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THE DUTY OF HOPING AGAINST HOPEl

A SERMON,

PREACHKD IN THE
CHAPEL OF HARROW WEALD, MIDDLESEX,
ON WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 1846,
ON LAYING THE FOUNDATION OF A NEW CHURCH,
AND OPENING A NEW SCHOOL.

THE REV. JOJJN KpBLE,
VICAR OP HUBSLET, HAMPSHIReT

jlot $id>Itai;)f b.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY LEVEY, EOBSON, AND FRANKLYN,
GREAT HEW STREET, FETTER LANE.
1846.

A SERMON, ETC.

Romans, iv. 18.
" Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the
father of many nations, according to that which was spoken,
So shall thy seed be."
This sentence, hoping against hope, has from the
beginning been a kind of watchword in the camp
and city of the Great King ; a sentence inscribed,
as one may say, upon the wayside crosses which
are set as marks here and there on either hand
of the road to the heavenly Jerusalem. It is, in
a certain sense, more than faith ; for faith, simply
taken, only goes beyond what we see; but tljjs
hope against it goes also.
Hope, such as Abraham had, such as St. Paul
here describes, is an actual throwing off and mas
tering the impression of importunate present evils.
It lifts and buoys up the whole man towards the
good which faith only discerns. It not only rea
lises, but appropriates the unseen good. It is,
therefore, both a more immediate spring of action,
and, as recognising God's unchangeable goodness,

more intimately tied to love, the end of the com
mandment and the bond of all perfectness.
And when Scripture speaks of hoping against
hope, or, in kindred phrase, of glorying and re
joicing in tribulations, let us not imagine that it
contemplates external and temporal difficulties
only. The history, indeed, of the Old Testa
ment turns our attention chiefly to these ; and
there is no doubt that in all times, and under
all dispensations, pain, and loss, and bereave
ment, and ill usage, and the other calamities of
social and bodily life, have been a great field and
nursery for saintly hope. Still, we are warranted
in believing that those outward trials were typical
of our spiritual ones; and we know, moreover,
by the Psalms and Prophets, by the Prophet
Jeremiah especially, what deep misgivings, what
chilling desolation of heart, what sense of deser
tion, and loneliness, and labour in vain, they had
to contend against,— what temptations to sloth or
despondency, as if the Law and the promises had
failed. This, however, it may be thought, was no
more than one might reasonably look for, so long
as God's people had with them but the shadow
only of His supernatural kingdom and presence.
But when the substance should come, it might be
expected that His people would no longer be tried
in the same way ; hoping would no more be an
effort against hope, rather it would be the natural

element in which the regenerate soul might live
undisturbed, and go on from strength to strength.
So the sanguine heart might imagine ; and might
seem to find encouragement in doing so, every
where almost in the old Prophets. But the re
ality, we know, was far otherwise. As it pleased
our Almighty Redeemer Himself to be a Man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief, in this respect
as much as in any ; that His earthly, life was
throughout, humanly speaking, a life of disap
pointment, — so it has ever been with His Church.
The outward and visible appearance of things has
always, on the whole, been against her. Her time
on earth is a time of crosses, even apart from perse
cution and direct hostility. Looking at the whole
comprehensively, and weighing one thing against
another, we may truly say she has had constant
experience of hopes frustrated and expectations
cut off. Think of our Lord weeping over Jerusa
lem; think of "the number ofthe names together"
being "about an hundred and twenty;" think of
St. Paul, without rest in his spirit, fears within, as
well as fightings without ; and consider whether
the citizens of the heavenly kingdom have not
had, from the very beginning, notice sufficient that
anxiety, doubt, and disappointment, regarding the
spiritual good of themselves and others, would
continue to be in great measure the very air they
would have to breathe. The word spoken ofthe
father of the faithful, against hope believing in

6
hope, and transferred by the Apostle as a kind of
password from him to the Church, his spiritual
seed; — have we any right to complain if that word
is still visibly fulfilled in our time ; if after that
men, as men, have done their'best, all that we see
remains yet very unsatisfactory, the air around us
full of confusion, mistrust, and perplexity ; men's
hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after
those things which appear to be coming on the
earth? Come what will of that kind, as we too
deeply feel that we have deserved it all, and worse ;
so, if we read thoughtfully, we cannot deny that
we have had ample warning of it, in the New
Testament as well as in the Old.
I do not say that the tcrnes of disappointment,
still less that those of perplexity and doubt, are by
any means the most prevailing in the voice of
Christian antiquity. As the mass of external trials
was greater, more universal, and more overwhelm
ing ; as miracles, and visions, and martyrdoms, and
miraculous instances of visible sanctity, were vouch
safed to the Church more abundantly, to sustain
her in the conflict; — there was, of course, the less
room for doubt and wavering what to believe, or
with whom to communicate ; men's duty was plain,
if they had but strength to do it; and when pas
tors were disappointed, it was rather in the way
of direct apostacy than in the practical failure of
good principles still professed. But it is very
observable that in all instances, as soon as perse-

cution is relaxed, the other sort of complaint be
gins; and I do not suppose that it would be hard
to trace, along a chain of Fathers quite back to
the companions ofthe Apostles, the old complaint,
To what times, 0 Lord, hast Thou reserved me!
In a word, the perplexity inseparable from ten
dencies to disunion and from practical unbelief, is
no new thing in the Church ; more or less, it has
accompanied her all along. How should it be
otherwise, since even in the regenerate the evil
mind of the flesh remains ? And perhaps it would
not be too rash a saying, were one to suggest that
a claim to be free from all this, whenever and
wheresoever found, is a suspicious rather than an
attractive circumstance : as, in medicine, wise men
look coldly on remedies which profess to be quite
perfect and infallible. In fact, such a claim ap
pears in some degree to deprive Christ's people, in
ordinary times, of one of their most salutary trials. >
Where we have infallible assurance, no perplexity
or misgiving at all, there, it would seem, can be no
room for " hoping against hope," no opportunity of
patiently enduring, and of so being blessed, with
faithful Abraham.
Even if such doubtfulness be not a condition
of our earthly being altogether, have we not some
reason to apprehend that we may have incurred it
(so far as we may be suffering from it) personally,
nationally, or ecclesiastically, for our many sins?

8
If so, our only course must be to behave ourselves
patiently under it, caring for this above all, that
we make it not an excuse, either consciously or
unconsciously, for slothfulness or neglect of known
duties. We know what the rule of the ancient saints
was, when they suffered, were it more or less fre
quently, from painful doubt about their own con
dition. Against hope they believed in hope that
the promises of God might be fulfilled in them ;
they endeavouring to do their plain duties, and
leaving the rest to Him. That which passed in all
their hearts may be understood by the recorded
experience of one of them, familiar, no doubt, to
many who now hear me :
" When one that was in anxiety of mind, often
wavering between fear and hope, did once, being
oppressed with grief, humbly prostrate himself in a
church before the altar in prayer, and said within
himself, 'Oh, if I knew that I should yet persevere!'
he presently heard within him an answer from
God, which said, ' What if thou didst know it 1
What wouldst thou do ? Do now what thou
wouldst do then, and thou shalt be secure.' And
being herewith comforted and strengthened, he
committed himself wholly to the will of God, and
that noisome anxiety ceased, neither had he any
mind to search curiously any farther to know what
should befall him, but rather laboured to under-

stand what was the perfect and acceptable will of
God for the beginning and accomplishing of every
good work."
This saying, well considered, will appear equally
applicable to other kinds of spiritual misgiving —
to doubts about truth of doctrine and reality of
Church communion, as well as to perplexity and
want of assurance concerning a man's own per
sonal salvation. We may understand the heavenly
voice as saying, " What if thou didst see clearly
the theological grounds of this or that mysterious
proposition, this or that article of the Creed?
What wouldst thou do ? Do the same now, and
thou wilt be right." In like manner, had that
ancient saint come to know of any Christian whose
heart Providence permitted to be troubled with
doubtings, whether he were truly or no a member
of Christ's body ; may we not imagine him, in his
deep charity, repeating those comfortable words,
"Do now what thou wouldest do, hadst thou no
doubt at all of thy being within the pale of God's
grace, and by that grace thou shalt be secure."
Thus, whatever our spiritual anxieties may be,
the God of our father Abraham has from the be
ginning provided us with a sure remedy : not to
distrust the grace of our baptism, but to use it
in faith and hope. And this holds in respect of
others, quite as much as in respect of ourselves.
Where God's Providence empowers and calls on
us to be instrumental in doing good to the souls of

10
our brethren, we are not to draw back and say, "It
is impossible ; they are past help, there is nothing
at all to be done." We are not to behave as though
the grace of their regeneration were clean dried
up, the sign of the cross worn entirely out of their
foreheads. Against all human hope and expecta
tion, we are to believe with a divine and Christian
hope, that our feeble endeavours and prayers may,
sooner or later, by His miraculous mercy, be re^
warded with many souls ; as Abraham in his weak
old age became the father of many nations. We
are not to set limits to His ever-bountiful returns,
but, according to the measure of the gifts which
He has given us, we are in all cheerfulness to
venture all, hope for all, but expect to see no
thing. And this so much the more, as we feel our
selves, either as a nation or as individuals, to be
strictly and properly in the station of penitents.
Surely it is enough and far too much, it is over
flowing mercy ^ for such as we are, to be allowed
to do any the least work in the house of our God,
merely but to lift a hand or to breathe a prayer in
the holy and blessed cause ofthe Church, which is
His body. Surely it were presumption in us to
look to behold the fruit of our labours, when even
our Lord and Saviour waited long before He could
see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. And
as to present satisfaction and comfort, if we can
have but a reasonable hope that we are, on the

11
whole, in a right path, let us thank God, and ask
no more. It is obvious how these principles apply to the
occasion of our present meeting. When we leave
this sacred place, we shall proceed, God permitting,
to lay the foundation-stone of a new church, and
that being done, to open for the first time a new
school, to be carried on under high and strict
rules; both ceremonies to be accompanied with
solemn prayers and benedictions, and both, in the
general design, not without sanction of sufficient
authority, in the name and on the behalf of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
At any time, and under any circumstances,
such efforts are real and deep trials to those who
undertake them. If we venture so immediately on
putting our hand to God's work, we had need
begin with special preparation of heart; neither
can we go on without special prayer and interces
sion. So it is in any case. But in this country
and at this time, what reasons there are to make
our prayers more than usually anxious and earnest,
we are all more or less aware. Our consciences
within, and our experience all around, tell us a sad
and heart-breaking tale of blessings forfeited, privi
leges wasted, irreverence, self-will, unbelief, sen
suality indulged, until the very trace and outline of
God's city seems nearly worn away from among
us. But we know also and believe in our hearts —
(may He confirm and increase our faith!)— -that in

12
the Church-system, as contained in the Prayer-
Book, had we but the will and the strength to
use it, we possess the remedy for this sad state of
things. And here, to allay possible misgivings, I will
say in a word what I mean by the sufficiency of
our Church-system. I mean:
First, That we believe ourselves, since our bap
tism, to be in a high and supernatural state, ana
logous to that in which the Israelites were of old,
only infinitely higher and nearer to God, as de
pending on our real union with God the Son made
Man, and therefore infinitely more blessed on the
one hand, more dangerous on the other. I mean :
Secondly, That the sacraments, and prayers,
and discipline of the Church, administered by
apostolical authority, are God's ordained outward
means for keeping us in this condition, and ensur
ing to us the blessings of it.
And thirdly, I mean : That in our Prayer-Book,
supposing it really and fully obeyed, He, of His
undeserved mercy, has sufficiently provided for
each one of us those sacraments, prayers, and
discipline. This, in rough outline, being supposed the true
notion of the system in which our lot is cast; a
church and school, to be conducted accordingly,
must be scrupulously conformed in all things to
the mind and meaning ofthe Prayer-Book. And
if in any respect that has been mistaken or over-

13
looked, we must humbly and charitably endeavour
to supply the defect. Evidently, then, so far, we
are making a venture, we are trying an experi
ment ; so much the more anxious and exciting is
the work which we are setting about, and our need
is proportionately increased of a stedfast, humble
resolution, like that of Abraham, and of hope be
lieving against hope.
God in His great mercy has given us saintly
examples and Scripture promises : unworthy as we
are, we may venture on", we may disregard our
own doubts and misgivings ; we need not look
back, now that we have been permitted once to
put our hands to His plough.
Besides (and here I desire especially to speak
with all seriousness, both to those who are more
immediately engaged in sacred undertakings, and
to others who, like myself, are but lookers-on in
comparison), Abraham's watchword, hoping against
hope, is God's warning to us not to expect to see
or feel here on earth, and in our own lifetime,
the good effect of our undertakings in His cause.
There is a very dangerous and subtle snare of the
Evil One, apt to beset men in times like ours : I
mean, our being tempted to put all or a great
deal upon the providential issue of some one pro
ject or experiment ; upon the line taken by this
or that individual or set of persons. Whereby we
bring on ourselves almost certainly the peril either
of sloth or of over-confidence ; our own self-will

14
in either case counterfeiting the voice, of a direct
ing angel. Remember what people they were
who were always seeking after signs, and what
the event was. Would it not be a safe rule, to
take care first that all our undertakings be in
accordance with the spirit of our Prayer-Book,
and then commit them to God, in faith, hope,
and penitence : resolving beforehand that we will
not be greatly moved by the mere event either
way ; that neither seeming failure shall make us
remorseful about what we really did for the best,
nor yet (which would be still more lamentable)
shall present success lift us up, and set us on
thinking ourselves to be somewhat ?
Further : we must hope against hope, not in
our first beginnings only, and in respect of our
general plans, but afterwards also, in every minute
detail of them. The longer we live, the more
plainly shall we learn that in no other temper
would our Maker have us deal with His free,
though fallen creatures, the souls of our brethren.
To take a very familiar and obvious instance :
who knows not that, even in the material fabric
and arrangements of every new or restored church,
many things are sure to turn out, after the very
best consideration, quite differently from what was
intended and hoped ? And if we do not previously
make up our minds to this, how certainly will the
good work turn, more or less, to discontent and
discouragement!

15
Again : no one can say beforehand what will
be the immediate visible effect even of the wisest
and most dutiful arrangements for the ordering of
Church-services ; how they will strike the minds
of the people ; whether those whom we design to
train in them will walk worthy of them, or no.
Shall we therefore be disheartened if our efforts
in that way seem for a while to bear no fruit?
Shall we cease caring for such things, and say,
" It is all of no use"? Nay, the husbandman
waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath
long patience for it, until he receive the early and
latter rain: and shall not Christ's servants do as
much for that seed, which, for aught they know,
will spring up and bear good fruit in eternity ?
O my brethren, be patient ; stablish your hearts;
the coming of the Lord draweth nigh : and until
then, it is the very law of our being to walk by
faith, not by sight.
Let us go on in thought from our church to
our school, and consider the special intention of
it. There we shall perceive still greater need of
being prepared with patient hearts to encounter
any degree of seeming failure, by how much the
work intended is of a newer and more untried
cast. For, as most of my hearers are of course
aware, there is a special object in this institution,
over and above that which is common to all
Christian schools. We hope and pray that from
this day forward this place may begin to be a.

16
nursery, not only of sincere Christians, but of
Christians willing and able to serve the Church
of God, at home or abroad, in her roughest and
barest paths of duty : and it is obvious that to
this end they must be trained to endure hardness,
to love the poor and low places of the earth, to
give up their own wills, more unreservedly than
is expected, in a common way, even of those who
are most carefully brought up in our Church. So
far, then, those who are engaged in it seem to be
making a sort of venture ; to be entering oil a
course of which hitherto their eyes have seen
little, however long and deeply their hearts may
have mused upon it. God be with them ! God
forbid that a single word or tone should be ut
tered to discourage their devout, their dutiful,
their charitable work ! But it will not be dis
couragement, it will be cheerfulness and hope in
the end, if they now say in their hearts, " O Lord,
we commit our work to Thee : we know not
what the end of it may prove ; but take it, we
beseech Thee, into Thine own hands. Prepare
us, from beginning to end of it, for what Thy
Providence shall bring forth."
Or it may be well to remember the prayer of
Moses, and, knowing as we do our own utter un-
worthiness, and fearing above all things the pride
of apparent success, to beseech God, so far as we
may lawfully choose, not to let us see much of
the fruit of our labours in this world : " Shew

17
Thy servants Thy work;" teach them what to
do in Thy cause, — "and their children Thy glory :
may the next age see the result. We know not
what is success, and what failure; we only know
that it must be good to do and suffer all Thy
will." Far better, surely, for each one of us to spend
all his life in so praying and labouring, than to
have present joy of his labours, along with such
confidence as is apt to be engendered by the con
sciousness of satisfying and influencing others.
And in the end, depend on it, far better for the
Church itself, though we may not understand how.
Some of the greatest advances in perfection
have been granted to God's family in this man
ner ; by the after-growth of sayings and examples
which seemed at first to have been utterly thrown
away. Our Lord's saying to the rich young man
did but send him away sorrowful ; but within a
few months, hundreds in Jerusalem remembered
and obeyed it, bringing their goods, and laying
them at the Apostles' feet. Some centuries after
wards, the same saying fell accidentally (as men
speak) on the eye of another rich young man,
and he presently sold all that he had, took up
the cross, and became a prime pattern of the
strictest way of life in the Church : and all gene
rations honour him by the name of St. Antony.
Not long after, the memory of his example moved
yet another young man to do that which ended

18
in his embracing a religious life in like manner;
and this was no other than the great St. Augus
tine. Thus the happiest results may ensue from per/
sons not thinking at all of results, but simply and
unreservedly trying to do what will be most ac
ceptable to God.
In this spirit let us endeavour to begin and
end all our prayers and works. Having weighed
probable consequences, so far as charity requires
(for to do so is one condition of knowing God's
will), and having once made up our minds, let us
thenceforth dismiss from our hearts all anxious
longing to see the good we may be doing.
What if we made this the special grace to be
asked for at the altar of God, the next time He
shall permit us to draw near it ? as no doubt we
shall then feel it our duty to offer up special in
tercession for this church and school.
The season upon which this work has pro
videntially fallen is full of encouragement to such
intercession, full of motives for self-denying hope.
For this is the seventh day from the birth of St.
John the Baptist, and to-morrow, being the oc
tave of his birth, is marked by the Church as the
day of the Visitation of the blessed Virgin Mary ;
the day, probably, on which she ended her long
visit to her cousin Elisabeth, and set her face
homewards, to prepare for the greater and more
mysterious blessing which awaited herself. Our

19
thoughts accordingly are now carried back to the
Virgin Mother, the type of Christ's Holy Church,
blessing with her presence and prayers the birth
arid the childhood of him who was to make ready
the way of Jesus Christ : and may we not, with
out presuming too far, accept this as a gracious
token of a blessing on the two undertakings which
this day has brought together ? Our Mother, the
Church, we hope is with us in laying our founda
tion-stone : may we not hope that she will be with
us also when our school-doors shall be opened ;
that an answer may be vouchsafed to her prayers,
like to that which crowned the intercessions made
for St. John ; that the children with whom God
shall entrust us here may grow and wax strong in
spirit, and, abide thankfully in holy retirement and
self-denial, until it please God to shew them to
Israel, by calling them to their several employ
ments in His Church ; and that they may then
go forth, each in his station, turning men's hearts
to the Lord against His second coming ?
Finally : if any man's conscience reproach him,
as being hitherto a mere looker-on in pious and
dutiful undertakings, much more as having by
wilful sin done his part towards making them
void, let the fruit of that reasonable shame ap
pear now in his works, by true amendment, and
by his making some venture for Christ's sake :
ever so little will be better than none at all. And
may those whom God permits to come nearer,

20
and to be forward in good works, remember those
at a distance in their solemn intercessions. So
may we all go on, for ourselves and for our bre
thren, against hope believing in hope.' and all that
is heart-breaking here — perplexity, disappointment,
disunion — shall become, by His blessing, helps to
patience, and therefore means of true peace and

THE END.

LONDON :
rniNTBJ) DY UOBSON, LEVEY, AND FRANKI.1R,
Great New Street, Fetter Lane.

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