religious life is not a brooding over emotions, grazing the keel of faith in the shallows, or dragging the anchor of hope through the oozy tide-mud, as if afraid of encountering the healthy breeze. Away! with your canvas spread to the gale, trusting in Him who rules the raging of the waters. The safety of the timid bird is to be on the wing, if its haunt be near the ground,--if it fly low, it exposes itself to the fowler's net or snare. If we remain grovelling on the low ground of feeling and emotion, we shall find ourselves entangled in a thousand meshes of doubt and despondency, temptation and unbelief. "_But surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of_ THAT WHICH HATH A WING"[34]--(marginal reading.) "_They that wait (or hope) in the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles._"[35] [34] Prov. i. 17. [35] Isaiah xl. 31. HOPE strengthens and invigorates her pinions the higher she soars. She gathers courage from the past, and looks with eagle eye to the future. "_I know_," says Paul, "_in whom I have believed_," (hoped, or trusted,) "_and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him_." "_I will hope continually_," says David, "_and will yet praise Thee more and more_."[36] Again, using a kindred emblem--the bird in the tempest rushing for shelter under the mother's wing--"_Thou hast_ BEEN _my help,_ THEREFORE _in the shadow of Thy wings will I rejoice_."[37] [36] Psalm lxxi. 14. [37] Psalm lxiii. 7. Can such be said of the world's hopes? Does experience lead to repose in _them_ with similar implicit confidence? _Hope_--the hope of earthly good, and earthly joy, and earthly happiness--is often (too often) the mirage of life; the bubble on the stream, tinted with evanescent glory, a flash of prismatic beauty, and then _gone_! Multitudes flock to this enchantress in her cave, and though mocked and duped, and mocked and duped again, still they haunt her oracle, and kiss her magic wand. She has built for them again and again air castles--turret on turret, buttress on buttress, gilded dome and glittering minaret, and these have melted like frost-work. But yet these Babel builders, with the same avidity as ever, return to the work, and again the fantastic battlements are piled high in mid air! We do not condemn these noble aspirations and struggles of this noble emotion;--far from it. What would the world be without Hope? It is the oil which keeps its vast machinery in play; it is the secret of all success--the incentive to all enterprise. Annihilate hope, and you blot out a sun from the firmament. Annihilate hope, and the husbandman would forsake his furrow, the physician his patient, the merchant his traffic; the student would quench his midnight lamp; science would at this hour have been lisping its alphabet, and art and philosophy would have been in their infancy.