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Untitled Article
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
is the condition of its health and vigour . This is true of all the intellectual faculties , and of all the moral powers generated by them . The one to which our attention is now more immediately directed is hope , one of the most powerful of spiritual agents . ? n ? r * H * The elements of hope are furnished by the memory , selected by the judgment , and combined and embellished by the imagination . This agent is ,
above all others , designed for an active and not a contemplativd > eKistenoe . It can see nothing fair which it does not long to approach , nothing grand to which it does not aspire ; nothing good which it does not strive to grasp . If fettered and imprisoned by the tyranny of any adverse power , it sickens at the sight of unattainable good , like the captive at the gleams of the morn - ing sun ; and , like him , if long stinted in the elements of its life , it pines and dies . But it is no more able to obtain for itself the objects of its desire
than any other single faculty . All need co-operation ; all fill an appointed office ; all act upon one another while employed also on external objects . The office of hope is to stimulate the faculties to the attainment of some good of which it has a clear discernment . The mere perception of the existence of that good is not hope ; the estimate of its value is not hope ; the desire to possess it is not hope . With the perception and desire must be combined a stronger or weaker conviction of probability ; and that
probability depends on the employment of action , —of the appointed means to secure the desired end . Whenever the anticipation becomes disconnected with action , hope resigns its place to the imagination , and the substantial approaching good fades into a retreating , intangible vision . Thus the energy , the very existence of hope depends on action ; and in proportion to the vigour of the hope will be the energy of the action .
Hope is not , like some other faculties , regularly progressive in the human mind during the period of its mortal existence . In childhood , its power is overweening ; in youth , disproportioned to the judgment ; in manhood , it sinks to its lowest rate of influence ; but from that time , if . the spirit be well disciplined , it becomes more and more refined and vigorous till the close of life . Its omnipotence in childhood is owing to the total deficiency of judgment . The infant stretches his hands to the moon with the evident expectation of reaching it ; and the higher he is held the more vehement is his desire and the more grievous his subsequent disappointment .
The infirmity of the judgment in youth is the cause of the still disproportionate strength of hope ; and it is not till the experience of life has fostered the judgment and chastened the hope , and yoked them into companionship-, that their pursuit of the highest objects can become enlightened and their advance equable and rapid . Thenceforward their natural destiny is to go from strength to strength , till all obstacles shall be overcome , and all infirmities have vanished .
In this heavenward career was the Apostle far advanced when he described himself as " reaching forth untp those things which are before . " Forgetting all that had no reference to present action , he made the future as well as the past subsidiary to the present . Not idly gazing into futurity any more than indulging in fruitless retrospect , he was perpetually reaching forwards , pressing towards the mark , so that the recognition of higher objects became an immediate impulse to their pursuit , and the seeing of the eye infallibly originated the effort of the soul .
In this path ( the brightest and shortest to heaven ) the rejoicing pilgrim meets with perpetual encouragements to persevere , and infallible assurances that he is in the right way . If the vigour of the action corresponds with the
Untitled Article
670 Essay on the proper Use of the Prospective Faculty .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1830, page 670, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2589/page/14/
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