are limited within the range of earth, you get blended as
an indistinguishable throng, 'hopes and fears that kindle hope,' and
that too often kill it. But the Christian has a certain anticipation of
certain good, and to him memory may be no more fixed than hope, and the
past no more unalterable and uncertain than the future. The motto of our
hope is not the 'perhaps,' which is the most that it can say when it
speaks the tongue of earth, but the 'verily! verily!' which comes to its
enfranchised lips when it speaks the tongue of Heaven. Your hope,
Christian man, should not be the tremulous thing that it often is, which
expresses itself in phrases like 'Well! I do not know, but I tremblingly
hope,' but it should say, 'I know and am sure of the rest that
remaineth, not because of what I am, but because of what He is.'

Another element in the perfection of hope is its continuity. That hits
home to us all, does it not? Sometimes in calm weather we catch a sight
of the gleaming battlements of 'the City which hath foundations,' away
across the sea, and then mists and driving storms come up and hide it.
There is a great mountain in Central Africa which if a man wishes to see
he must seize a fortunate hour in the early morning, and for all the
rest of the day it is swathed in clouds, invisible. Is that like your
hope, Christian man and woman, gleaming out now and then, and then again
swallowed up in the darkness? Brethren! these two things, certainty and
continuity, are possible for us. Alas! that they are so seldom enjoyed
by us.

III. And now one last word. My text speaks about the discipline or
cultivation of this Christian hope.

It prescribes two things as auxiliary thereto. The way to cultivate the
perfect hope which alone corresponds to the gift of God is 'girding up
the loins of your mind, and being sober.' Of course, there is here one
of the very few reminiscences that we have in the Epistles of the
_ipsissima verba_ of our Lord. Peter is evidently referring to our
Lord's commandment to have 'the loins girt and the lamps burning, and ye
yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord.' I do not need to
remind you of the Eastern dress that makes the metaphor remarkably
significant, the loose robes that tangle a man's feet when he runs, that
need to be girded up and belted tight around his waist, as preliminary
to all travel or toil of any kind. The metaphor is the same as that in
our colloquial speech when we talk abo