II. The double source of that hope.

Observe that the first clause of my text comes as the last term in a
sequence. It began with 'being justified by faith.' The second round
of the ladder was, 'we have peace with God.' The third, 'we have
access into this grace.' The fourth, 'we stand,' and then comes, 'we
rejoice in hope of the glory of God.' That is to say, to put it into
general words, and, of course, presupposing the revelation in Jesus
Christ as the basis of all, without which there is no assured hope of
a future beyond the grave, then the facts of a Christian man's life
are for him the best brighteners of the hope beyond. Of course, that
is so. 'Justified by faith'--'peace with God'--'access into grace';
what, in the name of common-sense, can death do with these things?
How can its blunted sword cut the bond that unites a soul that has
had such experiences as these with the source of them all? Nothing
can be more grotesque, nothing more incongruous, than to think that
that subordinate and accidental fact, whose region is the physical,
has anything whatever to do with this higher region of consciousness.

And, further than that, it is absolutely unthinkable to a man in the
possession of these spiritual gifts, that they should ever come to a
close; and the fact that in the precise degree in which we realise as
our very own possession, here and now, these Christian emotions and
blessings, we instinctively rise to the belief that they are 'not for
an age, but for all time,' and not for all time, but for eternity, is
itself, if not a proof, yet a very strong presumption, if you believe
in God, that a man who thus 'feels he was not made to die' because he
has grasped the Eternal, is right in so feeling. If, too, we look at
the experiences themselves, they all have the stamp of