It is of no use to say to men, 'Let not your hearts be troubled,'
unless you finish the verse and say, 'Believe in God, believe also in
Christ.' For unless we trust we shall certainly be troubled. The state
of man in this world is like that of some of those sunny islands in
southern seas, around which there often rave the wildest cyclones, and
which carry in their bosoms, beneath all their riotous luxuriance of
verdant beauty, hidden fires, which ever and anon shake the solid earth
and spread destruction. Storms without and earthquakes within—that is
the condition of humanity. And where is the 'rest' to come from? All
other defences are weak and poor. We have heard about 'pills against
earthquakes.' That is what the comforts and tranquillising which the
world supplies may fairly be likened to. Unless we trust we are, and we
shall be, and should be, 'troubled.'
If we trust we may be quiet. Trust is always tranquillity. To cast a
burden off myself on others' shoulders is always a rest. But trust in
Jesus Christ brings infinitude on my side. Submission is repose. When
we cease to kick against the pricks they cease to prick and wound us.
Trust opens the heart, like the windows of the Ark tossing upon the
black and fatal flood, for the entrance of the peaceful dove with the
olive branch in its mouth. Trust brings Christ to my side in all His
tenderness and greatness and sweetness. If I trust, 'all is right that
seems most wrong.' If I trust, conscience is quiet. If I trust, life
becomes 'a solemn scorn of ills.' If I trust, inward unrest is changed
into tranquillity, and mad passions are cast out from him that sits
'clothed and in his right mind' at the feet of Jesus.
'The wicked is like the troubled sea which cannot rest.' But if I
trust, my soul will become like the glassy ocean when all the storms
sleep, and 'birds of peace sit brooding on the charmed wave.' 'Peace I
leave with you.' 'Let not your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust
also in Me.'
Help us, O Lord! to yield our hearts to Thy dear Son, and in Him to
find Thyself and eternal rest.
'MANY MANSIONS'
'In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would
have told you.'—JOHN xiv. 2.
Sorrow needs simple words for its consolation; and simple words are the
best clothing for the largest truths. These eleven poor men were
crushed and desolate at the thought of Christ's going; they fancied
that if He left them they lost Him. And so, in simple, childlike words,
which the weakest could grasp, and in which the most troubled could
find peace, He said to them, after having encouraged their trust in
Him, 'There is plenty of room for you as well as for Me where I am
going; and the frankness of our intercourse in the past might make you
sure that if I were going to leave you I would have told you all about
it. Did I ever hide from you anything that was painful? Did I ever
allure you to follow Me by false promises? Should I have kept silence
about it if our separation was to be eternal?' So, simply, as a mother
might hush her babe upon her breast, He soothes their sorrow. And yet,
in the quiet words, so level to the lowest apprehension, there lie
great truths, far deeper than we yet have appreciated, and which will
enfold themselves in their majesty and their greatness through
eternity. 'In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I
would have told you.'
I. Now note in these words, first, the 'Father's house,' and its ample
room.
There is only one other occasion recorded in which our Lord used this
expression, and it occurs in this same Gospel near the beginning; where
in the narrative of the first cleansing of the Temple we read that He
said, 'Make not My Father's house a house of merchandise.' The earlier
use of the words may help to throw light upon one aspect of this latter
employment of it, for there blend in the image the two ideas of what I
may call domestic familiarity, and of that great future as being the
reality of which the earthly Temple was intended to be the dim prophecy
and shadow. Its courts, its many chambers, its ample porches with room
for thronging worshippers, represented in some poor way the wide sweep
and space of that higher house; and the sense of Sonship, which drew
the Boy to His Father's house in the earliest hours of conscious
childhood, speaks here.
Think for a moment of how sweet and familiar the conception of heaven
as the Father's house makes it to us. There is something awful, even to
the best and holiest souls, in the thought of even the glories beyond.
The circumstances of death, which is its portal, our utter
unacquaintance with all that lies behind the veil, the terrible silence
and distance which falls upon our dearest ones as they are sucked into
the cloud, all tend to make us feel that there is much that is solemn
and awful even in the thought of eternal future blessedness. But how it
is all softened when we say, 'My Father's house.' Most of us have long
since left behind us the sweet security, the sense of the absence of
all responsibility, the assurance of defence and provision, which used
to be ours when we lived as children in a father's house here. But we
may all look forward to the renewal, in far nobler form, of these early
days, when the father's house meant the inexpugnable fortress where no
evil could befall us, the abundant home where all wants were supplied,
and where the shyest and timidest child could feel at ease and secure.
It is all coming again, brother, and amidst the august and unimaginable
glories of that future the old feeling of being little children,
nestling safe in the Father's house, will fill our quiet hearts once
more.
And then consider how the conception of that Future as the Father's
house suggests answers to so many of our questions about the
relationship of the inmates to one another. Are they to dwell isolated
in their several mansions? Is that the way in which children in a home
dwell with each other? Surely if He be the Father, and heaven be His
house, the relation of the redeemed to one another must have in it more
than all the sweet familiarity and unrestrained frankness which
subsists in the families of earth. A solitary heaven would be but half
a heaven, and would ill correspond with the hopes that inevitably
spring from the representation of it as 'my Father's house.'
But consider further that this great and tender name for heaven has its
deepest meaning in the conception of it as a spiritual state of which
the essential elements are the loving manifestation and presence of God
as Father, the perfect consciousness of sonship, the happy union of all
the children in one great family, and the derivation of all their
blessedness from their Elder Brother.
The earthly Temple, to which there is some allusion in this great
metaphor, was the place in which the divine glory was manifested to
seeking souls, though in symbol, yet also in reality, and the
representation of our text blends the two ideas of the free, frank
intercourse of the home and of the magnificent revelations of the Holy
of holies. Under either aspect of the phrase, whether we think of 'my
Father's house' as temple or as home, it sets before us, as the main
blessedness and glory of heaven, the vision of the Father, the
consciousness of sonship, and the complete union with Him. There are
many subsidiary and more outward blessednesses and glories which shine
dimly through the haze of metaphors and negations, by which alone a
state of which we have no experience can be revealed to us; but these
are secondary. The heaven of heaven is the possession of God the Father
through the Son in the expanding spirits of His sons. The sovereign and
filial position which Jesus Christ in His manhood occupies in that
higher house, and which He shares with all those who by Him have
received the adoption of sons, is the very heart and nerve of this
great metaphor.
But I think we must go a step further than that, and recognise that in
the image there is inherent the teaching that that glorious future is
not merely a state, but also a place. Local associations are not to be
divorced from the words; and although we can say but little about such
a matter, yet everything in the teaching of Scripture points to the
thought that howsoever true it may be that the essence of heaven is
condition, yet that also heaven has a local habitation, and is a place
in the great universe of God. Jesus Christ has at this moment a human
body, glorified. That body, as Scripture teaches us, is somewhere, and
where He is there shall also His servant be. In the context He goes on
to tell us that 'He goes to prepare a place for us,' and though I would
not insist upon the literal interpretation of such words, yet
distinctly the drift of the representation is in the direction of
localising, though not of materialising, the abode of the blessed. So I
think we can say, not merely that _what_ He is that shall also His
servants be, but that _where_ He is there shall also His servants be.
And from the representation of my text, though we cannot fathom all its
depths, we can at least grasp this, which gives solidity and reality to
our contemplations of the future, that heaven is a place, full of all
sweet security and homelike repose, where God is made known in every
heart and to every consciousness as a loving Father, and of which all
the inhabitants are knit together in the frankest fraternal
intercourse, conscious of the Father's love, and rejoicing in the
abundant provisions of His royal House.
And then there is a second thought to be suggested from these words,
and that is of the ample room in this great house. The original purpose
of the words of my text, as I have already reminded you, was simply to
soothe the fears of a handful of disciples.
There was room where Christ went for eleven poor men. Yes, room enough
for them! but Christ's prescient eye looked down the ages, and saw all
the unborn millions that would yet be drawn to Him uplifted on the
Cross, and some glow of satisfaction flitted across His sorrow, as He
saw from afar the result of the impending travail of His soul in the
multitudes by whom God's heavenly house should yet be filled. 'Many
mansions!' the thought widens out far beyond our grasp. Perhaps that
upper room, like most of the roof-chambers in Jewish houses, was open
to the skies, and whilst He spoke, the innumerable lights that blaze in
that clear heaven shone down upon them, and He may have pointed to
these. The better Abraham perhaps looked forth, like His prototype, on
the starry heavens, and saw in the vision of the future those who
through Him should receive the 'adoption of sons' and dwell for ever in
the house of the Lord, 'so many as the stars of the sky in multitude,
and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable.'
Ah! brethren, if we could only widen our measurement of the walls of
the New Jerusalem to the measurement of that 'golden rod which the man,
that is the angel,' as John says, applied to it, we should understand
how much bigger it is than any of these poor sects and communities of
ours here on earth. If we would lay to heart, as we ought to do, the
deep meaning of that indefinite 'many' in my text, it would rebuke our
narrowness. There will be a great many occupants of the mansions in
heaven that Christian men here on earth—the most Catholic of them—will
be very much surprised to see there, and thousands will find their
entrance there that never found their entrance into any communities of
so-called Christians here on earth.
That one word 'many' should deepen our confidence in the triumphs of
Christ's Cross, and it may be used to heighten our own confidence as to
our own poor selves. A chamber in the great Temple waits for each of
us, and the question is, Shall we occupy it, or shall we not? The old
Rabbis had a tradition which, like a great many of their apparently
foolish sayings, covers in picturesque guise a very deep truth. They
said that, however many the throngs of worshippers who came up to
Jerusalem at the passover, the streets of the city and the courts of
the sanctuary were never crowded. And so it is with that great city.
There is room for all. There are throngs, but no crowds. Each finds a
place in the ample sweep of the Father's house, like some of the great
palaces that barbaric Eastern kings used to build, in whose courts
armies might encamp, and the chambers of which were counted by the
thousand. And surely in all that ample accommodation, you and I may
find some corner where we, if we will, may lodge for evermore.
I do not dwell upon subsidiary ideas that may be drawn from the
expressions. 'Mansions' means places of permanent abode, and suggests
the two thoughts, so sweet to travellers and toilers in this fleeting,
labouring life, of unchangeableness and of repose. Some have supposed
that the variety in the attainments of the redeemed, which is
reasonable and scriptural, might be deduced from our text, but that
does not seem to be relevant to our Lord's purpose.
One other suggestion may be made without enlarging upon it. There is
only one other occasion in this Gospel in which the word here
translated 'mansions' is employed, and it is this: 'We will come and
make our abode with him.' Our mansion is in God; God's dwelling-place
is in us. So ask yourselves, Have you a place in that heavenly home?
When prodigal children go away from the father's house, sometimes a
broken-hearted parent will keep the boy's room just as it used to be
when he was young and pure, and will hope and weary through long days
for him to come back and occupy it again. God is keeping a room for you
in His house; do you see that you fill it.
II. In the next place, note here the sufficiency of Christ's revelation
for our needs.
'If it were not so I would have told you.' He sets Himself forward in
very august fashion as being the Revealer and Opener of that house for
us. There is a singular tone about all our Lord's few references to the
future—a tone of decisiveness; not as if He were speaking, as a man
might do, that which he had thought out, or which had come to him, but
as if He was speaking of what he had Himself beheld, 'We speak that we
do know, and testify that we have seen.' He stands like one on a
mountain top, looking down into the valleys beyond, and telling His
comrades in the plain behind Him what He sees. He speaks of that unseen
world always as One who had been in it, and who was reporting
experiences, and not giving forth opinions. His knowledge was the
knowledge of One who dwelt with the Father, and left the house in order
to find and bring back His wandering brethren. It was 'His own calm
home, His habitation from eternity,' and therefore He could tell us
with decisiveness, with simplicity, with assurance, all which we need
to know about the geography of that unknown land—the plan of that, by
us unvisited, house. Very remarkable, therefore, is it, that with this
tone there should be such reticence in Christ's references to the
future. The text implies the _rationale_ of such reticence. 'If it were
not so I would have told you.' I tell you all that you need, though I
tell you a great deal less than you sometimes wish.
The gaps in our knowledge of the future, seeing that we have such a
Revealer as we have in Christ, are remarkable. But my text suggests
this to us—we have as much as we need. _I_ know, and many of _you_
know, by bitter experience, how many questions, the answers to which
would seem to us to be such a lightening of our burdens, our desolated
and troubled hearts suggest about that future, and how vainly we ply
heaven with questions and interrogate the unreplying Oracle. But we
know as much as we need. We know that God is there. We know that it is
the Father's house. We know that Christ is in it. We know that the
dwellers there are a family. We know that sweet security and ample
provision are there; and, for the rest, if we I needed to have heard
more, He would have told us.
'My knowledge of that life is small,
The eye of faith is dim;
But 'tis enough that Christ knows all;
And I shall be with Him.'
Let the gaps remain. The gaps are part of the revelation, and we know
enough for faith and hope.
May we not widen the application of that thought to other matters than
to our bounded and fragmentary conceptions of a future life? In times
like the present, of doubt and unrest, it is a great piece of Christian
wisdom to recognise the limitations of our knowledge and the
sufficiency of the fragments that we have. What do we get a revelation
for? To solve theological puzzles and dogmatic difficulties? to inflate
us with the pride of _quasi_-omniscience? or to present to us God in
Christ for faith, for love, for obedience, for imitation? Surely the
latter, and for such purposes we have enough.
So let us recognise that our knowledge is very partial. A great stretch
of wall is blank, and there is not a window in it. If there had been
need for one, it would have been struck out. He has been pleased to
leave many things obscure, not arbitrarily, so as to try our faith—for
the implication of the words before us is that the relation between Him
and us binds Him to the utmost possible frankness, and that all which
we need and He can tell us He does tell—but for high reasons, and
because of the very conditions of our present environment, which forbid
the more complete and all-round knowledge.
So let us recognise our limitations. We know in part, and we are wise
if we affirm in part. Hold by the Central Light, which is Jesus Christ.
'Many things did Jesus which are not written in this book,' and many
gaps and deficiencies from a human point of view exist in the
contexture of revelation. 'But these are written that ye may believe
that Jesus is the Christ,' for which enough has been told us, 'and
that, believing, ye may have life in His name.' If that purpose be
accomplished in us, God will not have spoken, nor we have heard, in
vain. Let us hold by the Central Light, and then the circumference of
darkness will gradually retreat, and a wider sphere of illumination be
ours, until the day when we enter our mansion in the Father's house,
and then 'in Thy Light shall we see light'; and we shall 'know even as
we are known.'
Let your Elder Brother lead you back, dear friend, to the Father's
bosom, and be sure that if you trust Him and listen to Him, you will
know enough on earth to turn earth into a foretaste of Heaven, and will
find at last your place in the Father's house beside the Brother who
has prepared it for you.