there is a very striking and close connection throughout the verses,
which is lost unless we take them together. Note, then, 'we rejoice
in hope,' 'we glory in tribulation.' Now, it is one word in the
original which is diversely rendered in these two clauses by
'rejoice' and 'glory.' The latter is a better rendering than the
former, because the original expression designates not only the
emotion of joy, but the expression of it, especially in words. So it
is frequently rendered in the New Testament by the word 'boast,'
which, of course, has unpleasant associations, which scarcely fit it
for use here. So then you see Paul regards it as possible for, and
more than possibly characteristic of, a Christian, that the very same
emotion should he excited by that great bright future hope, and by
the blackness of present sorrow. That is strong meat; and so he goes
on to explain how he thinks it can and must be so, and points out
that trouble, through a series of results, arrives at last at this,
that if it is rightly borne, it flashes up into greater brightness
the hope which has grasped the glory of God. So then we have here,
not only a wonderful designation of the object around which Christian
hope twines its tendrils, but of the double source from which that
hope may come, and of the one emotion with which Christian people
should front the darkness of the present and the brightness of the
future. Ah! how different our lives would be if that ideal of a
steadfast hope and an untroubled joy were realised by each of us. It
may be. It should be. So I ask you to look at these three points
which I have suggested.

I. That wonderful designation of the one object of Christian hope
which should fill, with an uncoruscating and unflickering light, all
that dark future.