^ Wherever He would have His disciples go. He goes first Himself, and through the door which He has opened He draws them by His love. That is the whole philosophy of Christian culture. And that is the meaning of the Incarnation. God entered into human life ; made Himself one with it as He only could have done with a nature that was originally one with His own. He became man as He could not have become brute or stone. Then in that human nature He outwent humanity. He opened yet unopened gates of human possibility. He showed what man might be, how great, how godlike ! And by the love and oneness He has always been claiming man for the greatness whose possibility He showed.^
2. The Preparation. — " If I go," He said. But " go " is a cold word. It tells of parting. There is a sigh of desolation in it, like the moaning of the wintry wind as it sweeps through the leafless branches of the trees in the dead of night. It was a word which filled the heart of the disciples with sorrow. They thought it the coldest word that they had ever heard from Him. It seemed to hang like an icicle upon the lips of the Christ. Only the satisfaction that He was going to prepare a place for them made the word bearable. " I go to prepare " are His words. To go, then, does not mean to forget. Christ's exaltation is an exaltation to service. No trouble will be too great for Him in our interests. " Prepare." God believes in preparation. He
' Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, 179.
96 PREPARATION AND RECEPTION
did not place man on earth without having first prepared the earth for him; and as the ages move we are more and more impressed with the extent of the preparation. From this we can understand better the meaning of the word " prepare " as applied to heaven. And, more, we can see better why our Lord should speak of ''abiding places." A home which takes so long in preparing must not be a transient one. In the Divine economy there is always a sublime relation between the means and the end.
^ When a guest is coming to the house, the hostess prepares. The rooms are there, the furniture is there, but the thoughtful, tender-hearted woman has something to do beyond making them ready. She prepares for the guest. This, she says to herself, is his favourite flower, his favourite book, and that little touch of kindness makes the welcome perfect. It may not be much that she is able to do, but the little means that she would fain do all. So Christ prepares for Peter, prepares for John, prepares for Thomas. He knows what they like, and He does not forget. So He prepares for His people through the generations till the end arrives.^
^ I remember how once travelling in Syria the guide upon whom we wholly depended disappeared. By and by he came back to us as we rode along and told us where he had been : that in the village which we were approaching, and where we were to spend the night, his family lived ; that he had ridden on to see that they were ready to receive him and to prepare quarters in their house for us, the travellers under his charge, and now came back to conduct us thither ; and by and by he brought us where he belonged, and where through him provision had been made and a welcome was waiting for us.^
(1) There are two remarkable things about this statement. The first is that the master should prepare for the servant. This upsets the ordmary course of procedure. You are expecting to entertain some chosen friends. All your appointments are made ; you have sent before your face servants in whom you have confidence, and have told them to do as you have commanded, that all things may be in readiness for the invited guests. This is customary ; this is considered right. But Jesus Christ says to His servants, — such poor, incomplete, and blundering servants, too, — " I, your Lord and Master, go to prepare a place for you."
* W. Robertson Nicoll, The Lamp of Sacrifice, 169. ' Phillips Brooks, The Mystery of Iniquity, 173.
ST. JOHN XIV. 2, 3 97
This is quite in keeping with the method which Jesus Christ adopted in His ministry. This is no exceptional instance of condescension, self-ignoring, self-humiliation. He took a towel, girded Himself, and washed His disciples' feet and dried them, and having finished this lowly exhibition, He said, "If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye ought also to wash one another's feet." I have given you an example. So His whole life was a humiliation.
^ Suppose we had a near relative and friend who had long been away in far-distant lands. At length he determined to return home, and settle down quietly after his long, and tiresome, and wandering life. He wrote to us to provide a house for him, to prepare it, to furnish it completely, and even to lay out the grounds, all ready for his arrival and immediate occupation. That preparation would cost us very grave anxieties. How carefully we should endeavour to recall his old disposition, his old fancies and partialities! We should provide everything that we imagined could be pleasing to him. We should be all the while thinking about him. And yet, when we had it all ready, if a mutual friend should come to look over the house and grounds, he would see a great many signs of our own peculiar taste, our own individual preferences. We could not help making the house a little expression of ourselves, and a little expression of our friend. So it must be with the Lord Jesus. He is preparing a place for us, and He is thinking of us ; of our real wants, and of our varied wishes. But all the while He is impressing His own character upon it; He is filling it with indications of His own likings and sympathies. And the exceeding charm of our Heaven will be to us this : it will be so largely, and so evidently, Christ's Heaven, but at the same time it will be so manifestly our own Heaven — Christ's preparation, but prepared for us}