Hope - Well and Wisely Fixed - Unpublished Trail Guide

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Hope - Well and Wisely Fixed

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“Our God is described as ‘the God of Hope’; and we might get through many a dark day if we realize this, and that hope is a real if not tangible possession, which, like all the best things, we can ask for and have.”
Charlotte Mason, Children as ‘Persons’

It’s not surprising that Mason, in writing to educators, felt the need to speak about the importance of hope. She knew that even in our school rooms filled with goodness and living ideas, there would still be “many a dark day”. Yet with humble confidence, Mason directs each of us to a hope that lies not in the perfect execution of her method of education, nor any other number of shifting circumstances. She invites us to know what she knew first hand: it is our deepest Hope in Christ, “well and wisely fixed” that gives life.

“The Story of Charlotte Mason” by Essex Cholmondeley

Children Are Born Persons – by Charlotte Mason
Article from Charlotte Mason Poetry

“But hope – what is the good of hope! Practical people connect it with castles in Spain and other intangible possessions. If we are to know how far we live by hope, how far it is bread of life to us, we must go where hope is not. Dante understood. He found written upon the gates of hell: [‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter.’] ‘Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch’entrate.’ The prisoner who has no hope of release, the man with the mortal sickness who has no hope of recovery, the family which has had to abandon hope for its dearest, these know, by the loss of hope, that it is by hope we live. Our God is described as ‘the God of Hope’; and we might get through many a dark day if we realized this, and that hope is a real if not tangible possession, which, like all the best things, we can ask for and have. Let us try to conceive the possibility of going through a single day without any hope for this life or the next; and a sudden deadness falls upon our spirits, because ‘we live by hope.’

Charlotte Mason, Children As ‘Persons’

“G.F. Watts” by G.K. Chesterton

a picture study

“Hope” George Frederic Watts

That first picture is the image of hope I want.

“The spiritual sustenance proper for children.”

“(Long Point Bay) contains a few wrecks, but nothing like the numbers found on the open, western shore of the Point. They’re stacked on top of each other out there, some of them old victims of the ‘blackbirders’ who prowled along Long Point in the nineteenth century. In those days of few lighthouses it was customary on stormy nights for people to build bonfires to guide sailors around dangerous headlands or into harbors. Blackbirders built bonfires too, but they built them far short of safe passage. Sailors would see the lights and breathe a little easier and steer east of them, figuring they were rounding the Point. Instead, they ran aground on the shoals. The crew would swim ashore, or sometimes not, in either case receiving no assistance from those waiting on the beach. The vessel would be pounded to pieces in the surf and the blackbirders would go to work salvaging the cargo and transporting it down the beach by wagon, selling it to merchants in towns along the coast.”

Jerry Dennis, “The Living Great Lakes”

“We recite, week by week, that ‘we believe in the life everlasting,’ but, in this keenly scientific age, we ask ‘What is the life everlasting?’ and no answer reaches us. It may be that, in proportion as we make a serious attempt to realize that we are spirits; that knowledge, the knowledge of God, is the ineffable reward set before us; that there is no hint given us of change in place, but only of change of state; that, conceivably, the works we have begun, the interests we have established, the labours for others which we have undertaken, the loves which constrain us, may still be our occupation in the unseen life – it may be that, with such a possibility before us, we shall spend our days with added seriousness and endeavour, and with a great unspeakable hope.”

Charlotte Mason