the discovery
of a future state; and that nothing could make this certain to man, except a
revelation from God. The trial never could have been made with greater
advantages than by the philosophers of Greece and Rome; and these confessed
that they could arrive at no certainty on the subject. In this state of
things the gospel comes with its glorious discoveries, abolishes death—that
is, renders its reign but transient; and establishes the fact, not only of
the immortality of the soul—but of the resurrection of the body; thus
solving the great and stupendous problem of man's nature and destiny—and
bringing in everlasting consolation, and a good hope through grace.
MOHAMMEDANISM speaks of its Paradise—but how
groveling, how sensual, how unworthy the soul of man. The false prophet
accommodates his heaven to the carnal and lowest passions of our nature, and
holds out to the faithful little more or better than the lecherous harem of
an Eastern despot. He carries his sensual system into the celestial state,
and peoples his eternal world with a race of voluptuaries. What a contrast
is here presented to the Christian Paradise, where flesh and blood are
excluded, with all their grosser appetites and propensities; and not only is
the soul perfect in purity—but even the body is too spiritual for the
sensual passions of the flesh.
Little better is the Elysium of the classic nations of
GREECE and ROME, or rather of their poets—and it was only poetry.
If we consult Homer, Virgil, Pindar, and others, these rise no higher than
converse with gods which are themselves stained with crime—and this
communion maintained amid green bowers, gliding streams, murmuring springs,
verdant meadows, and warbling of birds. Others add mirth and sensual
delight. True it is, some of their philosophers turned away in partial
disgust from these base views, yet they had nothing better to substitute,
which could be relied upon with certainty. Now and then a dim ray of light
seemed to pierce the clouds of mortality, and point to a region beyond—but
while the eye of reason looked at it, it vanished like a meteor, and left
the benighted, bewildered philosopher in all his doubt and darkness. I need
not further enlarge upon this, than to contrast Cicero's skeptical statement
of the coming day of transition from earth to heaven, with Paul's triumphant
confidence, where he says—"We know that if the earthly house of our
tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens!"
There was Paganism, straining her exploring eye
over the dark abyss of the grave, with feeble fluttering hope, and strong
prevailing fear, holding up her dark lantern—but gaining no
discovery—uttering her inquiring voice—but receiving no response—all was
dark and silent to her. Here, is Christianity, gazing with steady
faith, living hope, and enraptured view, amid the broad daylight of
revelation, on those sweet fields beyond the swelling flood which stand
dressed with living green, and adorned with the at amaranthine flowers of
the celestial Paradise. Oh, precious gospel, which has thus laid open to us
not only the GLORY—but the CERTAINTY of a future state of bliss!
It is hardly worth while to bring into the comparison
those monstrous, absurd, and groveling representations of the future state,
which are the products of MODERN PAGANISM—the transmigration of souls
of the Eastern world from body to body, through millions of ages, until they
are at last absorbed in the gods; or the hunting grounds and pleasures of
the hunt, which form the future of savage tribes. Who can contemplate these
varied—but groveling and uncertain expectations, held by the ancient and
modern heathen, and not see, comparing them with the Christian faith, the
truth and force of the apostle's description, when he calls it a good hope?
Compare it with the hope of the JEW. How scanty
were the revelations of a future state under the Old Testament. How seldom
did the sun of the celestial world seem to break through the clouds and
shadows of the Levitical economy, and throw its luster on the path of even
the pious Israelite. In what gloom and deep dejection did he approach the
sepulcher. Where in all the law, the psalms, the prophets, do we find those
triumphant anticipations of eternal glory, which are so frequent in the
writings of holy Paul? Where do we see the ancient believer looking up into
heaven with the exulting expectation that he shall soon be there with God
and his saints? How rarely did David strike his harp or tune his voice in
praise of the heaven to come. How seldom did even the evangelical prophet
Isaiah rise high on the wing of prophecy until he bathed his spirit in the
flood of the excellent glory, and then descended to tell the visions he had
seen. One chapter, I might almost say one verse, of the New Testament,
tells us more of the celestial world, as to the reality and nature of its
felicities, than all the pages of the Old Testament. So true are the
apostle's words already quoted—"He has abolished death, and brought life and
immortality to light by the gospel."
Is it not, then, a good hope that Christians have? And
then, just for a moment, dwell on its
SOURCE,
as expressed in this verse, "a good hope through grace." Any hope,
the expectation of the smallest favor—even the shortening of the duration of
punishment, or lightening the weight of punishment—would be favor.
Annihilation would be mercy, for sinners who deserved to be plunged in
eternal despair; just as any situation on earth might be esteemed a favor
for a man who had been condemned to die, and deserved it. It would have been
grace to be merely exempted from the bitter pains of eternal death—though
our eternal destiny had been to dwell in some world far from God's presence,
and with only some few comforts to make existence tolerable. It would have
been a display of grace, rich grace—to bestow upon us all the glories of
Paradise for ten thousand ages—and then to extinguish our existence forever.
Had we never heard of eternal life, and had this been presented to us as the
object of Christian desire and expectation—we would have considered it as a
manifestation of abounding favor.
But for sinners who had deserved hell to have such a hope
as ours—the hope of everlasting life, with all that can make existence a
blessing; to have a hope founded on the incarnation, sufferings, and death
of the Son of God; to be brought by the new creating power of God into the
possession of this hope—is it not a display of grace which will fill the
universe with astonishment, and our eternity with wonder and with praise?
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