he says, 'Tribulation worketh perseverance'--the same word that
is used here--'and perseverance worketh' the proof in our experience
of a sustaining God; and the proof in our experience of a sustaining
God works hope. We know that of ourselves we could not have met
tribulation, and therefore the fact that we have been able to meet
and overcome it is demonstration of a mightier power than our own,
working in us, which we know to be from God, and therefore
inexhaustible and ever ready to help. That is foundation firm enough
to build solid fabrics of hope upon, whose bases go down to the
centre of all things, the purpose of God, and whose summits, like the
upward shooting spire of some cathedral, aspire to, and seem almost
to touch, the heavens.

So hope is born of sorrow, when these other things come between. The
darkness gives birth to the light, and every grief blazes up a
witness to a future glory. Each drop that hangs on the wet leaves
twinkles into rainbow light that proclaims the sun. The garish
splendours of the prosperous day hide the stars, and through the
night of our sorrow there shine, thickly sown and steadfast, the
constellations of eternal hopes. The darker the midnight, the surer,
and perhaps the nearer, the coming of the day. Sorrow has not had its
perfect work unless it has led us by the way of courage and
perseverance to a stable hope. Hope has not pierced to the rock, and
builds only 'things that can be shaken,' unless it rests on sorrows
borne by God's help.

II. So much then for the genealogy of one form of the Christian hope.
But we have also a hope that is born of the day, the child of
sunshine and gladness; and that is set before us in the second of the
two verses which we are considering, 'The God of hope fill you with
all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope.'

So then, 'the darkness and the light are both alike' to our hope, in
so far as each may become the occasion for its exercise. It is not
only to be the sweet juice expressed from our hearts by the winepress
of calamities, but that which flows of itself from hearts ripened and
mellowed under the sunshine of God-given blessedness.

We have seen that the bridge by which sorrow led to hope, is
perseverance and courage; in this second analysis of the origin of
hope, joy and peace are the bridge by which Faith passes over into
it. Observe the difference: there is no direct connection between
affliction and hope, but there