Like every other good thing hope has many symbols. Watson said: “Hope is like the cork to the net, which keeps the soul from sinking in despair.” “It is to man,” said Felthan, “as a bladder to a learning swimmer, it keeps him from sinking in the bosom of the waves and by that help he may attain the exercise.” “Hope,” says Howe, “is the engine that moves the world and keeps the intelligent part of it in action everywhere.” But in the Scriptures it is symbolized as an anchor: “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul.”
When David was sad he said to himself: “Hope thou in God.” What volumes of thought these words contain. “Hope” and “God” and the word “thou” linking them together. “Hope thou in God.” That boy who places his trust in God is never hopeless. Airy fancies may seek to allure him, treacherous vices may endeavor to beguile him, but hope flits eternal around the human head and breast, and hangs its rainbow on the blackest cloud in all the chaste sparklings of an angel from the realms of light. To give up hope is to give up the beauty of life. It was only when Paradise was lost that Milton makes Satan exclaim: “Then farewell hope,” and immediately thereafter, as always the case, he adds: “Evil, be thou my good.”
THE CERTAINTY OF THIS HOPE.
Paul said in regard to hope, “Sure and steadfast.” Like the anchor whose flukes get fast beneath the moveless rocks, holding the vessel to its moorings in spite of the storm, so hope whispers these magic words of joy, when waves of calamity and sorrow would engulf in the vortex of despair, “sure and steadfast.” Why? Because the cable that holds the anchor hope is faith and the rock that holds the flukes of the anchor is Christ, and the reason we believe it is sure, is because the Word of God says so, for His Word is “Yea and amen to him that believeth.” We believe because millions have tested and proved it.
Now anchors are not so much needed in mid-ocean, for the water is deep, the rocks far down, and the reefs distant, so that with a storm before or behind, the ocean craft could smile and say, “I can race as fast as you can drive.” It is when nearing the coast that extra care is taken and the anchor held in readiness, for should a storm arise it might dash the ship upon the rocks, run it upon a reef or strand it upon the shore. Nor is the anchor of hope so much needed in the mid-ocean of prosperity, peace and the fulness of God’s love as it is near the shore when we start in the Christian life and labor.
ROCKS OF SCEPTICISM.
Without this sure anchor many a boy has drifted on the rock of scepticism. When the little “squall” of laughter and “windy” arguments were brought to bear against them, they forgot their promises and gradually drifted upon this disastrous rock. No boy’s anchor is secure who reads literature saturated with atheistical sentiments or keeps the company of infidel characters. Heinrich Heine the sceptic was proof of this. One day a friend called to see him, when suffering torments from a disease of the spine. He said: “If I could only walk on crutches, do you know where I would go? Straight to church.” “You jest,” the friend said. “No, no, straight to the church,” replied the former scoffer; “my friend, believe me, it is Heinrich Heine who tells you. After having reflected on it for years, and after having reconsidered and maturely weighed what has been written on this subject by men of all sorts, believe me, I have reached a conclusion that there is a God who judges our conduct, and that after this life there is another, when the good will be rewarded and the wicked punished. There are fools, who, having passed their lives in scepticism and mistake, and denied God in their words and acts, have not courage to own that they are wholly deceived. As for me,” he said sadly and almost hopelessly, “I feel compelled to declare that it is a cursed falsehood which long made me blind. Only at present I see clearly; and any man who knows me must confess that it is not because my faculties have become weak, for never was my mind more clear and strong than it is this moment.”
Without this sure and steadfast anchor many boys have drifted upon the reefs of temptation. An unanchored ship may lie on the waters as calmly and beautifully as in a painted picture, but almost before one realizes, the undercurrent carries it away, and a sudden jar, a terrible crash informs the captain it has stranded on a reef or struck a rock. So, too, hundreds of boys have been ruined in like manner, not by the gales of adversity, or strong winds of persecution, but by the undercurrents of strong temptations.
What Paul said of those who live by faith may be said of all boys. “These were tempted.” Temptations are with kings in their castles and peasants in the field. “They come,” says one, “of plenty, they are born of success and they are born of defeat.” They are not in themselves sins, but temptations become sin when the tempted one welcomes and yields to them. Temptations resemble the rocks which rest their jagged sides above the waves at low water. No vessel dare come near them. But after a while the tide comes sweeping into the bay and buries the rocks under a flood of water so that the largest ships as well as the lightest skiffs may ride in safety above their teeth of death. We cannot hinder temptation from coming to us, but we can refuse to heed it. How?