HOPE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9521, 20 April 1909, Page 2

HOPE.

WHAT IS IT? (" Christian. Science Monitor.") When, in a frequently quoted passage, Shakespeare declared that the only medicine of the miserable was hope, he made use of a phrase the corollary to which is expressed in the Old Testament, in the proverb, " Hope deferred maketh the heart sick." Hope is one of the greatest incentives known to the human mind. Without it man would be lost in the "dark Cimmerian desert" of fatalism. Still, Jiope to be more than a mere jack-o'-lantern must be based on some probability of attainment. The hope inspried by the Christian religion is based on the sure foundation of the science of that knowledge of absolute Truth taught by Christ Jesus, and repeatedly referred to in the Greek text of the New Testament as the full or exact knowledge of- God. It is this fact that Paul brings out so clearly in his first letter to the church in Corinth, summing it up in one of the best known texts ,in the whole Bible, " And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." Fatalism as a definite and concrete belief is, of course, peculiar to tbeEasfc. It is more in consonance with (the element of abstraction in the Oriental character, which gave the world the gnosticism of the early Christian centuries, than it is with the mental activity of the West which has manifested itself in what a certain European writer with Oriental proclivities has described as the commerce of Cockayne. At the same time, it finds expression throughout Christendom in, the common phrase, "the inevitable." It is consequently desirable that the world should come to realise as rapidly as possible that there is nothing inevitable except the ultimate triumph of good. Wherefore, says the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews, "We desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end." Hope, as Paul defines it, is no mere dreaming that the unexpected may happen. It is the expectation of being able to realise more fully the lesson already learned from faith. Hope indeed is evolved from faith. Our faith in the power of Love leads us to attempt -to. demonstrate its ability to heal, and as this ability is demonstrated the intensity of our faith increases, and with it our hope. It is this which constitutes having a reason for the hope that is in you, and which makes demonstration a necessary addition to the theology of Christianity. There is no reason why the' sick man should turn for health to Christian Science if, as Peter says, you cannot show him a reason for your faith in it, the sick man is not only the man possessed of physical ailments, he is the man. without hope in the world. Once that man's hope is roused in this way evil will never find him so easy a prey again. Tlie dead weight of despondency has been rolled away from his mind because he has found a hope which is no longer a chimera, but is capable of being supported by reason and (demonstration. No man certainly ever knew better than Peter. what it means to have a reason for your hope. He had been with Jesus all through the days of His ministry, and seen the wonderful works which had supplied the people o£ Palestine a reason which it was impossible to dispute. While in the years subsequent to the ascension he had 'himself '- been one of the foremost of the little band of disciples which bad carried on the. healing work of Jesus in accordance with His commands. To-day Christian Science is once again offering humanity the reason for the hope that is .in. it which was demanded by Christ Jesus, and given by the Christian Church in the early centuries. The hope it is giving to the world is the hope of something far more important than the mere healing of the body: it is the hope of conquered sin. It is a hop© which; when it enters the human consciousness, saps every eug-^ gestion of fatalism, for it shows man how he may demonstrate practically the omnipotence of divine Love, by simply struggling to pbey with all the strength that is in him the first commandment of the Hebrew decalogue, " Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Obedience to this one commandment, writes Mrs Eddy, x on page 340 of " Science and Health," annihilates "whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal,, political and religious codes;, equalises the sexes; annuls the curse 'on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed." Fatalism, predestination, morbid depression, all the varying forms of hopelessness bred by a belief in the power of evil) can, be proved to be impotent by the simple effort to realise what hope is, and demonstrate what it means. There is probably not a single Christian Science worker in the world who is not constantly face to face with the despair of men and women robbed, of hope by the verdicts of the medical profession, or the dogmas of theology. Tc people in such a condition the hope engendered by Christian Science exchanges hell for heaven. And s as they gradually begin to grasp the fact that their life, instead of having inscribed over its portal the inexorable sentence, "All hope abandon yo who enter here," holds instead for those who know how to accept it " the substance of 'things hoped for," they begin to understand the difference between the ordinary view of hope as something impalpable and illusive, and the Christian view which demands a .reason fox its aeee»tan*»?