y converge upon the brightening of our Christian hope. Our
rainbow is the child of the marriage of the sun and the rain. The
Christian hope comes from being 'justified by faith, having peace
with God ... and access into grace,' and it comes from tribulation,
which 'worketh patience,' and patience which 'worketh approval.' The
one spark is struck from the hard flint by the cold steel, and the
other is kindled by the sun itself, but they are both fire.

And so, lastly, we have here--

III. The one emotion with which the Christian should front all the
facts, inward and outward, of his earthly life.

'We glory in the hope,' 'we glory in tribulation,' I need not dwell
upon the lesson which is taught us here by the fact that the Apostle
puts as one in a series of Christian characteristics this of a
steadfast and all-embracing joy. I do not believe that we Christian
people half enough realise how imperative a Christian duty, as well
as how great a Christian privilege, it is to be glad always. You have
no right to be anxious; you are wrong to be hypochondriac and
depressed, and weary and melancholy. True; there are a great many
occasions in our Christian life which minister sadness. True; the
Christian joy looks very gloomy to a worldly eye. But there are far
more occasions which, if we were right, would make joy instinctive,
and which, whether we are right or not, make it obligatory upon us. I
need not speak of how, if that hope were brighter than it commonly is
with us, and if it were more constantly present to our minds and
hearts, we should sing with gladness. I need not dwell upon that
great and wonderful paradox by which the co-existence of sorrow and
of joy is possible. The sorrows are on the surface; beneath there may
be rest. All the winds of heaven may rave across the breast of ocean,
and fret it into clouds of spume against a storm-swept sky. But deep
down there is stillness, and yet not stagnation, because there is the
great motion that brings life and freshness; and so, though there
will be wind-vexed surfaces on our too-often agitated spirits, there
ought to be deeper than these the calm setting of the whole ocean of
our nature towards God Himself. It is possible, as this Apostle has
it, to be 'sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.' It is possible, as his
brother Apostle has it, to 'rejoice greatly, though now for a season
we are in sorrow through manifold temptations.' Look back upon your
lives from the point of vi