EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES
John 14:1. The discourse begun at John 13:31 is here continued. Here our Lord not merely answers fully Peter’s question, “Whither goest Thou?” (John 13:36), but speaks much needed words of comfort. Μὴ ταρασσέθω., “Let not your heart be troubled,” etc., should be compared with Ἰησοῦς ἐταράχθη τῷ πνεύματι of John 13:21. He was troubled that they might have peace. “From this point onwards, the form of instruction properly so called prevails; Jesus transports Himself in thought to the period when the promised reunion will be realised, and glances from this point of view at the future career of His apostles in the midst of a hostile world to be saved” (John 15:1 to John 16:15) (Godet). πιστεύετε.—Believe, imperative, like the second πιστεύετε. It was want of faith that caused their despondency. Therefore Jesus says, Look up in confidence to God; remember all that He is. “Believe also in Me.” You know Me: can you not therefore trust Me?
John 14:2. In My Father’s house, etc.—This is a reason for their confidence in God. He is a Father, and the Father’s house is no limited dwelling, but a house of “many mansions,” μοναὶ πολλαί The antitype of the οἶκος τοῦ πατρός μου (John 2:16). Comp, also Ezekiel 43; Revelation 21; Matthew 25:34. μοναὶ = abiding dwelling-places, or resting-places. Many.—πολλαί, does not denote variety, i.e. conditions of differing degrees of glory, but refers to the number of those dwellings. There will be room for all (John 10:16), and therefore for those troubled ones. Does not our Lord refer, perhaps, to the multiplicity of worlds in His universe, throughout space? We might well suppose that He pointed them to the starry sky. No doubt, when supper was ended, they passed from the upper chamber on to the flat roof, and there rested in the falling twilight, ready to go forth to Gethsemane. If it were not so, etc.—If they could not have followed Him He would not have buoyed them up with false hopes. One reason indeed why He told them this was because (ὅτι in best MSS.) I am going to prepare a place, etc.—“Here it is that faith in Jesus comes in as the complement of faith in the Father. He is their πρόδρομος, their forerunner in heaven” (Hebrews 6:20) (Godet). The interrogative “Would I have told you?” is not admissible, for there is no previous reference to which the clause would point.
John 14:3. And if I shall go, etc.—This does not express uncertainty. “The fact that He goes away to realise for them the kingdom of God, i.e. that His going away is for them such a realisation, forms the presupposition (ἐάν, if) of His return to receive His own ‘into His kingdom’ ” (Luthardt). Whether καί, and, be omitted or not, the sense is the same. I am coming again.—Even if this clause does not refer primarily to our Lord’s second coming, it includes a reference to that event. It must evidently be connected with Revelation 22:7; Revelation 22:12; Revelation 22:20; Revelation 1:8. He is ever coming until the end—in His resurrection glory, by His Spirit at Pentecost, in judgment on the nations. All these lead up to His final appearing. And shall receive you unto Myself, etc.—Whether in death, as He received His martyred servant (Acts 7:56); or those who are alive and remain when He comes to judgment (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
John 14:4. And whither (or where) I go ye know the way.—The meaning is virtually the same as that of the T. R. The “whither” includes the end of the way and the Father’s house.
John 14:5-7. These verses include the question of Thomas and the answer of our Lord. “The first conversation occasioned by the question of Peter (John 13:36-37) had turned upon the final reunion, the end. The second, called forth by the question of Thomas, turned rather on the ability of Jesus to bring them to the end upon the way” (Godet).
John 14:6. In His answer, by substituting the Father for the Father’s house, Jesus sought to make the end of the way more clear. Heaven is the divine presence. I am the way, the truth, and the life.—The end of their hopes and aspirations being the Father, it would be at once evident that Jesus must be the way. As the incarnate Word He is the uniting bond between men and God. Through Him and in His mediatorial office we have access to the Father. And this men attain by accepting His truth and Him as the truth—by coming to Him for spiritual life, and participating in that life by union and communion with Him. No man cometh, etc.—“He brings to the goal, and He alone, because He and He alone is and bears in Himself the essential revelation of God, and the blessing of the essential divine fellowship” (Luthardt).
John 14:7. If ye had known Me, etc.—By most expositors the emphasis is placed on known; but there seems to be some justification for the reading ἐγνώκατε ἐμέ, with א, D, i.e. “If ye have known Me, ye shall know My Father also.” Comp. with John 14:9, where the emphasis is certainly on I and Me. ἀπʼ ἄρτι, from henceforth.—Now and henceforth they would more fully know and understand Him. Their true knowledge of Him would now begin, and never again be entirely obliterated. From that night’s communications and proceedings they would begin to understand the true relation in which He stood to the Father.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— John 14:1-3
The reality and assurance of the heavenly state.—These words of Jesus before He went forth to Gethsemane and the cross contained those promises which divine Wisdom saw to be suited to the case of the disciples. They were soon to go out into the world to proclaim their message. Tribulation awaited them—trial, persecution, unjust treatment from Jew and Gentile. A believer’s foes would sometimes be those of his own household. And even though this were not so, they had to wander from land to land among alien peoples and unfamiliar scenes. All this militated against the majority of them possessing settled homes on earth, or any permanent dwelling-place. Therefore this sweet and tender promise was given to them. They had here no abiding city; but having this promise, they confidently looked for one to come. This promise holds good for all God’s people. When they cast off the shackles of mortality and pass into new and higher spheres of being, it is not to wander aimlessly through the vastnesses of eternity; it is to pass to the welcome of a Father’s house, where abiding dwelling-places are provided for them.
I. Notice the ground on which Jesus rests the reality and assurance of the heavenly state.—It is on the fact of His own personality as the truth. “If it were not so,” etc. He could present no stronger argument to the mind of His disciples. It is as if He had said: You know Me; the course of My life is before you, etc. Surely you must be persuaded I would never have spoken thus, would not fill your minds with delusive hopes, if these things were not so? This argument would be of the strongest to the disciples. For nigh three years they had followed Jesus, had seen His wonderful life as He went about doing good, and His wonderful works. They had heard His words of wisdom, had seen the stainless beauty of His character, had felt the strength of His love. Therefore His “If it were not so,” etc., would come to them with the force of a demonstration. Should such considerations have less weight with us? We have friends whose characters are so genuine that we say, Their word is as good as their bond. They would not, even to please us, utter what they know to be untrue, etc. And who that has studied the character of Jesus could think otherwise of Him? And especially will this be the case with those who know the power of Christ’s gospel in their hearts and lives, and have the joy of His fellowship in their souls. Such rest on this blessed promise in implicit confidence, etc.
II. Think what this promise implies.—We may draw from a consideration of the ideas the conception calls up to our minds those lessons of comfort, hope, etc., the Redeemer intended to convey. Of course human language and imagery can only at best dimly shadow forth heavenly things; in fact, they can only be understood in the measure in which we are prepared to understand them. So all the conceptions of the heavenly state in Scripture only faintly adumbrate the reality. Scripture itself declares this to be so (1 Corinthians 2:9). Thus the heavenly world is set before us in a variety of aspects. It is a country, state, city, garden, paradise, etc. Here it is the Father’s house. But the reality will be far beyond our highest conceptions. But just as an astronomer may reason analogously from what he knows of the starry orbs as to the infinite glory of the universe, so we, from the analogy of the ideas given in Scripture, may reason as to the glory of the heavenly world. Jesus, as we have said, seems to have chosen this conception as suited to the circumstances of the disciples. But, in speaking of heaven as the Father’s house, He did not leave them under the impression that it is a limited, etc., dwelling. It is a house of many mansions. The idea is that the family will be numerous and always resident (μονά, monç =abiding or tarrying; hence μοναί, monai = residences). The idea of a father’s house is one of the most pleasant that can occur to the mind. In after-life the heart turns fondly toward it. With few exceptions it is the happiest spot on earth. It is generally in the home-circle that we find humanity at its best. None are to be pitied so much as those who are alone on earth, who have no centre round which the affections may turn, no spot where, under the influences of love, trust, helpfulness, their whole being may grow healthily and joyfully. How many a life has been soured through isolation and loneliness! But the happy denizens of the Father’s house above are blessed in the sweetest communion, the noblest employ, etc.
III. Think, then, of a few of the characteristic features of the homes of earth, and see how they typify the house of many mansions.—
1. A true father’s house on earth is a place of safety. The children feel and are safe, so far as can be here, under the roof-tree of home. They are there shielded from danger as lambs in the fold. It is when the child goes forth into the far country that health, strength, energy, so carefully nurtured before, are in danger of being lost, squandered, etc., leaving the life bare. So in the Father’s house above, the family are eternally safe (John 10:28-29). The father’s house here is a place where everything needful, so far as possible, is provided for the children. It is in the far country that they meet with bitter want, etc. And in the heavenly dwelling-place “they hunger no more,” etc. (Revelation 7:16-17).
2. The true home on earth is a place of rest and peace. Thither the weary labourer directs his steps at close of day: a welcome awaits him—he gains fresh strength for future toil. So, too, the toiler wearied with labour in the fields of time finds a place of welcome rest. It is no wayside inn, no temporary abode; but a house of many abiding dwellings. There the voyager rests from struggle with adverse gales; the Christian soldier rests from conflict with sin and every spiritual foe.
3. Again, every true father’s house on earth is a place of love and joy. It is not the place merely that is dear. It is because there dwell those whom we love. Love binds the members of the family in one. Selfishness is excluded. The members of the family are glad in each other’s joy. A spirit of mutual charity and sympathy binds them together in common aims. No other spot on earth where love gains greater triumphs, where it shows more prominently its power. There it beareth all things, etc. (1 Corinthians 13). And where love reigns there is purest joy. Need it be said that this is true, only in infinitely higher degree, of the heavenly house of many mansions? It is the abode of love, etc. There “love never faileth”; and thus there is endless joy. And one chief element of this joy will be the union of the saints with the heavenly Father in our great elder brother Jesus Christ. “I will come again, and receive you unto Myself,” etc. (John 14:3). These are some of the characteristic features of the house of many mansions. But, after all has been said and can be said, how feeble and dim are our conceptions of its eternal glory! And how should such hopes and promises quicken us to live as children of the light and of the day!
John 14:3. Reunion of saints in heaven. In the Father’s house the Father’s children in Christ shall know as they are known.—It is a question of deep interest that confronts us when it is asked, “How are the dead raised, and with what body do they come?” And the apostle has answered that question for us with great fulness (1 Corinthians 15). But there is another question also of great interest connected with this subject, the answer to which we are left to infer. It is, Shall we know our friends and brethren in Christ on that happy shore on which they and all His shall dwell in eternal peace, when the resurrection dawn shall bring the consummation of their redemption, and body and soul shall be reunited in perfect purity? The spirit longs to know this, and seeks to rise to hope, and trust,
“With faith that comes of self-control,
The truths that never can be proved
Until we close with all we loved,
And all we flow from, soul in soul.”
Tennyson.
There are two considerations which might be mentioned as warranting Christians to entertain an assured hope that it shall be so.
I. Christ is there, and we shall know Him.—
1. This is, indeed, the chief element of the believer’s gladness in prospect of the life beyond. Our Lord Himself held out this prospect to the disciples as calculated to inspire their hearts with peace and joy: “In My Father’s house are many mansions,” etc. (John 14:2-3). It is therefore no unknown land, no land of strangers, into which believers shall enter to possess their inheritance, but a Father’s house of many abiding dwelling-places, fitted for His people.
2. And the Elder Brother, in whom all are united in one family, shall be there to receive all His own. Even now He knows His sheep and is known of them. Shall it be less so then? Nay, the close union in love of Christ and His people will then become complete and perfect. This is, indeed, one of the chief elements of eternal blessedness.
II. Our life beyond shall not be less but more perfect.—
1. “Now we see in a glass, obscurely; but then face to face,” etc. (1 Corinthians 13:12). And we know that when the manifestation of the Invisible takes place “we shall be like Him,” etc. (1 John 3:2). Christ’s people shall be made perfect in Him and in the Father.
2. Now perfection cannot mean loss of personality. If our individuality were destroyed, it would not be we who were perfected; for it is the I, the personality, which distinguishes every man as a separate, sentient, intelligent existence. Nay, we should look for the perfection of our personality rather than its extinction.
3. Thus clearer knowledge will mark the perfected man. “We shall know as we are known.” The dim obscurity of our present state will merge in perfect day. No longer will reason be thwarted by passion, or judgment warped by prejudice. Things shall be seen and known as they are, and not simply as what they appear to be. Then all shams shall be revealed, all hypocrisies unmasked.
4. And if with all the powers and faculties of mind the redeemed are to become Christlike, then memory, on which personality so much depends, will also be perfected. Christ remembers His own—His people remember His atoning work; and one chief theme of their praises will be the fact that He hath “redeemed them with His blood.” And so too we may believe they will remember their fellow-pilgrims in time and “know them when they meet.”
5. And if memory be perfected, it will thus be purified. When we stand close to some great structure of antiquity, we are conscious more of the marks that time and stress have left upon it than of its beauty as a whole—its fair proportions, its exquisite symmetry. But when we remove to a distance these appear, and the flaws and marks of time and the destroyer’s hand are lost and forgotten. So as we look back on and summon up in memory the images of our Christian friends departed, the flaws and disfigurements incident to our imperfect stale are for the most part forgotten, and only the fair proportions of their general Christian character remain. All the rest was adventitious; this is permanent. And in some such fashion the memory of the redeemed will be purged in their intercourse in the heavenly state from what is impermanent and perishable.
6. And as they are all united in Christ in love and knowledge, so will they be united one with another; and whilst the sphere of communion will be infinitely extended, still those who loved and laboured here as fellow-citizens of the saints will not, we may believe, love and labour unknown to each other in that higher sphere and more perfect service.
7. And the chief end, therefore, is to seek for that abiding unity in Christ with all our friends and loved ones that shall endure all the shocks of time and death and judgment, that shall exist and persist through all the ages of eternity. It has been truly said that if it were to be thought possible that we should not know and consequently never love our friends in Christ after this life, we should simply “number them with temporal things, and love them as such” (Baxter). A better hope remains. The redeemed whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life, whose names He will “confess before His Father and before His angels,” shall, knowing Him, know each other, and in unity rejoice eternally.
III. In these considerations there may be found comfort and hope. But there is also warning. This is our probation-sphere. It is here we become fitted or unfitted for the future life of glory. The spiritual life to come is but a continuation and consummation of the spiritual life begun here. For the foundation on which the spiritual life rests here and hereafter is One—Jesus Christ. Unity with Him and in Him is its condition; and its chief manifestation here as hereafter is charity, i.e. love: not only love of Christ, but in Him love of His people. “God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God in Him.” And the opposite of love is hatred, unrighteousness, sin. Turn and flee then from that which must perish, and cling to that which alone is enduring. Enter into living union through faith with Him who is the “resurrection and the life,” to whom the Father hath given to have life in Himself, and then rejoice in the assured hope and promise of life eternal.[5]
[5] ILLUSTRATIONS
Not many lives, but only one, have we—Frail, fleeting man!
How scared should that one life ever be—That narrow span!
Day after day filled up with blessed toil,
Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil!
Dr. H. Bonar.
Think of “living”! Thy life, wert thou the “pitifullest of all the sons of earth,” is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. It is thy own; is all thou hast to front eternity with.—Carlyle.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH. John 14:6
Jesus, the way, the truth, the life.—Think of the meaning of this claim advanced by our Lord. It is a unique, a divine claim. No merely human leader or teacher ever made a similar claim—not even a Buddha or a Mohammed. They said, We shall instruct you, teach what we think truth, etc. Jesus goes beyond them and says, “I am the way,” etc. Such an utterance seems quite natural when viewed against the background of the life of Christ, so full of heavenly teaching and mighty works. Then think of the joy and peace, etc., He has brought to millions. We all indeed may have personal experience of the truth of this word. The reply to Thomas was not in the order of His question, “Lord, we know not,” etc. The answer means: Surely if ye know Me that is enough. He who comes through Me will attain the true end of the way. The end of spiritual life, the true end of its way, is its begining—God Himself. The stream returns to the ocean whence it was drawn. The spirit attains to union with God, from whom its life is derived. “He that hath seen Me,” etc. He is the mediator, the junction between the two points, the commencement and the end, the Alpha and Omega. Therefore He is absolutely the way.
I. Christ is the way through His incarnation.—There is a general tendency in the theology of the present time to lay great stress on the humanity, the human nature, of our Lord. Now that He was truly human is a precious truth never to be lost sight of. It is this fact that enables Him to say to us men, “I am the way,” for the way must necessarily begin with us, with human nature. But there is along with this tendency also a tendency to neglect, or minimise at least, the truth of the Saviour’s divinity. But the Saviour’s divinity is the corollary of His perfect humanity. And it is in His divine nature that He becomes the end of the way, as by the human He is its beginning. He leads from sin to God, from earth to heaven, because He is Emmanuel—God with us.
II. Not through nature and moral law alone can men come to God.—But say many, It is not so. Christ may be one of many ways to God, but He is not the only one. By the way of nature, of moral law, of moral being, we can come to the Father. But can we, e.g., come to the Father by the works of nature—“rise through nature up to nature’s God”? Truly in the works of nature there is the evidence of a wisdom and power which point to an Almighty Framer. We look out on the universe with its mighty forces, its unerring laws, all working together to produce harmony and order. The wonders of life in all its aspects, beauty of form, radiancy of colour, etc., speak of an intelligent mind informing all, and attuned to order and harmony. Then the workings of what we call providence for the preservation and continuance of the races of living things speak of goodness and benevolence in the presiding power. But they tell little of anything more to men unenlightened by revelation. For all they know from nature and nature’s laws man may be no more to the Deity than the ephemeræ that flutter their little day in the sunshine and then pass. When we realise our own littleness and insignificance in view of the grandeur surrounding us on earth, etc., and in the vast and apparently limitless void of space strewn with its stars and star-systems, then say we, “What is man,” etc. (Psalms 8). Besides, there is in nature something that appears, on a superficial view, even to contradict those conceptions of benevolence, etc., which providence seems to establish. There is disorder in nature—the mystery of pain and evil—facts which, if viewed apart, lead to Buddha’s idea of life as a curse and not a blessing. No, not through nature alone is there any true way to God, not in this way can we rise to the knowledge of the divine, loving Father. Nature’s stern laws tell of Almighty power. Even the workings of providence, and the benevolence inspiring them, are hidden sometimes behind what seems to contradict them. Hence those who seek to come in this way to God approach in fear, seeking to propitiate—not in faith, to a loving Father. Nature-religions, as history shows, have led men away from God. For they have come to “worship and serve the creature,” etc. (Romans 1:25).
III. Men cannot come to God even through their higher nature.—Others will say all this is true. But there is within man himself a witness of the Deity. Not by nature alone can we come to God. But the moral nature—conscience—is the record of the divine presence in man. When it speaks God speaks. Walking according to its dictates, we can come to God. The divine law is written on our moral nature; in listening to the voice of conscience, following the way of duty, the way to God lies before us. True in a measure. There is a great and precious truth here; but it is not all the truth. Were there no sin in the world, it would perhaps be the whole truth regarding man’s relation to God. But do men always obey the divine law, always listen to the voice of conscience, even the best of men? Are not traces of the divine law often obliterated, so that evil may become a man’s good, lying supplant truth, wrong usurp the place of right? Does not conscience oft become dulled, benumbed? Is not its voice often stifled or its pronouncement disregarded? Nay, does not the law only reveal our distance from God and our inability to commend ourselves to Him and come to Him by this way? “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” It reveals to us the holy and righteous God; but across its face is written, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” It tells of the righteous Judge, of the divine Lawgiver, who is jealous for His broken law, who will vindicate it and “make it honourable.” Men are not led by this way to the refuge of a heavenly Father’s love and care.
IV. Jesus alone is the way to God.—A way is a road connecting two distant points. Jesus claims to be the bond of union between man and God, the highway uniting earth and heaven. Men were alienated from God, spiritually dead. Christ came to bring love, light, life, to men. Those who receive in Him these blessings have attained the end of their being. They become Christlike, one with Him in the Father. Through the Way they have attained to the end. The way is therefore the means by which men “attain to the truth which is light, and the life which is love.” Thus Jesus can say absolutely, “I am the way.” And He is so because He is the truth and the life. As Augustine says, He is via vera vitœ. When we have laid hold of the truth, when we have Christ’s life in us, then truly we have come to the Father. Jesus is the truth. The test of a true, a right way is this, that it leads to the desired end. Now what men need is that they shall attain to harmony in their own being, and with that divine Being on whom they depend. In Christ Jesus, and in no other way, can and do they attain to this. In Him they realise and are saved from their sinfulness; they become possessed of a new spirit, through which they attain the mastery over their lower nature, so that the higher being becomes dominant. So, too, by His gospel they learn that the broken divine law has been vindicated, so that in Him God is seen to be just and the justifier, etc. (Romans 3:26). Finally, through union and communion with Jesus they become one with the Father in Him
(17). Thus Christ is the true way to the Father, the way of reconciliation, pardon, peace (Ephesians 2:11-22).
V. But how is Jesus as the truth to be received and appropriated?—Our Lord does not leave us in doubt. “I am the life,” He says. It is through His power, His spiritual life implanted and working within us, that we must attain to the end of the way. We must become actually and spiritually united to Him
(15), and drawing from that source of all life we shall be aided to endure, to overcome the evil within and without, and thus to advance onward and upward. “In Him was life,” etc. (John 1:4). In Him alone is light, i.e. truth; and in Him also is life, i.e. power. Christ then alone is the way, because He is the truth and the life. And in Him those means of grace, which could not in themselves aid us to advance one step in the heavenly life, become channels through which that heavenly life is ever renewed and strengthened within us. In Him also the law, the quickened conscience, and even the tokens of God’s power in nature, etc., act as aids and incentives to progress on the way of life. For there must be progress—a way implies this idea. It is one of the conditions of ultimate attainment. True, at once when men believe they come through Christ to the Father. But our present attainment is only an earnest of fuller joy. As spiritual children we know but little of His glory, power, wisdom, etc. But as we advance in the knowledge of Christ the spiritual vision becomes more clear (2 Corinthians 4:6), until at last “we shall know as we are known.” The way begins in the darkness of our state by nature. Christ rises on our souls (Malachi 4:2); our spiritual morning dawns; and even here in seasons of spiritual communion we catch glimpses of the glory that shall be revealed in us, when, in God’s eternal presence, the way shall have been traversed and the pilgrimage ended.
ILLUSTRATIONS
John 14:1. The heavenly home.—“Where does God live?” asks the little child; “Oh that I knew where I might find Him!” cries the earnest man. We are all seeking Thy dwelling-place, Thou King of kings. We have not yet found a palace large enough to contain Thee. Some have sought Thee in the water, some in the air, some in the fire, because the water and the air and the fire are to us boundless things. Yet it is not in the boundless that Thou desirest to be found; it is in the limited, the broken, the contrite. The heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee, but the broken and contrite heart can; it is there Thou delightest most to dwell. Thy brightest glory is not in the stars, but in the struggles of a conquering soul. Thy temple is the heart of Him whom men have called the Man of Sorrows. Thy fulness dwells in His emptiness, Thy wealth in His poverty, Thy strength in His weakness, Thy joy in His sorrow, Thy crown in His cross. Within that temple meet harmoniously the things which to the world are discords—perfection and suffering, peace and warfare, love and storm; the lion and the lamb lie down together. There would I seek Thee, O my God. Within these sacred precincts, where all things are gathered into one, where middle walls of partition are broken down, where jarring chords are blended in one symphony of praise, there would I seek and find Thee. Under the shadow of that cross, where death meets life and earth is touched by heaven, my finite soul would lose its finitude and be one with Thee; my night would vanish in Thy day, my sorrow would melt in Thy joy, my meanness would merge in Thy majesty, my sin would be lost in Thy holiness. The veil which hides me from Thee is the shadow of my own will; when the veil of the temple shall be rent in twain I shall see the place where Thy glory dwelleth—Dr. Geo. Matheson.
John 14:2. The Father’s house.—Home—an endearing name for the heavenly state.
This fond attachment to the well-known place
Whence first we started into life’s long race,
Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,
We feel it e’en in age, and at our latest day.
Cowper.
There is a land of every land the pride,
Beloved by heaven o’er all the world beside;
There is a spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest,
Where man, creation’s tyrant, casts aside
His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride,
While in his softened looks benignly blend
The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend:
Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife,
Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life;
In the clear heaven of her delightful eye
An angel-guard of loves and graces lie;
Around her knees domestic duties meet,
And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet.
“Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found?”
Art thou a man? a patriot?—look around;
Oh, thou shalt find, howe’er thy footsteps roam,
That land thy country, and that spot thy home.—Montgomery, “West Indies.”
John 14:2. For pilgrims there is promise of a home beyond.—It has often been so ordered that earth’s greatest have “dwelt apart.” A life of toil and danger or isolation has been mapped out for them. But was it not, perhaps, that through their enduring faith and high example others than themselves might be lured to live for the better home? Take, for example, one of our greatest modern heroes—Crusader and Bayard in one—as he stood alone, surrounded by strangers and traitors, in that far-off city on the Nile whence he went home. Think of exiled Dante in mediæval times, a lonely wanderer, learning in his exile, desolation, and bitter experience to sing more sweetly of the soul’s true home. Or think of Paul the apostle. With his warm affections and deep sympathetic nature he must have often deeply felt his loneliness. Does not a glimpse of this feeling meet us in the words, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable”? But to those, and to all who have been spiritually “strangers and pilgrims” here, this higher hope has been given. They were not in reality either desolate or forsaken. They claimed affinity and kinship with a great family, and to them, in view of the unseen and eternal realities, the passing vanities and troubles of time shrank into nothing. They knew also that whatever is most precious here, and most worthy of our regard, would not be lost hereafter. Pure love and friendship, wisdom and knowledge, holiness and truth, all that bear the marks of heaven, are like it—eternal.
John 14:2. Premonitions of the heavenly home.—Man, even here in the midst of his life obscure and dim, sees the mountain tops of the future world touched with the golden rays of a sun that never rises here. So the dweller in the polar circle, in the long night of the Arctic winter, when no sun rises, yet sees, at what should be midday, a golden aurora glimmering on the highest summits, and dreams of the long summer days when the sun shines and does not set.—Jean Paul Richter.
And oft I wish amidst the scene to find
Some spot to real happiness consigned,
Where my worn soul, each wandering hope at rest,
May gather bliss to see my fellows blest.
Goldsmith, “The Traveller.”
John 14:3. Heaven is blessedness, for Christ is there.
How know I that it looms lovely that land I have never seen,
With morning-glories and heartsease and unexampled green,
With neither heat nor cold in the balm-redolent air?
Some of this, not all, I know; but this is so:
Christ is there.
How know I blessedness befalls who dwell in Paradise,
The outwearied hearts refreshing, rekindling the worn-out eyes;
All souls singing, seeing, rejoicing everywhere?
Nay, much more than this I know; for this is so:
Christ is there.
O Lord Christ whom having not seen I love and desire to love,
O Lord Christ who lookest on me uncomely yet still Thy dove,
Take me to Thee in Paradise, Thine own made fair;
For whatever else I know, this thing is so:
Thou art there.
British Weekly, Aug. 31, 1893.
John 14:3. Shall we know our friends in heaven?—One after another they fall by our side, till at last a shadow is cast over every good-night and good-bye, and life comes to be a journey into the wilderness, there to die alone. Yet we do not cease to love them and desire them. Long lost, they are longer dear; and the question we put is, “Is the love of the Lamb so jealous and so strong as to absorb and consume all meaner passions, leaving no room for any but the one affection?” The answer is to be discovered by putting another question: “Do we find that our love for Christ weakens our love for those who share with His supreme affection?” Is it true that all who love one another before they were in Christ, love one another less when they pass from darkness into light? Is it not emphatically the contrary? Are not all other loves hallowed, ennobled, and eternised by this other affection? The love of Christ includes our love for all those who are in Christ. It intensifies and perpetuates the earthly affection, and any heavenly love that does otherwise is diseased and perverted.
“He who being bold
For life to come is false to the past sweet
Of mortal life, hath killed the world above.
For why to live again, if not to meet?
And why to meet, if not to meet in love?
And why in love if not in that dear love of old?”
W. Robertson Nicoll.