ady for them!" We have a nice little world here that we
stick to, as though losing that we lose all. We are afraid of falling
off this little raft of a world. We are afraid that some meteoric
iconoclast will some night smash it, and we want everything to revolve
around it, and are disappointed when we find that it revolves around
the sun instead of the sun revolving around it. What a fuss we make
about this little bit of a world, its existence only a short time
between two spasms, the paroxysm by which it was hurled from chaos
into order, and the paroxysm of its demolition.

And I am glad that so many texts call us to look off to other worlds,
many of them larger and grander and more resplendent. "Look there,"
says Job, "at Mazaroth and Arcturus and his sons!" "Look there," says
St. John, "at the moon under Christ's feet!" "Look there," says
Joshua, "at the sun standing still above Gibeon!" "Look there," says
Moses, "at the sparkling firmament!" "Look there," says Amos, the
herdsman, "at the Seven Stars and Orion!" Don't let us be so sad about
those who shove off from this world under Christly pilotage. Don't let
us be so agitated about our own going off this little barge or sloop
or canal-boat of a world to get on some "Great Eastern" of the
heavens. Don't let us persist in wanting to stay in this barn, this
shed, this outhouse of a world, when all the King's palaces already
occupied by many of our best friends are swinging wide open their
gates to let us in.

When I read, "In my Father's house are many mansions," I do not know
but that each world is a room, and as many rooms as there are worlds,
stellar stairs, stellar galleries, stellar hallways, stellar windows,
stellar domes. How our departed friends must pity us shut up in these
cramped apartments, tired if we walk fifteen miles, when they some
morning, by one stroke of wing, can make circuit of the whole stellar
system and be back in time for matins! Perhaps yonder twinkling
constellation is the residence of the martyrs; that group of twelve
luminaries is the celestial home of the Apostles. Perhaps that steep
of light is the dwelling-place of angels cherubic, seraphic,
archangelic. A mansion with as many rooms as worlds, and all their
windows illuminated for festivity.

Oh, how this widens and lifts and stimulates our expectation! How
little it makes the present, and how stupendous it makes the future!
How it consoles us about our pious dead, that instead of b