Taken with editing from Bunyan’s little book, Israel’s Hope Encouraged.
Hope has in it an excellent quality to support Israel in all his troubles. Faith has its excellence in this, hope in that, and love in another thing. Faith will do what hope cannot do; hope can do what faith does not do; and love can do things distinct from what both can do. Faith goes in the vanguard, hope in the main body, and love brings up the rear; and thus now abide faith, hope and charity. But now we are thinking of faith and hope distinctly, to let you see a little. Faith comes by hearing, hope by experience. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God, hope by the credit that faith has given to it. Faith believes the truth of the Word; hope waits for the fulfilling of it. Faith looks through the Word to God in Christ; hope looks through faith, beyond the world, to glory.
Faith lays hold of that end of the promise that is next to us – that is, as it is in the Bible. Hope lays hold of that end of the promise that is fastened to the mercy seat. For the promise is like a mighty cable that is fastened by one end to a ship and by the other to the anchor. The soul is the ship where faith is, and to which the nearer end of the cable is fastened, but hope is the anchor that is at the other end of this cable “and which entereth into that within the veil”. Thus faith and hope getting hold of both ends of the promise, they carry it all away safely. Faith looks to Christ as dead, buried and ascended, and hope for His second coming. Faith looks to Him for justification, hope for heaven.
Faith fights for doctrine, hope for reward. Faith fights for what is in the Bible, hope for what is in heaven. Faith purifies the heart from bad principles, hope from bad behaviour. Faith sets hope on work; hope sets patience on work. Faith says to hope: “Look for what is promised”; hope says to faith: “So I do and will wait for it too”.
Thus faith saves, and thus hope saves. Faith saves by laying hold of God by Christ. Hope saves by prevailing with the soul to suffer all troubles, afflictions and adversities that it meets with between this world and the world to come.
Similitude of the King’s Son
Take the matter in this plain similitude: There was a king that adopted a young person to be his child and clothed him with the attire of the children of the King and promised him that, if he would fight his father’s battles and walk in his father’s ways, he should at last share in his father’s kingdom. He has received the adoption and the King’s robes, but not yet his part in the kingdom. Yet now hope of a share in it will make him fight the King’s battles and also tread the King’s paths. And though he should meet with many things that have a tendency to deter him from so doing, thoughts of the interest promised in the kingdom, and hopes to enjoy it, will make him cut His way through these difficulties. And so these thoughts will save him from the ruin that those destructions would bring upon him; they will, in the end, usher him into a personal possession and enjoyment of that inheritance.
Hope has a thick skin and will endure many a blow; it will put on patience as a garment; it will wade through a sea of blood; it will endure all things for the joy that is set before it – if the hope is of the right kind. Hence patience is called the “patience of hope”, because it is hope that makes the soul exercise patience and long-suffering under the cross, until the time comes to enjoy the crown. The Psalmist therefore, by this exhortation, persuades them that have believed the truth to wait for the accomplishment of it as, by his example, he did himself: “I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope”. It is for the lack of this hope that so many professing Christians, that have so boasted and bragged of their faith, have not been able to endure in the day of alarm and affliction. Their hope in Christ has extended no further than to this life, and therefore they are of all men most miserable.