3. Christ's confirmation of human instincts. — There are some beliefs embedded in the native soil of our hearts ; they grow there of themselves, and we need no proof of their existence or reality. One of these is the hope of immortality. No savage so barbarous, no religion so material, as to be without its hope and its paradise, and its realms of the blessed, where there is rest and peace after the toil and battle of life. And Jesus in adding, " If it were not 80, 1 would have told you," seems to guarantee to us as correct interpreters of God's mind to men these deep instincts of human nature. He who ever told His disciples the truth, who kept back nothing that was for their good though He should pain and shame them thereby, would surely have told them if these hopep of
ST. JOHN XIV. 2 89
future blessedness were doomed to disappointment. It is impossible that Christ should deceive.
^ The unspeakable value of these words of the Lord Jesus is that they vindicate a native and ineradicable instinct of the soul. They set His seal on the sanctified use of the imagination in religion. They proclaim the soul to be a freedman of the universe, with a right to exercise its faculties in picturing to itself an authentic ideal. " In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not so, I would have told you." As though He had said, I know you have your dreams of God, of heaven, of a perfect life beyond the tumults of time and the river of death. You think of Him as the Father, the Holy One and the Good, too wise to err, too good to be unkind ; whose love is as the salt sea, " washing in pure ablution round earth's human shores," whose mercy is infinite as the sky ; whose will for all is eternal life ; — you dream of a state where that holy will is ideally done, and where the spirits of just men made perfect serve Him day and night in blessedness. And these dreams are true ; " If it were not so, / would have told you." ^
4. Christ's encouragement. — Life for many of us is grey and dim. Let the glory of eternity break through the clouds. We are wanting, many of us — how many ! — in decision, in earnestness, in elastic energy : let us find vigour where a thousand saints have found it — at the fountain of immortal strength. Life is full of disappointments ; the horizons narrow with the advancing years : let the sadness sometimes forget itself in the anticipation of eternal joy, and the poverty in the anticipation of eternal wealth. The hopes that look for fulfilment within these mortal years often fail, but the great hope is beyond the reach of vicissitude and peril; and while we are learning with sorrow the narrowing limits of our mortal strength, let us exult in the ages which are to bring a perpetual expansion to all our powers and to all our joys. Half a gospel will never give any man the whole of the Christian redemption. In the gospel of Christ, life and immortality have been brought to light, and a universal spirit that should dis- tinguish the children of God, a magnanimous superiority to the vicissitudes of this earthly life, the courage to attempt great duties, and the fortitude to bear without complaint great sorrows — these come not merely from the pathetic memories of the past, from the incarnation of Christ, from His sorrows, from His death, but from
' E. GrifRth-Jones, Faith and Verification, 220.
90 RELIABILITY OF THE REDEEMER
the endless ages of righteousness, of wisdom, of peace, of joy, and of glory, that Christ has promised us in the home of God.
^ He has brought life and immortality to light. Trusting Him, we can think of our bereavements calmly, and look forward joyfully to the hour of our departure. For those who believe in Christ, death is not annihilation but victory, not separation but reunion ; it is not the soul's extinction, but its birth into a brighter, purer, larger life. It means " ease after toil, port after stormy seas," home after changeful, perilous journeyings, the frail tents of the wilderness exchanged for the shining gates and undecaying walls of the city of God.^
As it were better, youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth.
Toward making, than repose on aught found made; So, better, age, exempt From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waited'st age : wait death nor be afraid ! ^
» G. G. Findlay, The Things Above, 210. * Browning, Eahli hen Ezra,
The Preparation and the Ueception.
9>
Literature.
Alford (H.), Quebec Chapel Sermons, i. 365.
Allon (H.), The Indwelling Christ, 321.
Brooks (P.), The Mystery of Iniquity, 171.
Church (R. W.), Village Sermons, iii. 176.
Dale (R. W.), Christ and the Future Life, 33.
Fairweather (D.), Bound in the Spirit, 151.
Findlay (G. G.), The Things Above, 188.
Ingram (A. F. W.), The Mysteries of God, 135.
Lewis (F. W.), The Unseen Life, 119.
MacColl (M.), Life Here and Hereafter, 71.
Matheson (G.), Searchings in the Silence, 210.
Moody (D. L.), Heaven, 61.
Mozley (J. B.), Sermons Parochial and Occasional, 268.