And the precise point in the text, bearing upon this subject, is the fact, that while the disciples seemed to feel as though all redemption for Israel was now hopeless, that process of redemption for Israel, and for the world, was going on through the agency of those very events which had filled them with dismay.Even as they were speaking, in tones of sadness, about the crucified Christ, the living Christ, made perfect for his work by that crucifixion, was walking by their side.Looking far this side of that shadow of disappointment which then brooded over them, we see all this, that then they did not see; but now is it with ourselves, under the frequent shadows cast by more ordinary events? This suggestion may afford us some profitable thoughts.
I need hardly say, in the first place, that man is continually inspired by expectation.Every effort he makes is made in the conviction of possibility and the light of hope.This is the heart of ambition and the spring of toil.
It is the balm which he applies to the wounds of misfortune.
It is the key with which he tries the wards of nature.And from the morning of life to its last twilight he is always looking.forward.The saddest spectacle of all--sadder even than pain, and bereavement, and death --is a man void of hope.The most abject people is a hopeless people, in whose hearts the memories of the past, and the pulses of endeavor, and the courage of faith are dead, and who crouch by their own thresholds and the crumbling tombstones of their fathers, and take the tyrant's will, without an incentive, and without even a dream.The most intense form in which misery can express itself is in the phrase, "I have nothing to live for." And he who can actually say, and who really feels this, is dead, and covered with the very pall and darkness of calamity.But few, indeed, are they who can, with truth, say this.
But if hope or expectation is such a vital element of human experience, so does disappointment have its part in the mechanism of things, and, as we shall presently see, its wise and beneficial part.For, after all, how few things correspond with the forecast of expectation! To be sure, some results transcend our hope; but how many fall below it, --balk it, -- turn out exactly opposite to it.! Among those who meet with disappointments in life, there are those who are expecting impossibilities, -- whose expectations are inordinate, -- are more than the nature of things will admit; or who are looking for a harvest where they have planted no seed.They carry the dreams of youth in among the realities of the world, and its vanishing visions leave them naked and discouraged.The light of romance, that glorified all things in the future, recedes as they advance, and they come upon rugged paths of fact --upon plain toil and daily care, --upon the market and the field, and upon men as they are in their weakness, and their selfishness, and their mutual distrust.Or they belong, it may be, to that class who are too highly charged with hope; whose sanguine notions never go by induction, but by leaps; who never calculate the difficulties, but only see the thing complete and rounded in imagination; --men with plenty of poetry, and no arithmetic; whose theories work miracles, but whose attempts are failures.It is pleasant, sometimes, to meet with people like these, who, clothed in the scantiest garments, and with only a crust upon their tables, at the least touch of suggestion, mount into a region of splendor.
Their poverty all fades away; -- the bare walls, the tokens of stern want, the dusty world, are all transfigured with infinite possibilities.Achievement is only a word, and fortune comes in at a stride.The palace of beauty rises, fruits bloom in waste places, gold drops from the rocks, and the entire movement of life becomes a march of jubilee.And they are so certain this time, --the plan they now have is so sure to succeed! I repeat, it is pleasant, sometimes, to have intercourse with such men, who throw bloom and marvelousness upon the actualities of the world, from the reservoirs of their sanguine invention.At least, it is pleasant to think how this faculty of unfailing enthusiasm enables them to bear defeat, and to look away from the cold face of necessity; -- to think that, while so many are trudging after the sounding wheels and the monotonous jar of life, and lying down by the way to die, these men are marching buoyantly to a tune inside.And yet this is pleasant only from a hasty point of view.These people meet with disappointment, of course; and it is sad to think how many lives have come to absolutely nothing, and are all strewn over, from boyhood to the grave, with the fragments of splendid schemes.It is sad to think how all their visionary Balbecs and Palmyras have been reared in a real desert, -- the desert of an existence producing no substantial thing.And among these vanishing dreams, and on that melancholy waste, they learn, at last, the meaning of their disappointment.And.from their experience, we too may learn, that we are placed here to be not merely ideal artists, but actual toilers; not cadets of hope, but soldiers of endeavor.
