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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 49

Hopes: A Sermon for the New Year [Vol. 5. No. 16., January 11, 1884.]

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Unity Pulpit. Boston.

Vol. 5. No. 16.

George H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street. Boston:

1884.
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M. J. Savage'S Works.

Poems. 16mo. Full gilt. With portrait, $1.50
Light on the Cloud. 16mo. Full gilt, 1.25
Belief in God. 12mo, 1.00
Beliefs About Man. 12mo, 1.00
The Modern Sphinx. 12mo, 1.00
The Morals of Evolution. 12mo, 1.00
Talks About Jesus. 12mo, 1.00
Christianity the science of Man-Hood. 12mo, 1.00
The Religion of Evolution. 12mo, 1. 50
Life Questions, 16mo, 1.00
Bluffton: A Story of To-day 1.00
The Minister's Hand-Book. For Christenings, Weddings, and Funerals. Cloth .75
Sacred Songs for Public Worship.
A Hymn and Tune Hook. Edited by M. J. Savage and Howard M. Dow. Cloth,
1.00
Leather, 1.50
For sale by

Geo. H. Ellis,

Publisher, 141 Franklin Street, Boston, Mass.
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Hopes:

A Sermon for the New Year.

"We are saved by hope."—Romans viii., 24.

As We study the religions of the world, we cannot fail to be struck by one fact, which is not peculiar to any one of them, but which is common, I might almost say, to humanity,—the fact that man has created for himself, in imagination, two Edens, an Eden in the past and an Eden in the future. A beautiful, perfect place, a beautiful, perfect condition, where there is no sin, no sorrow, no pain,—such, men have dreamed of as the starting-point of history. Another perfect condition, another beautiful place, where there is no sin, no sorrow, no pain, they have equally imagined as the goal of history. That is the thing to be attained as the outcome of human life. This, it seems to me, we may rightly take as a parable of life,—something, whether true or not of the race, true in a certain, very profound sense of the individual. These two Edens are the creation respectively of memory and hope.

Each individual has an Eden in his past; for it is one peculiarity of this wondrous faculty that we call memory that it is able to transmute and transform even the hard, harsh, disagreeable things of the past in such a way as to leave be-hind us, in the main, only a beautiful country.

I remember, for example, that I once passed through a terrific storm. We were in imminent danger of shipwreck,—waiting, weary, fearful, hour after hour, almost holding our breath as we heard the wind howling overhead and the big page 4 waves striking the sides of our trembling ship, wondering what would happen, hardly expecting we should see the land. It was torture while it lasted, although there might have been no great fear of death. But now all this experience is simply a pleasant excitement in the memory. The pain, the sorrow, the sadness, have all passed away; and it remains as something that we gladly remember. Something akin to this is true of all our experience. No matter what our childhood may have been, or the experience of youth, a large part of our disappointments has been trans-formed by the magic touch of memory, that, Midas-like, is able to turn even the basest metals to gold.

So, on the other hand, we picture to ourselves a beautiful country in the future. No matter how many times we may be disappointed, still the ardor of this hope is not quite chilled; still imagination flies on with fresh, untiring wing, and hovers over a country lying in the mild sunlight of a better day. We imagine a life with the evils of the present outgrown, and think that we shall certainly attain to this better state.

Our actual life is passed on a very narrow neck of time. An infinite or boundless ocean called the past is behind us, another infinite or boundless ocean called the future is before us. We live only by the instant.' The present is so fleeting that, before we can say it is, it is gone. We live only in this flitting, fleeting moment; and yet a large part of our conscious existence is spent either in the past or the future.

But what are we doing in this present passing moment? We are creating what shall be our memories. We are also creating either the possibility of realizing or the certainty of destroying our richest and noblest hopes. This very minute, the thought that we cherish, the decision we make, the kind or unkind word we speak, create for us the kind of memory that must be ours; and it is also determining whether we shall realize or fail in realizing our far-off hopes.

As we stand here this morning and look back over the page 5 past, calling to mind things that we hoped at the beginning of the year that is gone, candor will compel us to confess to ourselves, if we do not to others, that a very large number of those hopes have not been realized. Perhaps we have been disappointed oftener than we have attained the things that we have desired. We expected, some of us, to have been in a little easier condition financially than we are to-day. We expected to have made money during the past year, while, as a matter of fact,—at least of some of us it is true,—our property has shrunk. Some of it has slipped through our fingers. And we stand here with that hope blasted, holding only the blighted stalk in our hand; while the leaves that made the brilliant flower, instead of developing into fruit, have withered and fallen off.

Some of us have stood as watchers by the side of sickbeds. We have looked upon pale and wan faces,—faces indicating pain and weariness and long waiting,—and we have hoped that the days and weeks and months, as they went by, would bring life and fresh vigor to the cheeks; but these hopes have been disappointed, for these friends have not recovered. And we see them gradually slipping down and down, nearer to the edge of the cloud that, we know, will receive them out of our sight.

Some of us have been worried with care concerning our friends, concerning property, or concerning the welfare, moral or spiritual, of our children; and we have hoped for an outcome better than has been realized. And we are disappointed, wondering whether this new year is going to do for us that which the old failed to accomplish.

So concerning almost all the hopes of our past,—perhaps it is true that a large number, nay, even the larger number, have not been realized. They have been beautiful, flitting forms, that have receded as we have advanced. As we have stretched out longing hands to clasp them, they have eluded us, fading into nothing.

What is the lesson of it? What is this wonderful thing we call hope? Is it, after all, a lie, a cheat? Is it a mirage, page 6 making beautiful pictures on the air of something that does not exist in fact, of something that we, at any rate, shall never see? Is it a will-o'-the-wisp, leading us on, flitting ever before us until we find ourselves lost in the bog? Is it an illusion, something that does not represent a reality, something we should be better without? I hear older people sometimes saying to the young: "It is all very well for you to cherish these grand hopes for the future, but you will learn better by and by. I know it is very bright,—this dawn, this prediction of the morning sky before the sun is quite up; but you will soon find yourself plodding and trudging along the highway in the dust, with this same sun beating down upon you, a burden instead of a blessing." I do not like this way of chilling the enthusiasm of youth by those who, as they say, have experienced life and found that there was nothing in it. If you have indeed found that there is nothing in it, you have only found that there is nothing in you. The illusion of the world, if it be an illusion, only reflects the hollowness of your own hearts, your own lives, your own achievements, your own characters.

I do not believe, then, that this hope is a lie, a cheat, an illusion. I believe rather that it lies at the root of all that is best in human character.

Let us consider it for a moment, and see if we can find out what it is. I do not undertake to explain it, in the ultimate sense of that word; for I have never found anything in this universe that I could explain. When I can explain a grass-blade, I shall know God. Nothing can be explained in that sense. Yet I believe we can find out that hope bears so important a relation to this human life that we may say without any exaggeration, in the words of the apostle, "We are saved by hope." It is the salvation of the individual life and the salvation of the race, and without it we are nothing.

If I spoke as a man of science, I should say that hope is that mysterious, inexplicable, and yet universal and eternal evolutional impulse that lies at the heart of all life. It is the power that works in and works through, lifts up and page 7 leads on, develops and creates, all things. Hope, as it comes up into our consciousness, is only the outflowering, in con-sciousness, of this central power of life and growth.

To illustrate by something that is not alive, in the sense in which we are,—not consciously alive, but which is yet brother and kin to us in all literalness,—take a tree and study it. As the winter passes away and the spring is coming on, we know that there begins in it a stir, a thrill of new life, as the sun rides higher in the heavens, as there is a new warmth in the air. If this tree were only conscious, as we are, it would feel the thrill of the eternal and universal life in it, lifting it up, pressing at every point of its surface; that tendency which pushes out the bud on the bough, which unfolds the leaves, and makes them swing green and beautiful in the spring-like breeze, and play with the patter of the April rain. It is this same power of forefeeling and prophecy in the tree of leafage, of blossom and fruit, which is the touch in the tree of the evolutional life and growth of the world. It is this which is the life, the impulse, the spirit of promise, of potency of the future in every man, woman, and child,—a touch of the same infinite life. And hope is only the consciousness of this, a recognition of this forefeeling, a promise of some grander development not yet attained. That is the scientific explanation, based on the profoundest study of human life not only, but of all life, from highest to lowest.

When I speak as a religious teacher and thinker, I mean this power, this force; but I call it the God in us, the divine life, the impulse that lifts up and leads on the race to the fulfilment of its destiny. Hope, I say, is only the outblossoming of this into power and life. Do you not see, then, how important a part it plays in this humanity of ours? Do you not see that it is so important that we are justified in saying that the loss of hope is the very worst calamity that can possibly befall a human being, because it means the decay of life? It means the lack and loss of that power out of which everything comes.

Suppose, for example, I stand by a steam-engine. The page 8 steam-gauge is an indicator of the power shut up and held in reserve within the measure of its capacity; and, if that tells me that there is no steam there, the engine, for the time being, is practically dead and powerless. So hope, we may say, is the gauge of the individual and the race. It is an indicator of how much capacity and power there is in a human heart and life. And here is justification for the statement I have sometimes made, without stopping to explain it, that there is only one thing in any human life that is finally fatal; and that one thing is despair. There is no crime so crimson, there is no sin so dark, but that, if hope remains, the man may outlive it, outgrow it, even climb by means of it to something higher and better. But, if hope be gone, life and the impulse to do anything noble is gone. And so despair means death. You remember that marvellous parable of human life in so many of its phases, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress? You will recall how Pilgrim, on his way to the Eternal City, falls into the custody of Giant Despair, who shuts him up in Doubting Castle; and he feels that all things are at an end. No more for him the sunny roadway of a morning, and pleasant conversations with his friends; no more for him songs in the night; no more for him the victory of achievement, of reaching out a helping hand to a brother; no more for him glimpses and gleams of the Eternal City. He is helplessly, hopelessly sitting in despair. It is only when, after a little while, he plucks from his bosom the key of hope that he finds he has within his grasp the means of escape. With that he opens the door, and goes out into the free air, and pursues his way, glad and rejoicing.

It is despair, hopelessness, which lies at the heart of all the evil of this world. Take a drunkard, for example, whom you say you cannot reclaim. That means there is no spring of hope in him; he himself has given up hope. He says there is no use in his trying longer; that appetite is stronger than he is, and there is no impulse that can back up any effort on his part. So you find in the criminal classes that, in ninety cases out of a hundred, the only thing needed to page 9 make any better future for them is to give them the hope of it. Take the pauper class, too, that live from hand to mouth. They say: It is no use. We can only earn enough to keep soul and body together. There is no hope for any better social condition for us.

It is because of these things that I said what I did a moment ago about the evil of chilling this hope. Rather would I encourage it. We sometimes talk about a young man as sophomoric, and blame him as extravagant in his expectations. I would not give a cent for any young man who is not sophomoric, who does not look forward with extravagant expectation, who is not bubbling over with hope. I do not care how impossible is that which he expects. He will tame down soon enough. He will get over his magnificent expectations all too soon. He will find the reality of this life is not equal to his dream. Still, I would say, "Dream on." I would encourage even the building of air-castles. Build your castles in the air. Create a foundation, deep and strong, of the most brilliant imagining. Make it as fine, if you will, as the city of the New Jerusalem. Lift up your pinnacles. Let your flags fly from each one. Ring your bells of promise and of hope.

I believe that there is no harm in this castle-building for any one of us, so long as calm reason is at the helm, and so long as, day by day, we deal with the practical realities of life. Not only do we fly into that wonderland of memory for rest, but we actually enjoy many a sweet and noble hour as we sit in these castles in Spain that our fancies have builded. Many times do we escape from the barrenness, the drudgery of the common world around us, and rest for an hour in this country of our dreams. Is it an evil? Nay, it is a blessed refuge and place of peace.

Take the watcher by the sick-bed. Let her dream, while the sick one sleeps, of a future in which he shall be well. Will that make her less tender, less watchful, less helpful to the invalid that may never share the realization of such a dream?

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Suppose you have been disappointed in business. Is there any harm in resting your head upon your hand over the books in which the balance has come out on the wrong side, and dreaming that you will have something better by and by? No. Do you not rather go back refreshed, and with a new spring of vigor and power with which to attack the problems of life, and so make more certain the realization of your dreams?

Dream, then, of your future : only keep reason ever at the helm, and remember that not out of the dream, but by practical handling of the real problems of life, is to come the nearest approximation to the realization of your dreams.

We stand here this morning facing a new year, a new outlook, new opportunities; and we find ourselves, I trust, still hopeful. I should feel exceedingly sad if any one of you should tell me that you to-day have nothing fine and high and sweet for which you hope during the coming year. You hope to make money this year, although you lost last. You hope that your sick friend will recover; and I hope so, too, with all my heart. You hope that you will win for yourselves a little easier life; that you can shake off some of the cares and troubles of the past, lay down some of the burdens you have been bearing for many a weary month and year. You hope to pass out from the cloud into the sunlight, and take some step toward the realization of that practical freedom that comes with the accumulation of money,—ability to travel, to buy books, to help your friends, to assist in the development of all things fine and noble among men. I do hope myself that you will not be disappointed.

But I wish to offer two or three considerations that should moderate the feeling of your disappointment, if your hopes should fail, and help you to believe that hope is not a delusion and a snare.

Consider then, in the first place, that, although I have just hoped fine things for you, I cannot candidly say that I believe that you will realize one-half the hopes of to-day, just as you are figuring them to yourself. The outcome of a very page 11 large part of our lives is well illustrated in that half-humorous, half-pathetic saying of Thackeray,—that, when he was a boy, he wanted some taffy; but it cost a sixpence, and he did not have the sixpence. After he grew up, he had the sixpence, but he did not want the taffy. He gives this illustration of the way the outcome of life often disappoints the expectations. We want something that we cannot get. By and by, we could get it, but we no longer want it. Our tastes have changed. Yet, though Thackeray did not care anything about the taffy after he had the sixpence, his life was not a disappointment, and his hopes did not deceive him. He may not have gained the precise thing he wanted when he was a boy, but he gained something unspeakably finer and better. You may not, then, gain just the thing you hope for to-day; but, if you read your experience with anything like intelligence, you should have learned this lesson,—that, though you gain not the precise thing for which you hope, you may reasonably expect to gain something a great deal better.

When Columbus set sail from Palos, he hoped, by sailing ever westerly over this unknown sea, to reach the eastern coast of India. And when, after these weary months of mutiny and alternate hope and despair, with hope still dominant over all, he came in sight of land, he thought his hope was realized; and he died without learning his mistake. He did not reach that for which he hoped, he never found the eastern coast of India; but he did a better thing. He gave a new world to Europe,—a continent so much finer and better than India that here, we may reasonably expect, shall be the finest and highest development of man on this planet.

Take the father of Martin Luther. He hoped, and bent all his energies in that direction, that this brave, strong boy of his would enter the law, and become a respected citizen, attaining wealth, distinction, and power. All these hopes were dashed and blighted when, by the perversity of his religious imaginings, as his father must have regarded them, Martin Luther decided, in the freshness and vigor of his page 12 youth, to enter a monastery, and become a monk. His father's hope was blighted in this direction; but out of the monastery flashed a light to illuminate England, America, and give religious freedom to the world.

I was talking the other day with a lady from Brooklyn, who used to be wealthy. Through sudden reverses and through the ill health of her husband, she is now not poor, but cramped and narrowed in her circumstances; compelled to live carefully, and think how she will spend a dollar, where a few years ago she would not have considered the spending of a hundred. But yet she told me, while the mist gathered in her eyes, that she was glad beyond expression for the experience that had come to her. Her hopes had been crushed; but out of this withered blossom sprang a new flower of character, of experience of human life, of sympathy with all men's want and sorrow, of knowledge of human nature,—things that she felt were worth unspeakably more than the riches she had lost. So I take it that many and many a time, if we read our experiences carefully, we shall be compelled to confess that, though the special hope was not realized, something better came in its place.

Then there is one thought more, and that is, if we will only be rational in looking toward the future, if we will only read the lessons that memory's page holds out before our gaze, we need not be so often disappointed as we are. Nine out of ten of our disappointments come because we expected something we had no right to expect. A little child is disappointed because his nurse will not give him the moon; but that is a very childish and silly disappointment, because it is something impossible to realize, and undesirable, if it were possible. So, I take it, a large part of the hopes we cherish are things that, taking our characters, our conditions, our circumstances, our ability, into consideration, we have no right to expect, and that, perhaps, if we had a right to expect, would not be good for us; and so we have no right to hope for them and no right to be disappointed. If we will only be reasonable and learn the lessons of the past, and hope page 13 only for those things that we can rationally expect to attain, and lend our energies toward that realization, many more of our hopes would blossom and bear fruit than actually do.

There is another thought that is of the first importance. Though many of our hopes wither, still there is something that may come out of the experience of life ministered to by false hopes, by disappointment, by enjoyment, and experiences of every kind, much richer, fairer, finer than all else. We may have very little control over the matter, whether our hopes shall be realized or not; but over this one capital thing we do have control.

"My boyhood chased the butterfly,
Or, when the shower was gone,
Sought treasures at the rainbow's end,
That lured me, wandering on.
I caught nor bow nor butterfly,
Though eagerly I ran;
But in the chase I found myself,
And grew to be a man.

"In later years, I've chased the good,
The beautiful, and true,—
Mirage-like forms which take not shape,
They flit as I pursue.
But, while the endless chase I run,
I grow in life divine :
I miss the ideals that I seek,
But God himself is mine."

This, then, is the lesson. No matter how many hopes fail, we have it in our power, from the experience of life, of joy and of sorrow, to develop ourselves into manliness and womanliness. I may not be able to ward off a sorrow, but I can bear it like a man. I may have sinned, but I can fight myself above and beyond the sin. 1 may lose property, but I can be honest in the loss. I can be true through it all, and stand at the last clothed in the nobility of a character wrought out of all those experiences. You have it in your power, then, not to control the accidents of life, but to create page 14 manhood and womanhood as the result of them. And, when the last day of this year comes, if you are compelled to say, The thing I looked for did not come, but something else I feared did come, you know perfectly well that it will not be those things that will make up the sadness of your memories. Looking further still, when you stand on the last day of your life and look back, the great thing then will be what you are, what you have become. How much of patience, of tenderness, of purity, of nobility, of unselfishness you have extracted from the experience of life, as a bee gathers honey from flowers; how much of these you have wrought into your character,—this will be what will make memory a blessing, this will be the root through which shall spring up and blossom out the noblest flowers of hope. ' And that alone, if there be another life, is the sole capital with which you can start business there. This then will blossom, this magnificent hope of the future, so that even death cannot chill or quench it. When I try to look deeply into the meaning of life, this seems to me the most wonderful thing of all. I cannot think this glorious hope, this divine impulse leading on all the way from the beginning to to-day, is a lie. It has not proved a lie in the past. I do not believe it is a lie when it still flourishes vigorously on the very edge of the grave. It is hope that makes that daring leap in the dark, and believes that it shall light on a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Hope, looking down into a grave,' declares that that is not the end. It looks through it, and, catching a gleam of light from the other side, dares to assert that even death's ashes strew the way that leads to an eternal sunrise. This seems to me the most magnificent development of this faculty divine of which we can conceive. This character that you are capable of working out in the midst of the decay of all present hopes,—this shall fit you for that grand future, if it be; and, if it be not, it is that which shall make you look back with gladness upon your past. But I dare to trust, listening to the whisper of this hope, that it must be true. I dare to page 15 trust in that outlook pictured so beautifully by Campbell, in the last words of his great poem :-

"Eternal Hope I when yonder spheres sublime
Pealed their first notes to sound the march of Time,
Thy joyous youth began; but not to fade.
When all the sister planets have decayed;
When, wrapt in fire, the realms of ether glow,
And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below,—
Thou, undismayed, shalt o'er the ruins smile,
And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile."