regions form the preface, there emerges the clear, calm, steady light of my optimistic text.  I say it is not the buoyancy of ignorance.  It is not the flippant, light-hearted expectancy of a man who knows nothing about the secret places of the night.  The counselor is a man who has steadily gazed at light at its worst, who has digged through the outer walls of convention and respectability, who has pushed his way into the secret chambers and closets of life, who has dragged out the slimy sins which were lurking in their holes, and named them after their kind—­it is this man who when he has surveyed the dimensions of evil and misery and contempt, merges his dark indictment in a cheery and expansive dawn, in an optimistic evangel, in which he counsels his fellow-disciples to maintain the confident attitude of a rejoicing hope.

Now, what are the secrets of this courageous and energetic optimism?  Perhaps, if we explore the life of this great apostle, and seek to discover its springs, we may find the clue to his abounding hope.  Roaming then through the entire records of his life and teachings, do we discover any significant emphasis?  Preeminent above all other suggestions, I am imprest with his vivid sense of the reality of the redemptive work of Christ.  Turn where I will, the redemptive work of the Christ evidences itself as the base and groundwork of his life.  It is not only that here and there are solid statements of doctrine, wherein some massive argument is constructed for the partial unveiling of redemptive glory.  Even in those parts of his epistles where formal argument has ceased, and where solid doctrine is absent, the doctrine flows as a fluid element into the practical convictions of life, and determines the shape and quality of the judgments.  Nay, one might legitimately use the figure of a finer medium still, and say that in all the spacious reaches of the apostle’s life the redemptive work of his Master is present as an atmosphere in which all his thoughts and purposes and labors find their sustaining and enriching breath.  Take this epistle to the Romans in which my text is found.  The earlier stages of the great epistle are devoted to a massive and stately presentation of the doctrines of redemption.  But when I turn over the pages where the majestic argument is concluded, I find the doctrine persisting in a diffused and rarefied form, and appearing as the determining factor in the solution of practical problems.  If he is dealing with the question of the “eating of meats,” the great doctrine reappears and interposes its solemn and yet elevating principle:  “destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died.”  If he is called upon to administer rebuke to the passionate and unclean, the shadow of the cross rests upon his judgment.  “Ye are not your own; ye are bought with a price.”  If he is portraying the ideal relationship of husband and wife, he sets it in the light of redemptive glory:  “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also