live nearer to Him, and try more honestly, more earnestly, more
prayerfully, more habitually, even amidst all the troubles and
difficulties and trivialities of each day, to cultivate that great
faculty of joyful and assured hope.

Surely God did not endue us with the power of hoping that we might fling
it all away on trivial, transient things. We are all far too
short-sighted; our fault is not that we do not hope, but that we hope
for such near things, for such small things, like the old mariners who
had no compass nor sextant, and were obliged to creep timidly along the
coasts, and steer from headland to headland. But we ought to launch
boldly out into mid-ocean, knowing that we have before us that star that
cannot guide us amiss. Do not set your hopes on the things that perish,
for if you do, hopes fulfilled and hopes disappointed will be equally
bitter in your mouths. And you older people who, like myself, are
drawing near the end of your days, and have little else left to hope for
in this world, do you see to it that your anticipations extend 'above
the ruinable skies.' _There_ is an object beyond experience, above
imagination, without example, for which the creation wants a comparison,
we an apprehension, and the Word of God itself a sufficient revelation.
'It doth not yet appear what we shall be.' God hath called us to His
eternal kingdom and glory; let us seek to walk in the light of the 'hope
of His calling.'

GOD'S INHERITANCE IN THE SAINTS

'That ye may know what is the riches of the glory of His
inheritance in the saints.'--Eph. i. 18.

The misery of Hope is that it so often owes its materials to the
strength of our desires or to the activity of our imagination. But when
mere wishes or fancies spin the thread, Hope cannot weave a lasting
fabric. And so one of the old prophets, in speaking of the delusive
hopes of man, says that they are like 'spiders' webs,' and 'shall not
become garments.' Paul, then, having been asking for these Ephesian
Christians that they might have hopes lofty and worthy, and such as
God's summons to them would inspire, passes on to ask that they might
have the material out of which they could weave such hope, namely, a
sure and clear knowledge of the future blessings. The language in which
he describes that future is remarkable--'the riches of the glory of His
inheritance in the saints.' He calls it God's inheritance, not as
meaning that God is the Inheritor, but