’The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in
   believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the
   power of the Holy Ghost.’—­ROMANS xv. 13.

With this comprehensive and lofty petition the Apostle closes his exhortation to the factions in the Roman Church to be at unity.  The form of the prayer is moulded by the last words of a quotation which he has just made, which says that in the coming Messiah ’shall the Gentiles hope.’  But the prayer itself is not an instance of being led away by a word—­in form, indeed, it is shaped by verbal resemblance; in substance it points to the true remedy for religious controversy.  Fill the contending parties with a fuller spiritual life, and the ground of their differences will begin to dwindle, and look very contemptible.  When the tide rises, the little pools on the rocks are all merged into one.

But we may pass beyond the immediate application of these words, and see in them the wish, which is also a promise, and like the exhibition of every ideal is a command.  This is Paul’s conception of the Christian life as it might and should be, in one aspect.  You notice that there is not a word in it about conduct.  It goes far deeper than action.  It deals with the springs of action in the individual life.  It is the depths of spiritual experience here set forth which will result in actions that become a Christian.  And in these days, when all around us we see a shallow conception of Christianity, as if it were concerned principally with conduct and men’s relations with one another, it is well to go down into the depths, and to remember that whilst ‘Do, do, do!’ is very important, ‘Be, be, be!’ is the primary commandment.  Conduct is a making visible of personality, and the Scripture teaching which says first faith and then works is profoundly philosophical as well as Christian.  So we turn away here from externals altogether, and regard the effect of Christianity on the inward life.

I. I wish to notice man’s faith and God’s filling as connected, and as the foundation of everything.

’The God of hope fill you ...’—­let us leave out the intervening words for a moment—­’in believing.’  Now, you notice that Paul does not stay to tell us what or whom we are to believe in, or on.  He takes that for granted, and his thought is fastened, for the moment, not on the object but on the act of faith.  And he wishes to drive home to us this, that the attitude of trust is the necessary prerequisite condition of God’s being able to fill a man’s soul, and that God’s being able to fill a man’s soul is the necessary consequence of a man’s trust.  Ah, brethren, we cannot altogether shut God out from our spirits.  There are loving and gracious gifts that, as our Lord tells us, He makes to ’fall on the unthankful and the evil.’  His rain is not like the summer showers that we sometimes see, that fall in one spot and leave another dry; nor like the destructive thunderstorms, that come down bringing ruin upon one