When a gardener is about to receive some rare exotic, he prepares a place where it will flower and fruit to the best advantage. The naturalist who is notified of the shipment of some new specimen, prepares a habitat as suited as possible to its peculiarities. The mother, whose son is returning from sea, prepares a room in which his favorite books and pictures are carefully placed, and all else that her pondering heart can devise to give him pleasure. So our Lord is anxious to give what is best in us its most suitable nourishment and training. And He will keep our place against our coming. It will not suit another, and will not be given to another.
That all this will be so, is witnessed by the instincts of our hearts, and if it had not been so, He would have told us. That little clause is inimitably beautiful; it seems to teach that where He permits His children to cherish some natural presentiment of the blessed future—its solemn troops and sweet societies; its friendships, recognitions, and fellowships; its holy service, and special opportunities—that He really assents to our deepest and most cherished thoughts. If it had not been so, He would have told us.
The charm of Heaven will be the Lord's presence.—"Where I am, ye shall be also." We shall see His face, and be forever with Him. What would not men give, if some old manuscripts might turn up with new stories of His wondrous life, new parables as charming as those of the Good Shepherd and the Prodigal Son; new beatitudes; new discourses like that on the Vine. God might have permitted this. But what would it be in comparison with all that lies before! The past has lost much; but the future holds infinitely more. We shall see new Gospels enacted before our eyes, behold Christ as a real visible person in the glory of Divine manhood, hear Him speak to us as His friends, and shall know what He meant when He promised to gird Himself, and come forth to serve His servants.
If you are in doubt as to what Heaven is like, is it not enough to know that it will be in accord with the nature and presence and choice of Jesus Christ?
After His resurrection, He spent forty days among His disciples, that men might see what the risen life was like. As He was, and is, so shall we be. His body is the pattern in accordance to which this shall be fashioned. What He was to His friends after His resurrection, we shall be to ours, and they to us. We shall hear the familiar voices and the dear old names, shall resume the dear relationships which death severed, and shall speak again of the holy secrets of our hearts with those who were our twin-spirits.
And He will come again, either in our death hour or in His Second Advent, "to receive us" to Himself. If we only could believe this, and trust Him who says it, our hearts could not be troubled, though death itself menaced us; for we should realize, that to be received at the moment of dissolution by the hands of Jesus, into the place on which He has lavished time and thought and love, must be "far better" than the best that earth could offer.
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The Reality of which Jacob's Dream was the Shadow
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me."—JOHN xiv. 6.
We all know more truth than we give ourselves credit for. A moment before the Lord had said, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know." Thomas, the pessimist—always inclined to look at the dark side of things—directly contradicted Him, saying, "Master, we are absolutely ignorant of the goal to which Thy steps are bending; it is impossible, therefore, for us to know the path that lies through the gloom, and by which Thou art to come to it." It was a strange collision, the Master's "Ye know," and Thomas's "We know not." Which was right?