in the sense in which they seem to have been given.  Life is a deception; its anticipations, which are God’s promises to the imagination, are never realized; they who know life best, and have trusted God most to fill it with blessings, are ever the first to say that life is a series of disappointments.  And in the spirit of this text we have to say that it is a wise and merciful arrangement which ordains it thus.

The wise and holy do not expect to find it otherwise—­would not wish it otherwise; their wisdom consists in disbelieving its promises.  To develope this idea would be a glorious task; for to justify God’s ways to man, to expound the mysteriousness of our present being, to interpret God,—­is not this the very essence of the ministerial office?  All that I can hope however to-day, is not to exhaust the subject, but to furnish hints for thought.  Over-statements may be made, illustrations may be inadequate, the new ground of an almost untrodden subject may be torn up too rudely; but remember, we are here to live and die; in a few years it will be all over; meanwhile, what we have to do is to try to understand, and to help one another to understand, what it all means—­what this strange and contradictory thing, which we call Life, contains within it.  Do not stop to ask therefore, whether the subject was satisfactorily worked out; let each man be satisfied to have received a germ of thought which he may develope better for himself.

    I. The deception of life’s promise. 
   II.  The meaning of that deception.

Let it be clearly understood in the first place, the promise never was fulfilled.  I do not say the fulfilment was delayed.  I say it never was fulfilled.  Abraham had a few feet of earth, obtained by purchase—­beyond that nothing; he died a stranger and a pilgrim in the land.  Isaac had a little.  So small was Jacob’s hold upon his country that the last years of his life were spent in Egypt, and he died a foreigner in a strange land.  His descendants came into the land of Canaan, expecting to find it a land flowing with milk and honey; they found hard work to do—­war and unrest, instead of rest and peace.

During one brief period, in the history of Israel, the promise may seem to have been fulfilled.  It was during the later years of David and the earlier years of Solomon; but we have the warrant of Scripture itself for affirming, that even then the promise was not fulfilled.  In the Book of Psalms, David speaks of a hope of entering into a future rest.  The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting this passage, infers from it that God’s promise had not been exhausted nor fulfilled, by the entrance into Canaan; for he says, “If Joshua had given them rest then would he not have spoken of another day.”  Again in this very chapter, after a long list of Hebrew saints—­“These all died in faith, not having received the promises.”  To none therefore, had the