John xiv. 2.
In my Father’s house are many mansions: IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU.
These words are not a little remarkable; and, if carefully considered, will be found to make very much for the honour of the Christian religion, and its divine author.
Our blessed Lord was now upon the point of leaving the world. He foresaw, distinctly, his own approaching death, and the discouragements of all sorts, which, of course, would oppress his disciples, when he should be taken from them. He therefore applies himself, in this farewell address, to animate their courage by the assurance of future glory. “Let not your heart be troubled, says he, at the worst that may befall you: Ye believe in the general providence of God: believe also in me, in the care which I shall especially take to see an ample recompence made you for all your sufferings on my account. For in my Father’s house are many mansions; wherein each of you, according to his deserts, shall for ever enjoy an inviolable repose and felicity. And on this promise ye may rely with the most entire confidence: for know this, That, if it were not so, no consideration should have induced me to fill your minds with vain hopes; on the other hand, I would have told you the plain truth, how unwelcome soever it might be to you.”
We have here, then, from the mouth of Christ himself, an express disavowal of RELIGIOUS FRAUD OR IMPOSTURE; and that, in a point where wise men have sometimes thought themselves at liberty, nay under an obligation, to lye for the public service, and in a conjuncture, too, when, if ever, it might seem allowable for a good man to deceive his friends on a mere principle of compassion.
For what so beneficial, it may be said, to mankind, at large, as the persuasion of a future state, in which their happiness shall be proportioned to their virtue? And who, that has any bowels, would carry his attachment to strict truth so far, as not to suffer an unhappy friend to die, at least, in this persuasion, when the hopes of life, or the comforts of it, had entirely forsaken him?
These questions are plausible: but our Lord, who was the Truth, as well as the Life, governed himself by other maxims. He knew that the real interests of mankind are only, or are best promoted by veracity; that every degree of fraud, though it may have some immediate, or temporary good effects, is, in the order of things, productive of much mischief; is injurious to our moral and reasonable nature, which was made for truth, and finds its proper satisfaction in it; is liable to detection, to suspicion, at least; and if it be but the latter (entertained on probable grounds, and become, as it soon will be, universal), not only the chief benefits of the imposture are, thenceforth, lost, but truth itself, in other cases, is taken for imposture: of which there is not a more deplorable instance, than in the subject we are now considering: for, it being well known that men have been forward to deceive each other in matters of religion, and particularly in what concerns the hope or fear of a future state, hence, an incurable suspicion has sunk deep into the minds of too many, concerning Christianity itself; as if, in this momentous doctrine of life and immortality, it amused us only, as many other schemes of religion have done, with a plausible and politic fiction.
But our blessed Lord, as I said, had other views of this matter, and governed himself by other principles. He knew, who it was that had been a liar, and therefore a man-slayer from the beginning[187]; and left it to him, the adversary of God and man, to signalize himself by murderous deceit and imposture. For himself, he tells his disciples, whom of all men, it concerned him most to possess with this salutary belief of a future state; He tells them, I say, that, instead of deluding them with a groundless hope, he would certainly, and even at this season, which made that hope so infinitely precious, declare to them the simple truth, and on no account permit them to continue under a false (if it had been false), though flattering persuasion.
Shall we believe this great teacher, on his own word? Or, will you suspect, that even this uncommon declaration, uncommon in the founder of a new religion, was only a refinement of art and policy; and that Jesus hoped, by this shew of frankness, to propagate his favourite imposture the more successfully in the world?
I know, and have just now observed, to what lengths our ingenious suspicions on this subject are apt to run. But consider the circumstances; and then judge for yourselves, whether the suspicion, in this case, be well founded.
In my Father’s house, says he, are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. And can we doubt his sincerity in this declaration, when he was now to make an experiment of its truth; and the deception, if it were one, was first to operate on himself, before it affected others? A speculative reasoner, or a politic legislator, when planning his system at his ease, and in no danger of being called upon to make trial of his own principles, might discourse with much complacency, though with little inward belief, of a happy futurity. But for one, who was just stepping into that world, of which he announced such wonders, who was going, by one confident venture, to put his doctrine to the proof, and to expire in torments from a view to his own promises; for one, I say, thus circumstanced, knowingly to delude himself and others, is not in human nature, unless perverted by such a degree of weakness or vanity, as no man will think chargeable on the character of Jesus. Socrates, the ablest and the honestest of the ancient sages, had, on moral principles, reasoned himself into a favourable opinion of the soul’s immortality. He had often expressed this opinion to his friends, in terms of some force; and there were times in which he seemed very little, if at all, to question the truth of it. Yet, when he came to die, and had taken the fatal cup into his hand, his resolution gives way, he hesitates, and leaves his followers, after first of all confessing himself to be left, in the utmost uncertainty on this momentous topic: a conduct surely very natural, and becoming a wise man, who had not, and who knew he had not, the most convincing evidence of its reality!
But there are further reasons to think that Jesus was sincere in making this declaration to his disciples, suggested to us by the terms of his religion, and by his own personal character.
Those terms were, that whoever believed in the name of Christ, that is, became a convert to his religion, was thenceforth to encounter all sorts of difficulties, and dangers, and distresses, nay, death itself, and that, in every dreadful shape, which the malice of the world could invent, rather than to retract or forego his open profession of it. This, the disciples had been often told by their Master: who, whether as a prophet, or a wise man (it matters not which, to our present purpose) had distinctly foreseen, and had set before them in all its force, what they were to expect and to suffer for his sake, and the sake of the Gospel. Other teachers of religion and philosophy required no such terms of their followers, or had reason to apprehend no such consequences from the propagation of their opinions. They might therefore keep their doubts to themselves, if they had any, of a future state: In Jesus, such reserve, or dissimulation, would have been the most unfeeling cruelty.
And against whom is this suspicion indulged? Why against HIM (and that was the other consideration I mentioned) whose personal character was that of goodness and philanthropy itself. This character shines out in every page of the Gospel. We see it in all he said and did to his disciples, whom he calls his friends, and treats as such on all occasions: witness his condescension to their infirmities, his concern for their safety (while it might consist with their duty), his compassion for their sufferings, his friendliness of temper, we may even say, his affection for their persons and virtues. In short, the sympathetic tenderness of his nature was evidenced in all ways, in which it could possibly shew itself, even by that of tears.
Now, put these two things together, his deep concern for the interests of his disciples, on the one hand, and the severe injunctions he gave them, on the other, and see if there be any possibility of mistrusting our Lord’s good faith in that memorable declaration—In my Father’s house there are many mansions: IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU.
His language on the subject, so interesting to them, had, indeed, been always the same. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoyce, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven[188]. This he said in the beginning of his ministry: This he now repeats in the close of it; but with that remarkable assurance (now for the first time given, and, from the time of giving it, not more important, than it is credible) if it were not so, if your reward in heaven were not such, and so great, as I have ever affirmed it to be, in recompence of all your sufferings, past and to come, for my sake, I would not have left you under an error in what so infinitely concerns You—I would expressly have told you of it.
The use we have to make of these reflections is, to see what our Lord’s character truly was; and what our reasonable hopes and expectations from him are.
I. But for this declaration, it might be thought, that Jesus, pushed on by an eager ambition of being the founder of a sect, had, for his own ends, preached up this alluring doctrine of a future state; or, that, heated by a moral enthusiasm, he had overlooked the mischiefs of his scheme, in contemplation of the public ends, it might serve, as applied to the important interests of virtue and religion. Surmises of this sort might have sprung up in the minds of men, not prejudiced against the author of our faith; and would certainly have been cherished and malignantly insisted upon by his enemies. But it now appears, that he disclaimed all such views and purposes: that he was cool enough to see the iniquity of all religious deception; and just enough to acknowledge the cruelty of it, in the present instance. If he had not certainly known the truth of his doctrine, he would have recalled and disowned it. He felt, in his own case, what it was to encounter death for conscience-sake: and he knew what deaths others were to encounter on the like grounds of persuasion. But for the joy that was set before him, how could the shame and agony of that cross be endured? And, if there be no recompence of reward, should he expose to such, or to equal sufferings, his honest, unsuspecting, affectionate followers? The instant moment[189], the imposed duty[190], the foreseen event[191], the upright mind[192], the feeling heart[193], all conspire to satisfy us, that Jesus was not, could not, be the fraudulent, that is, the insensible, the unrelenting, the merciless inventor or publisher of a politic fable, but a teacher of truth and righteousness sent from God.
Thus much for our Lord’s general character; which we shall do well to keep in mind, when we meditate on any part of his instructions to us; but more especially, when, for our singular comfort, we attend to his great doctrine of a BLESSED IMMORTALITY. Our divine Master has in the clearest and fullest terms, announced this doctrine to us; and, what is more, he has anxiously removed the only possible doubt, which we could have of its truth, by disclaiming the politic use, which too many others had presumed to make of it.
II. It follows, that we may rely, with confidence, on this invaluable promise of a future life; the only source of peace and comfort to the mind, without which the disordered scene of this life is inexplicable to the wisest men, and scarce supportable by the happiest; we may, I say, rely with safety on this glorious hope[194] of immortality, unless we will suppose that Jesus meant to deceive us even then, when he most deliberately and solemnly pledged himself to us for his veracity: a supposition, which is, in truth, as foolish as it is indecent.
Assured therefore, as we are, that our Saviour both taught this doctrine, and taught it without the least mixture of guile or dissimulation, let us hold fast our expectation of it to the end; and in all the troubles of this life, whether endured for conscience-sake or not, provided only they be such as consist with a good conscience, let us reckon with certainty on our title to one of those eternal mansions, of which there are so many in the house of our heavenly Father; and that, for the sake and through the merits of our LORD JESUS CHRIST; the author of our salvation, as well as the proclaimer of it: our merciful Redeemer, at once, and infallible Instructor; to whom be all honour, praise, and thanksgiving, now and for ever. Amen.