ST. JOHN XIV. 2 73
has such glad awaking ! Happy close of life's day, whether it has been spent in storm or in calm, if it brings us safely within the portals of that house from which we shall go no more out.^
What joys are lost, what hopes are given, As thro' this death-struck world we roam.
We think awhile that home is heaven; We learn at length that heaven is home.^
4. How, then, is heaven a home ?
(1) The Father is there. — It is the "Father's house." It is a paternal home. This is needed to make it a home in any sense ; needed to give the heart rest either on earth or in heaven. Men who inquire into the facts and laws of the world, and find no God in it, have made themselves homeless. Men who have found human affection, but no God beneath it, have found only the shadow of a home. Thought and affection are shallow, short-lived things without Him who sets the solitary in families, — the Father of spirits. It is to teach us this that God has made a father's love the bond of a true human household.
^ God will not only reveal Himself to us in wonderful ways, and give us a constant sense of His presence with us, He will reveal Himself as our Father. We can imagine many forms of Divine revelation that would give us no permanent delight, and that would contribute very little to the development of the higher forms of moral and spiritual perfection. It is possible to become weary of the grandeur and the vastness of some of the aspects of physical nature, — weary of the ocean, weary of the immensities of the starry heavens, weary of the roar and rush of the waters of Niagara, weary of the awful loneliness and desolation of the Matterhorn. They reveal God, but they do not reveal those elements of His life which are nearest to ourselves, which solicit trust, which create love, and which inspire delight. At home God will reveal Himself in other ways. There may be within sight the most majestic achievements of His power and wisdom ; we may be environed with the most gracious illustrations of His delight in beauty; but we shall know Him as we have never known Him before — as our Father. He will be righteous, — but He will lay aside something of the awfulness of His righteousness; infinitely wise and strong, — but His wisdom and strength will appear, not in forms to oppress and confound us, but
' A. Raleigh, Quiet Besting- Places, 394. * Bishop Moule.
74 THE HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS
in forms to excite our wonder and delight. We shall be very near to Him — near as the children of a king to their father when he has laid aside for a time the pomp and cares of State, and is at once finding and giving joy among those who are dearest to him.^
^ You recollect how Joseph, when he spoke with his brethren and asked them of their welfare, could not rest until he had drawn an answer to his question, " Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake ? Is he yet alive ? " And when the hope of seeing him was near, how he made ready his chariot, and went up to meet Israel his father, and fell on his neck and wept ; and Israel said unto Joseph, " Now let me die, since I have seen thy face, because thou art yet alive." We may feel sure that the restored affection of his brethren, even Benjamin's, could not have filled the place in his heart had his father been no more ; and the good of the land of Egypt would have been empty, and its glory gone, without his father to look on and share it with him.^
(2) The children are there. — It is one of the loveliest of the ideas of Christ that the Kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of the child. As men hover round a thought dear to them, and though they leave it still return to it, so Christ came back again and again to this as if He could never tire of it. Children were sacred in His eyes, the Kingdom of God belonged to them, and to them God revealed His secrets. Children were the examples and model of the Christian life. The disciples were to be as children. Except they became as little children they could not see the Kingdom. To be humble like them was to be greatest. When they prayed, they were to begin, " Our Father" ; they were to live as children taking no thought for the morrow; and when they died, they were to go home to the Father's house and still be children.
\ Do you want the key to the religious life ? Most of you have it at hand in your own families. The Word of God is very nigh you if you have ears to hear it. Christ could find no better illustration of that trust and love and sympathy which should exist between God and us now, and no better illustration of the future life of communion between God and His saints, than that with v/hich any happy home amongst ourselves can furnish us. Christ says we are to be young again : we are to be as children in the happy, free, unanxious days of old when no care crossed our