gainst the Saviour of the natur y elements nd inclin ill furnis The unsanc Dose mere Faith, or i can ver it be well e God s s, nor can except o the gen f the re e permit ly than I influence d to en this late bject to your own consciences, in the words of St. Paul in 13* SERMON VI. HOPE. BY REV. EBENEZER FISHER. "Hope thou in God." - Psalm xlii. 5. Amid the troubles, and discouragements of the world, which are many; it is well to keep alive a cheering hope within the soul. It will be of great service to us to bear in mind, that to such a hope, God lends encouragement. The hope to which the writer of this Psalm exhorts his disquieted and downcast soul, has not regard to any specific thing, it is a general hope in God, and may encourage us to cherish a similar hope in him, as the Giver of all "good and perfect gifts," with whom are in store, if not the precise gifts which we expect, such, at least, as shall be sufficient for our real needs. This general hope in God, is finely expressed in the discourse on hope, in the eighth chapter of Romans, where the Apostle declares that "we are saved by hope;" "but if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it; likewise, the spirit helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought; in this there seems to be pictured, the general outlooking of the soul toward a better state, and a deliverance, of which the specific particulars are not clearly appre hended. It is a hopeful waiting, for a glorious manifestation," whose unknown modes and issues God shall shape aright. 66 Next to a good conscience, the thing most to be desired is a good hope; and even where ther is a bad conscience, it is a good hope, to hop for a better. Nearly all of God's gifts to mer demand of them some appropriate labor, in orde to the production of the benefits they were i tended to produce. Hope alone is free. It God's gift showered upon every condition human life, that none may be without some i ward witness of the divine care and love. It is one of the most important auxiliaries, maintaining that elasticity of the human soul, which it rebounds against temptation, sin, a he Apos "but we with helpeth e should ms to be the soul of which y appre glorious des and most to ere there to hope to men, in order were in e. It is ition of some in aries, in soul, by sin, and sorrow. It gives that buoyancy, which enables to surmount the great trials, and contend successfully in the severe struggles of life. We can labor in the face of discouragements, we can recover from reverses, endure afflictions, and digest sorrows, so long as hope remains. But when hope flies, all seems lost, for it should be the last to depart from any human heart while life remains. God has made her blessed ministrations appropriate to all conditions of life. She is not too proud for the cottage, but in the humblest home she finds an appropriate place, and what is more proper to the lowliest, than that which bids them look upward? She is not too poor for the palace, and wretched indeed beneath its diadem, is the loftiest head on earth, if hope be precluded. The exercise of the speculative powers of our nature, forms no small portion of our being, doing, and suffering even in this bodily state, and this material world. For every act which we do, the busy mind shapes, and compares, many schemes, and calculates many possible results. As Nature, the fruitful Mother, sheds millions of seeds of every kind, upon the earth in Autumn, |