II. THE IMMORTALITY OF FAITH. What is the proper idea of faith? It is the relation in which we ought to stand to things above us, higher than we are. It is our "evidence of things not seen." As long as there is anybody in the world wiser than ourselves, we shall have to believe what they say. Get the very wisest man that ever lived on earth, if there is in heaven one spirit wiser than he, he will have to believe—to take on trust—what the wiser spirit may say. And the holiest archangel must believe what the all wise God may say. Change them as we may, know as we are known, grow with giant strides as the eternal hours pass by, stilt we can never overtake or outgrow God. As long as we are creatures we shall be, in knowledge as well as in power, below our Creator. While we keep our being we shalt have to believe—we shall have to trust. If we have the true spirit wrought in us, we shall never want to get beyond faith. For the creature it is the highest blessedness that he is found willing to trust. To wish to see is to rebel. It is to wish to be God, and take the place of God. Enough for us to be forever the children of God, and it is a very foolish child who wants to get beyond trust. Heaven is so beautiful, because we shall there be children at home forever; perfected in faith, in childlike trust, and safe in the protection and the shadow of the eternal Father. We are learning to believe by the experiences of our human lives, but it would be a sad thing if we were only learning something which we should lose when we came to die, even if we exchanged it for something better. Of this we may rest assured, that in learning to trust we are learning for the heavenly and immortal spheres.
III. THE IMMORTALITY OF HOPE. In this life hope seems to change, but in reality it abides, only changing its objects. The old man hopes quite as truly as the young man, though not with the same passionate intensity. The change into the eternal spheres is more evident to the senses, but it is not more real, than the change from the boy to the man; surely in his second, glorified, manhood man wilt keep his power of hoping, only setting it on new and higher and eternal things. If we are still to grow in the eternal world, we must have something ever before us and above us to hope for. If we know that we may become wiser, truer, stronger, holier than we are, we cannot keep from hoping that we may become such. And heaven cannot possibly be a mere stereotyping of the sanctifyings wrought through our Christian life on earth, In seeking, then, for faith, hope, and charity, we are seeking the heavenly treasures, the things that are abiding and eternal. They are the "treasure in the heavens, which faileth not."—R.T.
1 Corinthians
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