—Johnson.
Owls hoot in the night; larks sing in the morning. The children of darkness riot and groan in their gloom. The children of light have “Songs in the night,” (Job 35:10), and “Joy cometh in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5). God stands by those who stand by Him. If you hope in God, your hopes will never fail. He promises us the life that now is, and that which is to come. He can make this life a life of gladness, and the everlasting life a life of endless peace and pleasure.
“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.” (Romans 15:13).
CHAPTER XXIX
Be Hopeful
Life properly belongs to the hopeful. It has been said that a pessimist is one who has the choice of two evils and takes them both. A discouraged man is defeated before he begins. When a boy, Peter Cooper had few school privileges. His father being a hatter, he was set to work pulling the hair from rabbit skins to obtain material with which to make hats. His health was poor and though having but “half a chance,” at seventeen he resolved to work for himself. At this time he was living at Peekskill. Thence he went to New York, where he apprenticed himself to a carriage-maker for five years for board and two dollars a month. He had neither time nor money for what the world calls pleasure, but he had the pleasure of hope. While working for fifty cents a week he resolved: “If ever I get rich I will build a place where the poor boys and girls of New York may have an education free.” He then entered the grocery trade and made some money; then a glue factory, where he became rich. In 1854 the object of his hope was commenced and finished at a cost of $800,000. “The great object that I desire to accomplish,” said he, “by the erection of this institution is to open the avenues of scientific knowledge to the youth of our city and country, and so unfold the volume of nature that the youth may see the beauties of creation, enjoy its blessings and learn to love the Author from whom cometh every good and perfect gift.” It is a source of consolation to know that, in whatever circumstance a boy may be placed, there is, amidst the desolate and cheerless scenes a harbinger of comfort, a helm to keep his course in the right channel, and a north star on which to fix his eyes, namely, hope. Without it, the world would be desert and man the most wretched of all God’s creatures. With it, aspiration clings to some tangible reality as the ivy’s tendril to the oak. There may be failures, but hope believes in final success. It whispers, “nothing is impossible;” smiles serenely on the struggling, sustains the aspiring and cheers with a vivacity of assurance that portends success. As such it lit the lantern upon the ship of Columbus, waved the torch before Bacon as he descended into Nature’s laboratory, supported the steps of Newton when he wandered into the dim solitude of unknown worlds, sprinkled the canvas of Titian with purple lines of summer, sent Watts’ engine snorting along the rails and Fulton’s steamboat puffing up the Hudson.
WHAT IS HOPE?
Hope is a beautiful word. Its definition makes every bosom bound and burn. It is called “Music to the ear of the young;” “health to the sick;” “the birthright of all;” “the soul’s most effective impulse,” and a “glorious expectation.” To the warrior it is the victor’s wreath, amulet and medal of honor. To the student it means the bench, platform, pulpit, or some other exalted position. To the Christian it means more. So intimately is it associated with practical godliness that religion is called “A hope through grace,” (2 Thess. 2:16) “a glorious hope,” “a better hope,” (Heb. 7:19) “a blessed hope” and “a lively hope.” (1 Peter 1:3). The Christian’s God is named the “God of Hope,” Jesus Christ, “Our Hope,” (1 Tim. 1:1) and His finished work “the hope set before us in the Gospel.”
General Grant once said to a personal friend that his habit of day-dreaming, a kind of large and persistent hoping, had never left him. In his earlier life he had resigned from the army and things had been going steadily against him. He was working on a farm near St. Louis, from which he used to carry wood to the city for sale, and then ride back in the empty cart. It was a favorite sort of hoping dream of his, as he rode homeward, to think of himself with Mrs. Grant making a tour of Europe, and of himself as an officer in the army. Foolish enough such hoping seemed for a poor farmer jogging homeward in the evening. But that hope was inspiration to him, and at last the reality of it all burst the bounds of his most daring dreaming. Hoping thus, even in Grant’s circumstances, was vastly better than a weak bewailing of his hard and unpromising plight. It is a noteworthy fact that all through the war, everyone of Grant’s utterances and dispatches had in it this note of hope. There could not be found a shadow of a suggestion of despair or of ultimate defeat. Hope, to him, as to thousands, was a stimulating factor.