ST. JOHN XIV. 2 'j^
T make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out thence no more." This is the crown of comfort, — the promise of an eternal inheritance.
^ The child asks you when you give him anything : " Can I have it to keep?" It is the immortal spirit within him that speaks. Here our Lord satisfies this immortal craving in man, and speaks of abiding places in the heavens — not tents, which you no sooner erect than you pull down again, and give iDack to the waste that spot which for a brief night you have associated with your hearth and home, but abiding places, from which we shall " go no more out for ever." Some time ago I revisited the village in which I was born. I looked for the chapel-house where as a child I spent many happy days. To my surprise, it was no longer there, but another house had been built on the same site. Then I turned to the garden where I had often played; but the greater part of it had been added to the adjoining graveyard. " Ah ! " I thought, " there is no abiding home on earth, and every garden, sooner or later, has graves dug in it ; but in my Father's house are many abiding places." ^
^ In Lord Tennyson's biography a story is related of Napoleon. A friend was urging on him how much more glorious the artist's immortality is than the soldier's. He asked how long the best- painted and best-preserved picture would last. " About eight hundred years," he was told. " Bah ! " he exclaimed with contempt, " telle immortality " — Such a poor immortaUty ! It is my feeling. I want to live not for eight hundred years, nor for eighty times eight hundred, but for ever and ever. And God gives me my desire.^
2. Spaciousness. — " Neither pray I for these alone," Jesus said, referring to His first followers ; " but for them also which shall believe on me through their word." The heart of the Eedeemer went out to the unnumbered multitude of all kindreds and tongues, who should wash their robes and make them white in His blood and pass through tribulation to His Kingdom. The Heavenly City is a place of vast dimensions and boundless hospitality. Jesus is not afraid of inviting too many guests.
Death is not a closing so much as an opening — not a falling so much as a rising — not a going away so much as a coming home. It is the passing of a pilgrim from one mansion to another, from the winter to the summer residence, from one of the outlying provinces up nearer the central home. " In my Father's house are 1 D. Davies. ' A. Smellie, In the Secret Place, 377.
7S THE HOUSE OF MANY MANSIONS
many mansions." This is not a chance expression, far less a mere figure of speecli. There are many other expressions quite as large. We read of the tJiird heavens, as if there were heavens above heavens, and again heavens above those. We read of Christ having " passed through all heavens " on His upward way, " that he might fill all things." And of " heaven, even the heaven of heavens," a place evidently spoken of as being of inconceivable grandeur and largeness, for it is said that even that cannot contain the infinite presence of God.
^ The Vatican is the largest palace in the world, with more than eleven thousand apartments. Nicholas v. (1447-55), the builder Pope, wished to make it the centre from which all the messengers of the spiritual empire should go forth. His aim was to unite in that palace all the Government offices and the dwellings of the cardinals. He died before he could carry out his vast design, and only a portion of it has ever been completed.
3. Variety. — Out of the idea of vastness arises almost necessarily the idea of an endless variety. At least it is so in this world. And surely we must not think of heaven as less than earth. The variety existing in God's works here is one of the principal charms of the natural world. Not only has every country in the globe its distinctive qualities and natural produc- tions, but within any one country what variety exists ! In the land of our birth, without crossing any sea, we can find the region of perpetual snow, and some favoured spots where the flowers never die ; ruggedness in one place, beauty in another ; productiveness here, sterility there ; and a never-ending variety running through the whole. No two faces in all the world, no two trees, no two flowers, no two blades of grass, could be pronounced exactly alike. Then we are almost bound to apply the analogy to the future life, and to believe that as there are " many mansions," so the furnishing and adorning of them will be very various. One will not be as another. There will not only be room for all, but interest for all.
^ Do not the words " many mansions " bear witness to us of the largeness of God's love, and the infinite varieties of His redeeming grace ? May we not behold there the great intellect, now emptied of all pride ? and the dull intellect, now learning, as it never learned in life, the wondrous things of God's law ? and,