well be called 'eternal consolation.' Of course, consolation is not
needed when sorrow has ceased; and when the wiping away of all tears
from off all faces, and the plunging of grief into the nethermost fires,
there to be consumed, have come about, there is no more need for
comfort. Yet that which made the comfort while sorrow lasts, makes the
triumph and the rapture when sorrow is dead, and is everlasting, though
its office of consolation determines with earth.

'Good hope through grace.' This is the weakness of all the hopes which
dance like fireflies in the dark before men, and are often like
will-o'-the-wisps in the night tempting men into deep mire, where there
is no standing--that they are uncertain in their basis and inadequate in
their range. The prostitution of the great faculty of hope is one of the
saddest characteristics of our feeble and fallen manhood; for the bulk
of our hopes are doubtful and akin to fears, and are mean and low, and
disproportioned to the possibilities, and therefore the obligations, of
our spirits. But in that Cross which teaches us the meaning of sorrows,
and in that Christ whose presence is light in darkness, and the very
embodied consolation of all hearts, there lie at once the foundation and
the object of a hope which, in consideration both of object and
foundation, stands unique in its excellence and sufficient in its
firmness. 'A good hope'; good because well founded; and good because
grasping worthy objects; eternal consolation outlasting all
sorrows--these things were given once for all, to the whole world when
Jesus Christ came and lived and died. The materials for a comfort that
shall never fail me, and for the foundation and the object of a hope
that shall never be ashamed, are supplied in Jesus Christ our Lord. And
so these gifts, already passed under the great seal of heaven, and
confirmed to us all, if we choose to take them for ours, are the ground
upon which the largest prayers may be rested, and the most ardent
desires may be unblamably cherished, in the full confidence that no
petitions of ours can reach to the greatness of the divine purpose, and
that the widest and otherwise wildest of our hopes and wishes are sober
under-estimates of what God has already given to us. For if He has
given the material, He will apply what He has supplied. And if He has
thus in the past bestowed the possibilities of comfort and hope upon the
world, He will not slack His hand, if we desir