to a blessed certainty instead of a
peradventure, and it deduces important practical consequences from the
hope. These three things are in the words of our text: a clear vision
that should fill the future; a definite aim for life, drawn from the
vision; and an earnest diligence in the pursuit of that aim, animated
by that hope.

Now these three--a bright hope, a sovereign purpose, and a diligent
earnestness--are the three conditions of all noble life. They themselves
are strength, and they will bring us buoyancy and freshness which will
prolong youth into old age, and forbid anything to appear uninteresting
or small.

So I ask you to look at these three points, as suggested by my text.

I. First, then, the clear hope which should fill our future.

'Seeing that ye look for such things.' What things? Peter has been
drawing a very vivid and solemn picture of the end, in two parts, one
destructive, the other constructive. Anticipating the predictions of
modern science, which confirm his prophecy, he speaks of the dissolution
of all things by fervent heat, and draws therefrom the lesson: 'What
manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and
godliness?'

But that dissolution by fire is not, as people often call it, the 'final
conflagration.' Rather is it a regenerating baptism of fire, from which
'the heavens and the earth that now are'--like the old man in the fable,
made young in the flame--shall emerge renewed and purified. The lesson
from that prospect is the words of our text.

Now I am not going to dwell upon that thought of a new heaven and a new
earth renewed by means of the fiery change that shall pass upon them,
but simply to remark that there is a great deal in the teaching of both
Old and New Testaments which seems to look in that direction. It is, at
least, a perfectly tenable belief, and in my humble judgment is
something more, that this earth, the scene of man's tragedy and crime,
the theatre of the display of the miracle of redeeming love, emancipated
from the bondage of corruption, shall be renewed and become the seat of
the blessed. They who dwell in it, and it on which they dwell pass
through analogous changes, and as for the individuals, the 'new
creation' is the old self purified by the fire of the Divine Spirit into
incorruption and righteousness, so the world in which they live shall,
in like manner, be 'that new world which is the old,' only having
suffered the fiery transformatio