p. 4 | Losing Hope by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 11, 1906

Losing Hope

By C. M. S.

FAITH and hope and trust and loyal obedience—these are the heritage as well as the privilege of the true Christian, and there is a blessing in them each and all.

While men and women of the world delve and toil and worry and strive for that which they can not take with them when the last summons comes, the Christian uses this life as an opportunity for entrance upon the grander one in which he can enjoy all there is that is good, and be free from every interference of unrighteousness. He whose hope of enjoyment is bounded by the cradle and the grave and beset on all sides by the forces of selfishness overreaching each other, has no anchor that can hold when human courage quails, and human strength gives out.

We can not build for this life only and build safely. We can not turn our attention and our energies in upon our own desires if we expect one day to let our eyes rest in pleasure upon “the King in his beauty.” Paul says: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” We can not stop with this life, and be Christians. The Christian’s hope lays hold on eternity. The Christian’s work must be a work for eternity. Speaking of that great hope around which cluster the prophecies and warnings and encouragements of the whole Bible, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews declares:

“Which we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast, and entering into that which is within the veil.” Heb. 6:19. Christ is within the veil; he holds the anchor. As long as the child of God clings to that anchorage, he can not drift. There is no power on earth that can sweep him away—there is no power in heaven that will.

But apart from that anchorage, there is no power to save man from eternal ruin. Outside heaven’s purpose for man there is no power that cares to do so. And because that is so, and men are drifting away from that true anchorage, we find an ever-increasing proportion of the human family losing hope, trust, and courage, and launching themselves into eternity with no preparation to meet God. Year by year the number of self-destructions increases—a sure indication that with each year an ever-increasing number are losing their anchorage and their courage.

The causes for this are manifold. The increase of skepticism, outside the church and inside the church, fostered by the destructive criticism of the Bible at the hands of an unconverted ministry, is doing perhaps as much as any other one thing to bring about this sad condition in the world. When a great portion of humanity lose faith in the Word of God, there is nothing but human power to encourage or guide, or even restrain. Their interest in even the things of this temporal life begins to loosen and unwind like the strands of a frayed rope. Every tremor of wavering in the pulpits of the land is increased and intensified in the great aggregate audience that listens. One note of doubt in the pulpit can make more skeptics than all the rest of the sermon can make converts. If he whose business it is to proclaim the Word doubts it, he has lost every leverage he might have employed to bring souls to the anxious seat.

But the land is filled to-day with these discords of doubt emanating from the pulpits of spiritual advisers. The hired choir has done its work of disintegration in the church; but the result of its work is completely lost in the maelstrom of ruin created by a doubting pulpit. From every seed of infidelity scattered by such hands there spring up a hundred tares to choke out the aspirations of the soul, destroy trust in God, and ruin respect for divine law. With that gone, there is no power but the human to restrain the hand, and more and more frequently is that power found to be utterly insufficient.

The world is losing hope because it is coming to have nothing but this life to hope in; because it has seen man’s only sure anchor disparaged; because it has seen the Word of God belittled by those who were paid to expound it. But this confederacy of ruin should not surprise the child of God. We have been forewarned by that very Word that in the last days scoffers would arise; that seducing spirits and doctrines of devils would be abroad; that genuine faith would be scarce in the earth; and that sin would abound on every hand. Men have placed their hopes in the accomplishment of some great purpose, and when the storm of disappointment came, their bark dragged anchor, and they lost their soul. Many indeed have seen their brightest hopes fade and wither and become the plaything of the winds of misfortune, and in that stress of spirit they have carried their case to judgment in their own hand, and with no advocate at the bar. Truly the world is losing its grip on God.

At such a time how the Christian should labor to place before the world the only hope worthy the name. “Hope thou in God.” The hope of the Christian is real. It spans the gulf between death and the resurrection. It bridges the strait between paradise lost and paradise restored. The Golden Gate toward which the Christian looks is the pearl-hinged gate of the city of God. Inside that is life everlasting, the fruition of hope long deferred, the companionship of the Christ who bought us with his blood. In spite of the fact that the world is losing hope, the true Christian may now look up and lift up his head, knowing that “our redemption draweth nigh.”

C. M. S.