438. The House On the Hills

The House On the Hills

Joh_14:2 : ’93In my Father’92s house are many mansions.’94

Here is a bottle of medicine that is a cure-all. The disciples were sad, and Christ offered heaven as an alterative, a stimulant, and a tonic. He shows them that their sorrows are only a dark background of a bright picture of coming felicity. He lets them know that though now they live on the lowlands, they shall yet have a house on the uplands. Nearly all the Bible descriptions of heaven may be figurative. I am not positive that in all heaven there is a literal crown or harp or pearly gate or throne or chariot. They may be only used to illustrate the glories of the place, but how well they do it! The favorite symbol by which the Bible presents celestial happiness is a house. Paul, who never owned a house, although he hired one for two years in Italy, speaks of heaven as a ’93house not made with hands,’94 and Christ in our text, the translation of which is a little changed, so as to give the more accurate meaning, says, ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94 This divinely authorized comparison of heaven to a great homestead of large accommodations I propose to carry out. In some healthy neighborhood a man builds a very commodious habitation. He must have room for all his children. The rooms come to be called after the different members of the family. That is mother’92s room. That is George’92s room. That is Henry’92s room. That is Flora’92s room. That is Mary’92s room. And the house is all occupied. But time goes by, and the sons go out into the world and build their own homes; and the daughters are married, or have talents enough singly to go out and do a good work in the world. After a while the father and mother are almost alone in the big house, and seated by the evening stand, they say: ’93Well, our family is no larger now than when we started together forty years ago.’94 But time goes still further by, and some of the children are unfortunate, and return to the old homestead to live, and the grandchildren come with them, and, perhaps, great-grandchildren, and again the house is full. Millennia ago God built on the hills of heaven a great homestead for a family innumerable, yet to be. At first he lived alone in that great house, but after a while it was occupied by a very large family, cherubic, seraphic, angelic. The eternities passed on, and many of the inhabitants became wayward, and left never to return, and many of the apartments were vacated. I refer to the fallen angels. Now these apartments are filling up again. There are arrivals at the old homestead of God’92s children every day, and the day will come when there will be no unoccupied room in all the house. As you and I expect to enter it and make there eternal residence, I thought you would like to get some more particulars about that many-roomed homestead. ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94

You see the place is to be apportioned off into apartments. We shall love all who are in heaven, but there are some very good people whom we would not want to live with in the same room. They may be better than we are, but they are of a divergent temperament. We would like to meet with them on the golden streets, and worship with them in the temple, and walk with them on the river-banks, but I am glad to say that we shall live in different apartments. ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94 You see, Heaven will be so large that if one want an entire room to himself or herself, it can be afforded.

An ingenious statistician, taking the statement made in Revelation, twenty-first chapter, that the heavenly Jerusalem was measured and found to be twelve thousand furlongs, and that the length and height and breadth of it are equal, says that would make heaven in size nine hundred and forty-eight sextillion, nine hundred and eighty-eight quintillion cubic feet; and then reserving a certain portion for the court of heaven and the streets, and estimating that the world may last a hundred thousand years, he ciphers out that there are over five trillion rooms, each room seventeen feet long, sixteen feet wide, fifteen feet high. But I have no faith in the accuracy of that calculation. He makes the rooms too small. From all I can read, the rooms will be palatial, and those who have not had enough room in this world will have plenty of room at the last. The fact is, that most people in this world are crowded, and though out on a vast prairie or in a mountain district people may have more room than they want, in most cases it is house built close to house, and the streets are crowded, and the cradle is crowded by other cradles, and the graves crowded in the cemetery by other graves; and one of the richest luxuries of many people in getting out of this world will be the gaining of unhindered and un-cramped room. And I should not wonder if, instead of the room that the statistician ciphered out as only seventeen feet by sixteen, it should be larger than any of the rooms at Berlin, St. James, or Winter Palace. ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94

Carrying out still further the symbolism of the text, let us join hands and go up to this majestic homestead and see for ourselves. As we ascend the golden steps an invisible guardsman swings open the front door, and we are ushered to the right into the reception-room of the old homestead. That is the place where we first meet the welcome of heaven. There must be a place where the departed spirit enters, and a place in which it confronts the inhabitants celestial. The reception-room of the newly arrived from this world’97what scenes it must have witnessed since the first guest arrived, the victim of the first fratricide, pious Abel! In that room Christ lovingly greeted all newcomers. He redeemed them, and he has the right to the first embrace on their arrival. What a minute when the ascended spirit first sees the Lord! Better than all we ever read about him, or talked about him, or sang about him in all the churches and through all our earthly lifetime, will it be, just for one second to see him. The most rapturous idea we ever had of him on sacramental days or at the height of some great revival or under the uplifted baton of an oratorio are a bankruptcy of thought compared with the first flash of his appearance in that reception-room. At that moment when you confront each other, Christ looking upon you, and you looking upon Christ, there will be an ecstatic thrill and surging of emotion that beggars all description. Look! They need no introduction. Long ago Christ chose that repentant sinner, and that repentant sinner chose Christ. Mightiest moment of an immortal history’97the first kiss of heaven! Jesus and the soul. The soul and Jesus.

But now into that reception-room pour the glorified kinsfolk. Enough of earthly retention to let you know them, but without their wounds or their sicknesses or their troubles. See what heaven has done for them! So radiant, so gleeful, so transportingly lovely! They call you by name; they greet you with an ardor proportioned to the anguish of your parting and the length of your separation. Father! Mother! There is your child! Sisters! Brothers! Friends! I wish you joy. For years apart, together again in the reception-room of the old homestead! You see, they will know you are coming. There are so many immortals filling all the spaces between here and heaven that news like that flies like lightning. They will be there in an instant, though they were in some other world on errand from God, a signal would be thrown that would fetch them. Though you might at first feel dazed and overawed at their supernal splendor, all that feeling will be gone at their first touch of heavenly salutation, and we will say, ’93Oh, my lost boy!’94 ’93Oh, my lost companion!’94 ’93My lost friend, are we here together?’94 What scenes have been witnessed in that reception-room of the old homestead! There Joseph met Jacob, finding it a brighter room than anything they saw in Pharaoh’92s palace; David and the little child for whom he once fasted and wept; Mary and Lazarus after the heartbreak of Bethany; Timothy and grandmother Lois; Isabella Graham and her sailor son; Alfred and George Cookman, the mystery of the sea at last disclosed; Luther and Magdalene, the daughter he bemoaned; John Howard and the prisoners whom he Gospelized; and multitudes without number who, once so weary and so sad, parted on earth but gloriously met in heaven. Among all the rooms of that house there is not one that more enraptures my soul than that reception-room. ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94

Another room in our Father’92s house is the throne-room. We belong to the royal family. The blood of King Jesus flows in our veins, so we have a right to enter the throne-room. It is no easy thing on earth to get through even the outside door of a king’92s residence. During the Franco-German War, one eventide in the summer of 1870, I stood studying the exquisite sculpturing of the gate of the Tuileries, Paris. Lost in admiration of the wonderful art of that gate, I knew not that I was exciting suspicion. Lowering my eyes to the crowds of people, I found myself being closely inspected by government officials, who from my complexion judged me to be a German, and that for some belligerent purpose I might be examining the gates of the palace. My explanations in very poor French did not satisfy them, and they followed me long distances until I reached my hotel, and were not satisfied until from my landlord they found that I was only an inoffensive American. The gates of earthly palaces are carefully guarded, and, if so, how much more the throne-room! A dazzling place is it for mirrors and all costly art. No one who ever saw the throne-room of the first and only great Napoleon will ever forget the letter ’93N’94 embroidered in purple and gold on the upholstery of chair and window, the letter ’93N’94 gilded on the wall, the letter ’93N’94 chased on the chalices, the letter ’93N’94 flaming from the ceiling. What a conflagration of brilliance the throne-room of Charles Immanuel of Sardinia, of Ferdinand of Spain, of Elizabeth of England, of Boniface of Italy! But the throne-room of our Father’92s house hath a glory eclipsing all the throne-rooms that ever saw scepter wave or crown glitter or foreign ambassador bow, for our Father’92s throne is a throne of grace, a throne of mercy, a throne of holiness, a throne of justice, a throne of universal dominion. We need not stand shivering and cowering before it, for our Father says we may yet one day come up and sit on it beside him. ’93To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne.’94 You see we are princes and princesses. Perhaps now we move about incognito, as Peter the Great in the garb of a ship-carpenter at Amsterdam, or as Queen Tirzah in the dress of a peasant woman seeking the prophet for her child’92s cure; but it will be found out after a while who we are when we get into the throne-room. Ay! we need not wait until then. We may by prayer and song and spiritual uplifting this moment enter the throne-room. O king, live forever! We touch the scepter and prostrate ourselves at thy feet!

The crowns of the royal families of this world are tossed about from generation to generation, and from family to family. There are young men and women in Berlin who have seen the crown on three emperors. But wherever the coronets of this world rise or fall, they are destined to meet in one place. And I look and see them coming from north and south and east and west, the Spanish crown, the Italian crown, the English crown, the Turkish crown, the Russian crown, the Persian crown, ay, all the crowns from under the great archivolt of heaven; and while I watch and wonder, they are all flung in rain of diamonds around the pierced feet.

Jesus shall reign where’92er the sun

Does his successive journeys run,

His kingdom stretch from shore to shore,

Till sun shall rise and set no more.

Oh, that throne-room of Christ! ’93In my Father’92s house there are many rooms.’94

Another room in our Father’92s house is the music-room. St. John and other Bible writers talk so much about the music of heaven that there must be music there, perhaps not such as on earth was thrummed from trembling string or evoked by touch of ivory key, but if not that, then something better. There are so many Christian harpists and Christian composers and Christian organists and Christian choristers and Christian hymnologists that have gone up from earth, there must be for them some place of especial delectation. Shall we have music in this world of discords, and no music in the land of complete harmony? I cannot give you the notes of the first bar of the new song that is sung in heaven; I cannot imagine either the solo or the doxology; but all this Bible talk about stringed and wind instruments in heaven means music, and can mean nothing else. Occasionally that music has escaped the gate. Dr. Fuller dying at Beaufort, South Carolina, said: ’93Do you not hear?’94 ’93Hear what?’94 exclaimed the bystanders. ’93The music! Lift me up! Open the window!’94 In that music-room of our Father’92s house, you will some day meet the old Christian masters, Mozart and Handel and Mendelssohn and Beethoven and Doddridge, whose sacred poetry was as remarkable as his sacred prose; and James Montgomery and William Cowper, who has at last got rid of his spiritual melancholy; and Bishop Heber, who sang of ’93Greenland’92s icy mountains and India’92s coral strand’94; and Dr. Raffles, who wrote of ’93High in yonder realms of light’94; and Isaac Watts, who went to visit Sir Thomas Abney and wife for a week, but proved himself so agreeable that they made him stay thirty-six years; and side by side, Augustus Toplady, who has got over his dislike for Methodists, and Charles Wesley, freed from his dislike for Calvinists; and George W. Bethune, as sweet as a song-maker as he was great as a preacher and the author of ’93The Village Hymns’94; and many who wrote in verse or song, in church or by eventide cradle; and many who were passionately fond of music, but could make none themselves. Oh, that music-room, the headquarters of cadence and rhythm, symphony and chant, psalm and antiphon! May we be there some hour when Haydn sits at the keys of one of his own oratorios, and David the psalmist fingers the harp, and Miriam of the Red Sea banks claps the cymbals, and Gabriel puts his lips to the trumpet and the four-and-twenty elders chant, and Lind and Parepa Rosa render matchless duet in the music-room of the old heavenly homestead. ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94

Another room in our Father’92s house will be the family-room. It may correspond somewhat with the family-room on earth. At morning and evening, you know, that is the place where we now meet. Though every member of the household have a separate room, in the family-room they all gather, and joys and sorrows and experiences of all styles are there rehearsed. Sacred room in all our dwellings! whether it be luxurious with ottomans and divans, and books in Russian lids standing in mahogany case, or there be only a few plain chairs and a cradle. So the family-room on high will be the place where the kinsfolk assemble and talk over the family experiences of earth, the weddings, the births, the burials, the festal days of Christmas and Thanksgiving reunion. Will the children departed remain children there? Will the aged remain aged there? I do not know, but everything is perfect there. The child may go ahead to glorified maturity, and the aged may go back to glorified maturity. The rising sun of the one may rise to meridian, and the descending sun of the other may return to meridian. However much we love our children on earth we would consider it a domestic disaster if they stayed children, and so we rejoice at their growth here. And when we meet in the family-room of our Father’92s house, we will be glad that they have grandly and gloriously matured; while our parents, who were aged and infirm here, we shall be glad to find restored to the most agile and vigorous immortality there. If forty or forty-five or fifty years be the apex of physical and mental life on earth, then the heavenly childhood may advance to that, and the heavenly old age may retreat to that. When we join them in that family-room we shall have much to tell them. We shall want to know of them, right away, such things as these: Did you see us in this or that or the other struggle? Did you know when we lost our property, and sympathize with us? Did you know we had that awful sickness? Were you hovering anywhere around us when we plunged into that memorable accident? Did you know of our backsliding? Did you know of that moral victory? Were you pleased when we started for heaven? Did you celebrate the hour of our conversion? And then, whether they know it or not, we will tell them all.

But they will have more to tell us than we to tell them. Ten years on earth may be very eventful, but what must be the biography of ten years in heaven? They will have to tell us the story of coronations, story of news from all immensity, story of conquerors and hierarchs, story of wrecked or ransomed planets, story of angelic victory over diabolic revolts, of extinguished suns, of obliterated constellations, of new galaxies kindled and swung, of stranded comets, of worlds on fire, and story of Jehovah’92s majestic reign. If in that family-room of our Father’92s house we have so much to tell them of what we have passed through since we parted, how much more thrilling and arousing that which they have to tell us of what they have passed through since we parted. Surely that family-room will be one of the most favored rooms in all our Father’92s house. What long lingering there, for we shall never again be in a hurry! ’93Let me open a window,’94 said an humble Christian servant to Lady Raffles, who, because of the death of her child, had shut herself up in a dark room and refused to see any one; ’93you have been many days in this dark room. Are you not ashamed to grieve in this manner, when you ought to be thanking God for having given you the most beautiful child that ever was seen, and instead of leaving him in this world till he should be worn with trouble, has not God taken him to heaven in all his beauty? Leave off weeping, and let me open a window.’94 So today I am trying to open upon the darkness of earthly separation the windows and doors and rooms of the heavenly homestead. ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94

How would it do for my sermon to leave you in that family-room today? I am sure there is no room in which you would rather stay than in the enraptured circle of your ascended and glorified kinsfolk. We might visit other rooms in our Father’92s house. There may be picture-galleries penciled not with earthly art but by some process unknown in this world, preserving for the next world the brightest and most stupendous scenes of human history. And there may be lines and forms of earthly beauty preserved for heavenly inspection in something whiter and chaster and richer than Venetian sculpture ever wrought. Rooms beside rooms. Rooms over rooms. Large rooms, majestic rooms, opalescent rooms, amethystine rooms. ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94

I hope none of us will be disappointed about getting there. There is a room for us, if we will go and take it, but in order to reach it, it is absolutely necessary that we take the right way, and Christ is the way; and we must enter at the right door, and Christ is the door; and we must start in time, and the only hour you are sure of is the hour the clock now strikes, and the only second the one your watch is now ticking. I hold in my hand a roll of letters inviting you all to make that your home forever. The New Testament is only a roll of letters inviting you, as the spirit of them practically says: ’93My dying, yet immortal, child in earthly neighborhood, I have built for you a great residence. It is full of rooms. I have furnished them as no palace was ever furnished. Pearls are nothing, emeralds are nothing, chrysoprasus is nothing; illumined panels of sunrise and sunset, nothing; the aurora of the northern heavens, nothing’97compared with the splendor with which I have garnitured them. But you must be clean before you can enter there, and so I have opened a fountain where you may wash all your sins away. Come now! Put your weary but cleansed feet on the upward pathway. Do you not see amid the thick foliage on the heavenly hilltops the old family homestead? ’93In my Father’92s house are many rooms.’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage