when it assumes this attitude. It is moreover for the very purpose of producing this freedom that the Divine Spirit has been given to man. An æsthetic religion, running itself into stiff and unelastic forms, putting on, as it were, regal attitudes, pressing into its service classical music, and arranging itself in highly-coloured vestments, may refuse to speak familiarly to the Father; but that is not religion as Jesus taught it, as Paul practised it, and as it has lifted the heavy burden from the heart through all the years. The soul in its highest moods loves to cry "Abba Father."

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CHAPTER XIII.

THE FATHER'S HOUSE.

"THE universe is all aglow with the lamplight and hearth-light of our Father's house." So says the author of the Supernatural in Nature. The charge of indulging in rhapsody and romance, often enough brought against preachers when dwelling upon the attractions of heaven, may occasionally be reasonable enough. The sensuous may overlap the spiritual. The interest in locality may predominate over the interest in character. Yet the reverent use of material symbol may greatly aid the mind in its conceptions of what the future shall be. Nothing could be more foolish than the indiscriminate objections that are taken to the idea of heaven as a place. To all finite existences there must be place. The simple being in a place will not, as we know, make up our idea of heaven. There must be a glory within that answers to the glory without; nevertheless that outer glory is

not the less real on that account. Hence, while there is to be a "name," there is also to be a "local habitation." There is to be a "Holy city," a "New Jerusalem." There is to be a society. There is to be a family. There is to be a home. What a warmth, what a beauty and freshness Jesus throws upon the universe by representing it as His "Father's house!" The imagination is taken captive while the whole heart is made to glow. Rising from the study of any book on astronomy, and looking out of doors when the heavens are full of stars, what a commentary we get on the depth and sweep of the wonderful words, "My Father's house." Thought runs up through orders and systems till, in that centre of centres, where angels veil their faces, it rests in the Father's presence. It sits down in the Father's house. Having come down from heaven, Jesus alone was able to tell us how great and glorious that home must be. But then, what human words could have conveyed what Jesus could have told? What science of the time could have taken it in? Even now, were He to descend again and speak of all its wonders, who would believe Him? The clashing prejudices of scientific systems would break upon His words now, even as the

clashing claims of religious systems broke upon his words when He was here before; for in certain circles men are nothing if they are "not critical," as Shakespeare would say.

And so, after many a weary journey, along many a crooked path in experience, we are to come at last to the Fatherland. The picturing powers of the mind fail to present its many attractions. What will it be? Or, rather, what will it not be? Our highest conceptions of beauty, of harmony, of blessedness, must needs come far short of the one Happy Home into which the joint heirs with Christ are gathered. To the pilgrim "pining for his distant home," the words of the Master are peculiarly welcome. The land hitherto so "very far off," is now very nigh. The "King in His beauty" is not going to hold a mere leveé or drawing-room, where only the high in rank or fortune are to be honoured, but a gathering of the royal children on the homehearth of the Father's house.

We do not forget that neither Jesus nor His disciples were in the mood for either poetic or scientific descriptions of that great unseen universe when He uttered these attractive

words. It was a moment in which every thought was steeped in tender feeling; hence

it was quite enough just to lift the veil a little and allow a portion of the glory to be seen. And so He does not speak of the "Palace of the Great King," nor of the "New Jerusalem," nor of the "Temple of God," but of the "Father's house." There is a picture in the expression. There is poetry in it too. The warm word was meant to shine out upon the darkness and cold with which sorrow, uncertainty, and fear were chilling the disciples to the heart. He could not leave them comfortless, and hence, in addition to other things, He holds before their eyes a vision of the future, when they should be gathered into the Father's home.

For Jesus does not mean to speak merely of a house, cold and comfortless, lacking beauty and arrangement, where no lovelinks bind the heart, and no feeling dances to the music of home-joy. The house is a home, where hearts throb, and the fountains of feeling play and sparkle in the light of the paternal smile. The ties that bind are not simply those of citizens, but of brethren; not simply those of subjects, but of children. Herein the thought of Jesus rises immeasurably above the views of men to whom the universe is only a vast ingenious machine, originating somehow, but having no