infused into me, then
my memory will give the threads with which Hope weaves her bright web. I
build upon two things--God's unchangeableness, and His help already
received; and upon these strong foundations I may wisely and safely
rear a palace of Hope, which shall never prove a castle in the air. The
past, when it is God's past, is the surest pledge for the future.
Because He has been with us in six troubles, therefore we may be sure
that in seven He will not forsake us. I said that the light of hope was
the brightness from the face of God. I may say again, that the light of
hope which fills our sky is like that which, on happy summer nights,
lives till morning in the calm west, and with its colourless, tranquil
beauty, tells of a yesterday of unclouded splendour, and prophesies a
to-morrow yet more abundant. The glow from a sun that is set, the
experience of past deliverances, is the truest light of hope to light
our way through the night of life.

One of the psalms gives us, in different form, a metaphor and a promise
substantially the same as that of this text. 'Blessed are the men who,
passing through the valley of weeping, make it a well.' They gather
their tears, as it were, into the cisterns by the wayside, and draw
refreshment and strength from their very sorrows, and then, when thus we
in our wise husbandry have irrigated the soil with the gathered results
of our sorrows, the heavens bend over us, and weep their gracious tears,
and 'the rain also covereth it with blessings.' No chastisement for the
present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterward it
yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.'

Then, dear friends, let us set ourselves with our loins girt to the
road. Never mind how hard it may be to climb. The slope of the valley of
trouble is ever upwards. Never mind how dark is the shadow of death
which stretches athwart it. If there were no sun there would be no
shadow; presently the sun will be right overhead, and there will be no
shadow then. Never mind how black it may look ahead, or how frowning the
rocks. From between their narrowest gorge you may see, if you will, the
guide whom God has sent you, and that Angel of Hope will light up all
the darkness, and will only fade away when she is lost in the sevenfold
brightness of that upper land, whereof our 'God Himself is Sun and
Moon'--the true Canaan, to whose everlasting mountains the steep way of
life has climbed at last through v