June 26

The hope laid up for you in heaven. - Colossians 1:5.

NOW, from this definition of hope we are able to ascertain the place of its existence and residence. This is earth; hope is confined to earth. There is no hope in hell, for there neither good nor relief can ever enter:-“They shall seek death, but death shall fly from them.” In vain did the rich man implore a drop of water to cool his parched tongue. Father Abraham told him that between him and happiness there was a great gulf fixed, which he could not pass over. Where is the wretch on earth that hope never reaches? But, says Milton, there

“Hope never comes, that comes to all.”

There is no hope in heaven. There consummation prevents it; there every desire is fulfilled. “They hunger no more, nor thirst any more.” “Then,” says David, “I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness;” “Then that which is perfect shall be come, and that which is in part shall be done away.”

Earth, therefore, is the only abode of hope; earth is suspended between the other two worlds. It is a mixed state of good and evil: the evil is not enough to exclude hope, and the good is not enough to dispense with it. “Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble;” “Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward;” and whatever direction life takes in his experience, it is through a vale of tears. By the fall, man was deprived of the tree of life, of the image and presence of God, and even hope itself was lost; but by the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us by Christ Jesus, it was recovered; and not only recovered, but improved. Our renewed state is far superior to our original state. By the Incarnation, the Lord of angels is our Brother. In his righteousness we are not only justified, but exalted. He came, not only that we might have life, but that we might have it more abundantly.

The object of the Christian’s hope is principally and peculiarly in heaven. As the apostle here says, “The hope that is laid up for you in heaven;” and with regard to this, all language fails, and all conception fails too. We are expressly informed that “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” What do we know now of the meaning of seeing God? What do we know now of a spiritual body? What do we know now of the various powers that may be enjoyed when mortality drops off from us? No; it is impossible to do any thing like justice to the subject. We have no images that can fully express it; we have no medium through which we can adequately view it. No; we have not eyes for the brilliancy, nor ears for the harmony, nor powers to bear up under that “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;” and “flesh and blood can no more understand than they can inherit the kingdom of God.”

But though the object of the Christian’s hope is peculiarly and principally above,-and there the Christian has a better and an enduring substance,-yet even here he has pledges of it, he has the earnest of it, he has the first-fruits, he has the foretastes. Even here

“The men of grace have found

Glory begun below.”

And Watts says,-

“When Christ, with all his beauties crown’d,

Sheds his bright beams abroad,

’Tis a young heaven on earthly ground,

And glory in the bud.”