The Apostle prays that God may give to these Ephesians 'the spirit of
wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him,' and then he adds, as the
result of that gift, the desire that the Ephesian believers may have
'the eyes of their hearts enlightened.' That is a remarkable expression.
It does not mean, as an English reader might suppose it to mean, that
the affections are the agents by which this knowledge reaches us; but
'heart' is here used, as it often is in Scripture, as a general
expression for the whole inward life, and all that the Apostle means is
that, by the gift of the Divine Spirit of wisdom, a man's inner nature
may be so touched as to be capable of perceiving and grasping the 'hope
of the calling.'
Observe, too, the language, 'that ye may know the hope.' How can you
_know_ a hope? How do you know any kind of feeling? By having it. The
only way of knowing what is the hope is to hope, and this is only
possible by dint of these eyes of the understanding being enlightened.
For our inward nature, as we have it, and as we use it, without the
touch of that Divine Spirit, is so engrossed with this present that the
far-off blessedness to which my text refers has no chance of entering
there. No man can look at something beside him with one eye, and at
something half a mile off with the other. You have to focus the eye
according to the object; and he who is gazing upon the near is thereby
made blind to that which is afar off. If we go crawling along the low
levels with our eyes upon the dust, then of course we cannot see the
crown above.
We need more than the historical revelation of the light in order to
enlighten the inward nature. There is many a man here now who knows all
about the immortality that is brought to light by Jesus Christ just as
well as the Christian man whose soul is full of the hope of it, and who
yet, for all his knowledge, does not know the hope, because he has not
felt it. You have to get further than to the acceptance intellectually
of the historical facts of a risen and ascended Saviour before there can
be, in your heart, any vital hope of immortality. The inward eye must be
cleared and strengthened, cross lights must be shut out so that we may
direct the single eye of our hearts towards the great objects which
alone are worthy of its fixed contemplation. And we cannot do that
without a divine help, that Spirit of wisdom which will fill our hearts
if we ask for it, which will fix our affections, which will clear our
eyesight, which will withdraw it from seeing vanity as well as give it
reality to see.
But we must observe the conditions. Since this clearness of hope comes
not merely from the acceptance as a truth of the fact of Christ's
Resurrection and Ascension, but comes through the gift of that Divine
Spirit, then to have it you must ask for it. Christian people, do you
ask for it? Do you ever pray--I do not mean in words, but in real
desire--that God would help you to keep steadily before you that great
future to which we are all going so fast? If you do you will get the
answer. Seek for that Spirit; use it, and do not resist its touches. Do
not fix your gaze on the world when God is trying to draw you to fix it
upon Himself. Think more about Jesus Christ, more about God's high
calling, live nearer to Him, and try more honestly, more earnestly, more
prayerfully, more habitually, even amidst all the troubles and
difficulties and trivialities of each day, to cultivate that great
faculty of joyful and assured hope.
Surely God did not endue us with the power of hoping that we might fling
it all away on trivial, transient things. We are all far too
short-sighted; our fault is not that we do not hope, but that we hope
for such near things, for such small things, like the old mariners who
had no compass nor sextant, and were obliged to creep timidly along the
coasts, and steer from headland to headland. But we ought to launch
boldly out into mid-ocean, knowing that we have before us that star that
cannot guide us amiss. Do not set your hopes on the things that perish,
for if you do, hopes fulfilled and hopes disappointed will be equally
bitter in your mouths. And you older people who, like myself, are
drawing near the end of your days, and have little else left to hope for
in this world, do you see to it that your anticipations extend 'above
the ruinable skies.' _There_ is an object beyond experience, above
imagination, without example, for which the creation wants a comparison,
we an apprehension, and the Word of God itself a sufficient revelation.
'It doth not yet appear what we shall be.' God hath called us to His
eternal kingdom and glory; let us seek to walk in the light of the 'hope
of His calling.'