are a place for you." The Father's house was a new
figure for heaven. The idea of God's house was, however, familiar to the
Jews. But in the Temple the freedom and familiarity which we associate
with home were absent. It was only when One came who felt that His real
home was in God that the Temple could be called "the Father's house."
Yet there is nothing that the heart of man more importunately craves
than the freedom and ease which this name implies. To live unafraid of
God, not shrinking from Him, but so truly at one with Him that we live
as one household brightened by His presence--this is the thirst for God
which is one day felt in every heart. And on His part God has many
mansions in His house, proclaiming that He desires to have us at home
with Him; that He wishes us to know and trust Him, not to change our
countenances when we meet Him at a corner, save by an added brightness
of joy. And this is what we have to look forward to--that after all our
coldness and distrust have been removed and our hearts thawed by His
presence, we shall live in the constant enjoyment of a Father's love,
feeling ourselves more truly at home with Him than with any one else,
delighting in the perfectness of His sympathy and the abundance of His
provision.

Into this intimacy with God, this freedom of the universe, this sense
that "all things are ours" because we are His, this entirely attractive
heaven, we are to be introduced by Christ. "I go to prepare a place for
you." It is He who has transformed the darkness of the grave into the
bright gateway of the Father's home, where all His children are to find
eternal rest and everlasting joy. As an old writer says, "Christ is the
quartermaster who provides quarters for all who follow Him." He has gone
on before to make ready for those whom He has summoned to come after
Him.

If we ask why it was needful that Christ should go forward thus, and
what precisely He had to do in the way of preparation, the question may
be answered in different ways. These disciples in after-years compared
Christ's passing into the Father's presence to the high priest's
entrance within the veil to present the blood of sprinkling and to make
intercession. But in the language of Christ there is no hint that such
thoughts were in His mind. It is the Father's house that is in His mind,
the eternal home of men; and He sees the Father welcoming Him as the
leader of many brethren, and with gladness in His heart going f