Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers the way:
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.--Goldsmith.
Hope is the best part of our riches. For it alone
reaches further than any other--off into the world which is to come. But
I am speaking to you of the practical advantages of hope. Bacon says:
"Hope is leaf-joy, which may be beaten out to a great extension, like
gold." It has been most beautifully said by Hillard that the shadow of
human life is traced upon a golden ground of immortal hope. Shakspeare
says the miserable have no other medicine. "Hope is a prodigal young
heir, and Experience is his banker, but his drafts are seldom honored,
since there is often a heavy balance against him." Now to make his
account good in the First National Bank of Experience, what should Hope
do? He plainly should begin the deposit of probabilities to draw
against. Walter Scott says: "Hope is brightest when it dawns from
fears," and I should think his drafts would be honored just so far as
they were drawn with circumspection. "Folly ends" writes Cowper "where
genuine hope begins." But where there is no hope there can be no
endeavor, so whether it exist in superabundance or not let us cultivate
it as one of the loveliest of the flowers of life, as absolutely the
sweetest perfume that ever burns in the Golden Censer. Let me tell you
how