But this we say, that if so much is perilled on a peradventure;--if _hope_--the _ignis fatuus_ of earth--be so greedily pursued,--why the cold and careless indifference regarding "the hope which maketh not ashamed"--the hope which is beyond the possibility of disappointment; promises which never fail; words which rest on a firmer and surer basis than the foundations of earth and the pillars of heaven? Shall the disappointed hewer still go on patching the shivered and broken _earthly_ cistern? Shall the man of science, undeterred by successive failures, pursue his unwearied analysis? Shall the merchant remain unbaffled by adverse markets that have drained his coffers, or successive storms that have stranded his vessels and wrecked his cargo? Shall the fragments of a brave army re-muster at the bugle call, and, amid dying comrades around and a shower of iron hail in front, return with undaunted hearts to the charge? Shall pining captives in a beleaguered garrison, pressed by famine, decimated by disease, outnumbered by force--shall these light their beacon-fires of _hope_, and sit to the last by their smouldering ashes, struggling on, either till calm endurance win its recompence, or until hope and life expire together? And shall the spiritual builder, or merchant, or soldier, be left alone coward and faint-hearted, and give way to unworthy distrust, or pusillanimous despair; and that, too, when the guarantees of _their_ hope are so amazing? Listen to them! What words could be stronger? what pledges more inviolable? "IN HOPE _of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began._"[38] "_Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath: that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil._"[39] [38] Titus i. 2. [39] Heb. vi. 17-20. Oh, beautiful figure! Hope casts its anchor into the Rock of Ages within the veil. The ship may be tossing in the surging sea below, but a chain of everlasting love and grace links it to the throne of God. I love to walk through the Bible, and gaze on its many delineations of _Hope_. It is a picture-gallery of this noble grace! As the great painters of the middle ages clung to favourite subjects, so HOPE seems ever to meet us in some form or other, as we tread this long corridor of inspired portraits. Here is the earliest. A picture hung in a framework of sorrow. Its subject is two drooping exiles going with tears out of Eden. But, lo! a tinge of light gleams in the dark sky, and the angel of _Hope_ drops in their ears healing words of comfort.