'Whose hope shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider's
web.'--JOB viii. 14.
'And hope maketh not ashamed.'--ROMANS v. 5.
These two texts take opposite sides. Bildad was not the wisest of
Job's friends, and he gives utterance to solemn commonplaces with
partial truth in them. In the rough it is true that the hope of the
ungodly perishes, and the limits of the truth are concealed by the
splendour of the imagery and the perfection of artistic form in which
the well-worn platitude is draped. The spider's web stretched
glittering in the dewy morning on the plants, shaking its threaded
tears in the wind, the flag in the dry bed of a nullah withering while
yet green, the wall on which leaning a man will fall, are vivid
illustrations of hopes that collapse and fail. But my other text has
to do with hopes that do not fail. Paul thinks that he knows of hope
that maketh not ashamed, that is, which never disappoints. Bildad was
right if he was thinking, as he was, of hopes fixed on earth; the
Apostle was right, for he was thinking of hopes set on God. It is a
commonplace that 'hope springs immortal in the human breast'; it is
equally a commonplace that hopes are disappointed. What is the
conclusion from these two universal experiences? Is it the cynical one
that it is all illusion, or is it that somewhere there must be an
object on which hope may twine its tendrils without fear? God has
given the faculty, and we may be sure that it is not given to be for
ever balked. We must hope. Our hope may be our worst enemy; it may and
should be our purest joy.
Let us then simply consider these two sorts of hope, the earthly and
the heavenly, in their working in the three great realms of life,
death, and eternity.