SERMON IX.
A PLACE PREPARED FOR US, AND WE PREPARED FOR IT.

SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION DAY.
S. JOHN xiv, 2.

"I go to prepare a place for you.''

THE Holy Scripture bids us particularly remark the constant love of our blessed Lord and Saviour, now about to ascend into heaven, towards His chosen disciples and Apostles. S. John's saying is, "when His hour was come, that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." And this, His great and enduring love, He particularly shewed, the night before His death, by the many comfortable words which He poured into their ears, to prepare them for His departure: at the very mention of which, as He well knew, sorrow was sure to fill their heart. But He would not have them be so cast down. He, the great Lord of heaven and earth, humbles Himself to behold and to pity the thoughts and misgivings, which He knows will arise in the hearts of His poor frail creatures, when death and separation are spoken of. "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions:" i. e. "in the great eternal heaven, where God lives and rules for ever, is abundance of room for you all." The promise indeed had just before been made to S. Peter especially; "Whither I go, thou canst not follow Me now, but thou shalt follow Me afterwards." But it was by no means confined to S. Peter. On the contrary, all the twelve, and through them all the disciples, are here given to understand that in the happy home, to which our Lord has returned, every one may find a place. He is the Head of the Body, the Church: and where the Head is, there the members, in due course of time, may hope to be. Not a few only of the most honourable, but every one, the meaner as well as the more glorious, may hope to be raised with the Head to everlasting joy.

This surely is infinite love and condescension. But our gracious Lord goes even beyond this. Hear how His discourse proceeds. "In My Father's house are many mansions: He has room enough and glory enough for all His family both in heaven and earth: but even were it otherwise, were there room for a few only, I would have said to you, 'I go to prepare a place for you.' Whatever became of others, to you at least, My chosen Apostles, I should have given a special promise of a home in heaven, suited for each one of you. Much more may you depend upon that greatest of all blessings, now that you know by My sure word how large heaven is, and how the gates of that happy place are thrown open, by God's mercy, to all who draw near Me with true hearts!"

This being, as it appears by holy writers of old time, the true way of understanding our Saviour's words in the text, we may well take them as containing an assurance, to the Apostles first and through them to all believers, of the great mercy which our Lord intended us at His going up into heaven. He goes to prepare a place for us, to make ready a happy home, where we may dwell with Him to all eternity.

And this He does, first, by offering Himself, His own sacrificed. Body and Blood, day and night to His heavenly Father, as a true and perfect atonement and satisfaction for our sins. S. Paul tells us so, plainly, in the epistle to the Hebrews. "Christ being come a High Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands. . . neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own Blood, hath entered once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." That is, as there was a division in the tabernacle of Moses first, and afterwards in Solomon's Temple, and the outer court was called simply holy, the other Holy of Holies, or holiest of all: so is God's heavenly kingdom separated from His kingdom on earth, and far, very far more holy and glorious than it. And as the priests went always into the outer tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God, but into the second went the High Priest alone, once only in every year, and without this all the rest would have been nothing: so all the services and offerings, which are made to God here on earth, have respect to that one meritorious Offering, which our Lord carried up into heaven and presented as at this time to His Father: the Offering of His own crucified Body and Blood. He has taken It with Him through the veil into that unseen world of glory: and there He exhibits and offers it, in some heavenly and mysterious way, to His Father and our Father, His God and our God, Who is so well pleased with it, that for the sake thereof He is content to remit the punishment which all we have deserved, and to allow us a passage through the veil into the most high and holy court of heaven. Thus, as Joseph went in and obtained leave of Pharaoh that his father and his brethren might dwell in the best of the land of Egypt, so Jesus Christ our Lord, Who verily made Himself a brother, a true Joseph to us, has gone in and obtained leave of the great King of heaven and earth, that we may dwell with Him in heaven. He has redeemed us by His own Blood on the Cross, and He never ceases to plead the virtue of that Blood. "He ever liveth to make intercession for us." By His painful death He overcame the sharpness of death, and by His Resurrection and Ascension He opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Once for all, He did then prepare a place for us; Heaven for sinners, the Throne of God for worms of the earth, the Holy of Holies for us who were unclean from the womb. How can we ever think enough of it? And yet, beyond this infinite deep of mercy, opens another deep no less infinite.

For our Lord ascended, not only to present Himself for us, as our true sin-offering, before His-Father's mercy-seat, but also to send down the Holy Ghost the Comforter, the Co-equal, Co-eternal Spirit, to be with us, and dwell in us: to make and keep us, in very deed, members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. That is, He not only prepares a place there for us, but sends also from thence to prepare us for the place. For after all that He has done and suffered for us, though, by His mercy, the gates of heaven stand open, yet we could not pass through them, so long as our hearts continue unclean and unprepared. Therefore to all His other favours He has mercifully added this one, that He hath given us His grace, His good Spirit to live and rule in us, changing our hearts, and giving us true faith and love; putting on us the wedding-garment, that the Angels may not turn us back and bid us depart into outer darkness, when we are crying, "Lord, Lord, open to us." This is what He continually spake of to His disciples, as His hour came on, to make them contented with His going. "It is expedient for you that I go away; for, if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you: but if I depart, I will send Him unto you." Christ sends the Comforter to us, to teach us and guide us into all truth: to bring all things to our remembrance, which He hath taught us from the beginning: to shew us things to come, turning our hearts to dwell on the great unspeakable matters of eternity: to be His true witness, putting us in mind of Him continually: to help us especially when we pray, making "intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered:" but most especially of all, to regenerate and sanctify us, uniting us to our Redeemer in Holy Baptism, and then dwelling in our hearts and bodies, to make us grow up from day to day in more entire and perfect communion with Him. Thus our Lord prepares a place for us, by sending His Spirit to prepare us for it.

And thirdly, Christ is preparing our heavenly home, by that which He does as our King, sitting on the Bight Hand of God, with all power committed unto Him in heaven and in earth. He, Who is now bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh: He, Who is not ashamed to call us brethren: He is now and for evermore King of kings and Lord of lords, having "s given unto Him dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, nations and languages, may serve Him." All kings are to fall down before Him, all nations are to do Him service. And He has distinctly told us to what end, and by what rule, He will order this His empire. "All things shall work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." He gives to all the changes of this mortal life such a turn as He knows to be best for His Church and kingdom, His Body here on earth. He is gradually bringing matters into that condition, which He knows will best prepare this His earthly Jerusalem, the Church, to be taken up again into that heaven, from which at first she came down, and to become a heavenly Jerusalem again. By His royal power, out of sight, He is preparing heaven for the Church, and by the same royal power and providence, continually governing all things here in sight, He is preparing the Church for heaven. And all these His great and gracious works, visible and invisible; His sending His Spirit, His offering Himself, as our Priest, His ordering all as our King: all are to go on, until the time arrive when He shall come again, and receive His own to Himself, that where He is, there we may be also. Thus you see, in a few short words our Saviour here gives His disciples a sufficient account of His doings unto the end of the world. All was to be ordered by Him, and all ordered with an eye especially to the Church, His Spouse; that she might in His good time come to be where He is.

We are, every single one of us, members of that holy Church: every single one among us, be it man, woman, or child, has a portion in these great promises. Let us turn this over in our minds.

Every one among us may know for certain, that our Lord went up to be an Intercessor and Mediator for the sins not of the whole world only, but also for each one of us in particular. He had each one in His thought, when He entered within the veil. He knew there would be in His Church, at such a time, such persons as we are, and that we should be tempted to commit such and such sins. Knowing it all, knowing all those secret and horrible circumstances of our sins, which make them so intolerable to our consciences, our Lord Christ did nevertheless vouchsafe to carry into the Holy of Holies, and there present before His Father, His own Blood, for the washing away of those sins. He knew the worst of us, yet He laid down His life for us. Think of it again and again, for you can never think enough of it. From the beginning, from the moment of our Lord's Ascension to His Father's Eight Hand, even to this very hour, Christ has been preparing a place for us. What a pity, should we now forfeit that place! And for aught we know, we may forfeit it for ever, the very next known sin we commit.

Then again, our Lord sent the Comforter, not to quicken whole Churches only, or other large bodies of Christians, but also to dwell in your heart, in my heart, in the hearts of all His baptized: for this special end, that He may prepare us for our place in heaven. This again is a very aweful, as well as a very comfortable thought. The great God of heaven and earth abides and dwells, not only near us, not only around us, not only about our path and about our bed, and so as to spy out all our ways, but within us, in our very heart, to be, as it were, the soul of our souls, dwelling in them as they dwell in our bodies. And to what end? That we may be not unworthy to enter in and dwell in the room which the same great God, in another Person, is getting ready to receive us in heaven. Reflect on this: that in every wilful sin we commit, we are actually and immediately fighting against God the Holy Ghost, Who strives against that sin in our hearts: and we are so far disappointing and undoing the work which God the Son, our Saviour, is even now working for us in heaven. To our corrupt hearts, alas, it seems a light, simple, natural thing, a mere matter of course, that we should one hour tell a lie, to keep ourselves from some little trouble or disgrace; another hour, suffer our thoughts and eyes to wander after impurity and sin; another, that we should in a deliberate way speak and judge unkindly of some neighbour: and so on with other sins. To us, alas! it all seems but too natural. But what says the Scripture to all Christians? By every such indulgence in wrong, though it be but in thought, you resist the Holy Ghost here on earth, and you vex and scorn your Saviour, pleading for you in heaven. Who can ever feel as if he were watchful enough, when he considers in this way the immense importance of every thought word and work, in which God gives him a choice between right and wrong?

And again, who ever can be thankful and courageous enough, when he considers that other fruit of our Blessed Lord's Ascension, that we know Him now to be reigning not only as King over the whole Church, but as Shepherd and Guide over each one of us in particular, ordering all and putting all together, in such sort as may most help us, if we will, in the way to heaven? So that as every known sin is unspeakably dreadful in a Christian, being a direct act of warfare against those two Divine Persons, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, so every common indifferent matter may be, if we will, turned into an unspeakable blessing. For if it is set about in God's faith and fear, our Lord and King will know how to make it work in some way for our everlasting good.

And now, what shall we say, on the whole, to this astonishing course of love and mercy, which our Lord sets forth to us in those few plain words, "I go to prepare a place for you?" What can we say or feel, my brethren, but this--that we are the meanest and worst of beings, if such love is lost upon us: if, while God the Son is so busy in heaven, preparing us there an everlasting home, and God the Holy Ghost no less busy on earth, preparing us for that home, we still go on brutishly set upon the things which we see around us, bodily and earthly things, which are but for a day? It ought not to be a question; but it is a most serious question. Christ is gone to prepare a place for us: are we preparing ourselves for that place? Christ has suffered and is doing all things to provide us with a happy eternity: are we in any true sense training ourselves for that eternity? He is in heaven as our Priest, Intercessor, and Advocate, to offer up our prayers like sweet incense to His Father: how often, and how earnestly, do we send up prayers for Him to offer? He never forgets our souls: do we ever seriously think of them? What that heaven is, which He is preparing for us, we know not yet fully: but thus much He has told us; that His Presence there, the Presence of the Most Holy Trinity, is all in all: that His saints and servants are to be happy with one another and with Him, serving Him continually, as in a perfect and glorious Church: that nothing wicked or unclean can come there, and that such as abide there will go on eternally from glory to glory, becoming more and more like Him. We know not yet what we shall be, butai we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." O that we may be wise! that we may consider these things! that we may turn ourselves once for all, away from the world, towards Christ in heaven, and having done so, may never forget to keep our hearts pure, lest we forfeit the place prepared for us!

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