The Bible is a book of hope. It looks, not backward, but forward. It has its face turned towards the light. It always speaks of “a best that is still to be.” We open its pages and we read of Eden; of a time when the world was free from pain and sorrow and sadness, because man was free from sin. While man was innocent his home was a garden, all nature served him, a sky that was always blue smiled down upon him, and God was his familiar friend. But we read on a chapter or two and a change comes over the aspect of things. Eden disappears, and has never been found since. Joy, harmony, peace vanish, and leave behind them discord, sorrow, hate. When man sinned, pain and grief and death entered the world, man’s sky grew black with clouds; God no longer spoke with him in the cool of the evening, and he was driven out of the garden, at the gates of which the cherubim were posted with swords of flame which pointed every way, as if to say, “No return, no return.” But even in the story of that bitter loss I detect the note of “hope.” You perhaps remember the old Greek legend which says that when Pandora was married to Epimetheus the gods gave her a box, which was full of winged blessings, as a wedding present. As long as Pandora kept the box locked, so long life was like a summer’s day. She and her husband enjoyed every blessing. But one day, tempted by curiosity, she opened the box, and on the instant the little winged creatures who were locked inside took flight and left her for ever. All? did I say. No, not quite all. _Hope_ remained at the bottom of the box, the only blessing left to Pandora and her husband! And so exactly man lost everything by sin except _hope_. When God made man He gave him every blessing. But when man unmade himself, these blessings took flight. He lost his innocence, he lost his peace, he lost his happiness, he lost his home, he lost everything but _hope_. God left him _hope_ to comfort him in his bitter grief. God left him _hope_ to save him from despair. When man’s night was blackest, God sent into his sky a star, a star that was the promise of a day to come. In pronouncing doom upon disobedient man, God also gave him a promise as if to say, “It shall not always be midnight and deep despair with thee. Thy dayspring shall again arise.” That note of hope, struck even in the story of the tragedy of the fall, is the key-note of the Bible. The Bible is a book of the future, and the spring-time, and the dawn. You will not find its pages taken up with regrets for the Eden which has been lost; it looks forward to a better Eden still to come. It does not spend its time in bewailing the sunshine that has disappeared from the earth; it rather bids men wake and watch that they may be ready to greet the still more glorious day which is about to break. For as you read the Bible, what do you discover? You discover one glowing promise after another given by God; you find hope ever waxing stronger; you find the assurance that the night is