And when we turn away from such clews as these and look right into the face of life to ask what the powers and services and functionings of hope in the actual life of man and in the life of the world are, we realize that all this exultant hope has its deep grounding in the actual living needs of men. It is by hope――the New Testament is unequivocal about it, and our own experience answers to that word――it is by hope that we are saved. Not in one passage in the New Testament can you find the declaration that we are saved by faith. We are saved “by grace through faith,” but Paul is flat-footed in his declaration that we are saved by hope. And the moment a man looks life square in the face he sees why it should be so. Were it not for hope there could not be any saving that were worth a man’s while. There might be a clearing up of the past; we might secure something like a clean conscience; but there could not be any confidence, any ease, any rest, as over against the tragic problem of life, if a man could not look out into the future――which is really the thing he now has to deal with――with boundless hope. Salvation is just that thing. It is not cleaning up our lives from the point of view of the past, just for the sake of cleaning up our lives; but it is the hope that for the sake of our future God is going to live in us a saving life. All this is true whether we think of salvation as it comes penetrating our lives and dealing with such problems as in shame and self-distrust we think of in our hours of recollection and penitence, or whether we think of it as something reaching out into the expanding experience of the future. Either way, salvation is a matter of hope. There is a lovely touch in one of Paul’s epistles where he says: “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” What do you think of that motive? He does not say, “Seeing that our sin is so black and abhorrent as it is, seeing that the past is so shameful and unworthy as it is, let us cleanse ourselves.” “My brothers,” he said, “seeing we have such promises”――that is, “that the hope is so bright, that there is no ground for despair, that we can believe victory can actually be achieved by us, seeing that we have these hopes, let us cleanse ourselves in growing holiness.”