HUMANITY is constantly being driven to find refuge from its woes, relief from its sufferings, pardon for its sins, outside of itself. How futile are its unspiritual efforts to find a solution of the many perplexing problems which beset mortal existence! Ages pass, but mankind unaided still finds itself helpless before the effects of its own material beliefs. And it is this helplessness which drives it out of itself, so to speak, to find a solution for its difficulties.
In the eleventh verse of the forty-second Psalm we find oppressed human thought taking itself to task, and then cheering itself by urging hope in God. It reads: "Why art thou cast down, o my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God." And in the fifteenth verse of the thirty-eighth Psalm, also, a definite note of hope is heard: "For in thee, O Lord, do I hope: thou wilt hear, o Lord my God." Thus, the Hebrew thought is found to have reached beyond the barriers of hopelessness and to be reposing its trust in God. Revelation has enlightened it, and now it stands expectant of the help of Almighty God.
The Hebrews, led by their enlightened prophets, had hope in God because they knew something of His holy nature; something of His wisdom, power, and goodness; something of His omniscience and love. But their knowledge of Him was far less definite than that possessed by Christ Jesus, who revealed God as the Father of man, as loving man with infinite tenderness, as protecting him absolutely. The Master taught that God's kingdom is at hand —not afar off—and this inspired in mankind a measure of hope which was not possible under even the most enlightened teaching of the prophets who had preceded him.
