Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1889 — OUR HOUSE ON THE HILL. [ARTICLE]

OUR HOUSE ON THE HILL.

“IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY ROOMS.” Room for All tlie Children of the Earth-—Everlastfnx Feace and Joy Await His Faithful Followers. Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Hampton, N. Y., Sunday. Subject: “Our House on the Hills.” Text: John xiv., 2. He said: Here is a bottle of medicine that is a cure-all. The disciples were sad and Christ offered heaven as an alterative, a s imulant and a tonic. He shows them that their Borrows are only a dark background of a bright picture of coming foUcity. He lets them know that though now they live on the lowlands they shall yet have a house on the uplands. Nearly all the descriptions bt heaven may be figurative. I am not positive that in all heaven there is a literal crown or harp or pearly gate or throne or chariot. They may be only used to illustrate the glories of the place, but how well they do it! The favorite symbol by which the Bible presents celestial happiness is a house. Paul, who never owned a house, althobgh he hired one for two years in Italy, speaks of heaven as a “house not ~ made with hands,” and Christ in our text, the translation of which is a little changed so as to give the moie accurate meaning, says: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. This is divinely authorized comparison of heaven to a great homestead of large accommodations I propose to carry out. In some healthy neighborhood a man builds a very commodious habitation. He must have room for all his children. The rooms come to be called after the different members of the family. That is mother’s room. That Is George’s room. That is Henry’s room. That is Flora’s room. That* is Mary’s room. And the house is all occupied. But time goes by and the ions go out into the world and build j their own homes, and the daugthers are married or have talents enough singly to go out and do good work in the world. After a while the father and mother are almost alone in the big house, and seated by the evening stand, They say: “Well, our family is no larger now than when we started together forty years ago.” But time goes still farther by and some of the children are unfortunate and return to the old homestead to live, and the grandchildren come with them, and perhaps great-grandchildren, and again .the house is full. 7 | Many millennia ago God built on the hills of heaven a great homestead for a lamily innumerable yet to be. At first he lived alone in that great house, but after a while it was occupied by a very large family, cherubic, seraphic,angelic. I Fhe eternities passed on and many of the inhabitants became wayward and left never to return. And many of-the apartments were vacated. I refer to tne fallen angels. Now these aparttnents are filling up again. There are arrivals at the old homestead of God’s children every day, and the day will come when there will be no unoccupied room in all the house. As yon and I expect to enter it and Hake our eternal residence, I thought you would like to get some more parti;ulars about that m&ny-roomed homeitead. You see the place is to be apportioned off into apartments. We shall love all who are in heaven, but there lome very good people whom we would tot want to live with in the same room. They may be better than we are,but they tre of a divergent temperament. We vould like to meet with them on the S'lden streets and worship with them the temple and walk with them on She river banks, but lam glad to say that we shall live in different apartments You see heaven will be so large that if one wants an entire room to him•elf or herself it can be afforded.

An ingenious statistician taking the itatement made in Revelation, twentyfirst chapter, that the heavenly Jerusalem was measured and found to be 12,000 furlongs and that the length and heght and breadth of it are equal, says that would make heaven in size 948 sextillion 938 quintiliion cubic feet, and then reserving a certain portion for the court of heaven and streets, and estisuiting that the world may last 100,000 fears, he ciphers out that there are aver five trillion rooms, each room seventeen feet long, sixteen feet wide, fifteen feet high. But I have no faith in the accuracy of that calculation. He makes the rooms too small. From all I can read, the rooms will be palatial, and those who have not had enough room in this world, will have plenty of room at the last. The fact is that moßt people in this world are crowded and though out on a vast prairie or in a mountain district people may have more than they want, in most cases it is house built close to house, and the streets are crowded and the cradle is ctowded by other cradles, and the graves crowded in the cemetery by other graves, and one of the richest luxuries of many people in getting oat of this world will be tne gaining of unhindered and uncramped roomT And I should not wonder if instead of the room that the statistician ciphered out as only seventeen feet oy sixteen, it should be larger than any of the imperial rooms at Berlin, St. James or Winter Palace. Carrying out still further the symbolism of the text let us ioin hands and go np to this majestic lomestead. That is the place where we first meet the welcome of heaven. There most be a place whan the daparted spirit enters and a place in which it confronts the inhabitants celestial. The reception room of the newly arrived from this world—what scenes it must have witnessed since the first guest arrived, the victim of the first fratricide, pious Abel. In that room Chrißt lovingly greeted all new comers. 'He redeemed them and he has the right to the first embrace on their arrival. What a minute when the ascended spirit first sees the Lord. Better than all we ever read about Him or sang about Him In all the churches and through all our earthly lifetime, will it be, just for one second to see Him. The most rapturous idea we ever had of Him on aacremental days or at the height of some great revival or under the uplifted baton of an oratorio are a bankruptcy of thought compared with the first flash of .His appearance in that reception room. At that moment when you confront each other, Christ looking upon you and you looking upon Christ, there will be an ecstatic thrill and surging of emotion that beggars all description. Lpokl They need no introduction. Long ago

Christ chose that repentant sinner and that repentant (inner choee Christ. Mightiest moment of an im mortal history—the first kiss of heaven! Jesua and tne soul. The soul aad Jeans. But nowjinto that reception room pour the glorified kinsfolk. ' Enough of earthly retention to let you know them, but without their wounds or their sickness or their troubles. See what heaven has done for them. So radiant; so gleeful, so transportingly lovely. They call you by name. Tney greet you with an ardor proportioned to the anguish of your parting and the length of your separation. Father! Mother! Tdere is your child. Sisters! Brothers! Friends! I wish you joy. For years apart, together again in the reception room of the old homestead. You see they wiil know you are coming. There are so many immortals filling all the spaces between here and heaven that news like that flies like lightning. They will be there in an instant; though they were in some other world on an errand from God a signal would be thrown that would fetch them. Though vou might at first be dazed and overawed at their supernal splendor, all that feeling will be gone at their first touch of heavemy salutation, and we will say: “0, my lost boy,” “O, my lost companion,” “O, mv lost friend, are .we here together?” What scenes have been witnessed in that reception room of the old homestead! There met Joseph and Jacob, finding it a brighter room than anything they saw in Pharaoh’s parlor; David and the child for whom he once fasted and wept; Mary and Lazarus after the heartbreak of Bethany; Timothy and grandmother Lois, Isabella Graham and' her sailor son. Alfred and George Cookman. the mystery of the sea at last made manifest; Luther and Magdalene, the daughter he bemoaned; John Howard and the prisoners whom he gospelized, and multitudes without number who, once so weary and so sad, parted ou earth but gloriously met in heaven. Among all the rooms of that house there is no one that more enraptures my boul than that reception room, “in my Father’s house there are many rooms,” Another room in our Father’s house is the throne room. We belong to the Royal iamily. The blood of King Jesus flows in our veins, so we have a right to enter the throne,room. It is no easy thing On earth to get through even the outside door of a King’s residence. During the Franco-German waiy one eventide in the summer of 1879,1 stood studying the exquisite sculpturing of the,.gate of the Tuileries, Paris. Lost in admiration of the wonderful art of that . gate I knew not that I was exciting suspicion. Lowering my eyes to the crowds of people I found myself being ! closely inspected by governmental officials, who, from my complexion judged me to be a German, and that from some i belligerent purpose I might be examining the gates of the palace. My explanations in very poor French ! did not satisfy them, and, they followed me long distances until I

reached my hotel, and were not satisfied until from my landlord they found that I was oniy an inoffensive I American. The gates of earthly palaces are carefully guarded, and, if so, how much more severely the throne room. : A dazzling place is it for mirrors and all costly art. No one who ever saw the j throne room oTthe first and only Na--1 poleon will ever forget the lettler N embroidered in purple and gold on the upholstery of chair and window, the letter N chased on the wail, the letter N chased on the chalices, the letter N fiaming from the ceiling. What a conflagration of brilliance the throne room of Charles Immanuel of Sardinia, of ! Ferdinand of Spain, of Elizabeth of | England, of Boniface of Italy. But the j throne room of our Father’s house hath | a glory eclipsing all the throne rooms ■ that saw scepter wave or crown glitter !or foreigh ambassador bow, for our Father’s throne is a throne of grace, a throne of mercy, a throne of justice, a throne es universal dominion. We need not stand shivering and cowering before it, for oar Father says we may yet one day come up and sit on it beBide him. “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne.” You see we are princes and princesses. Another room in our Father's heuse will.be the family room. It may correspond somewhat with the family room on earth. At morning and evenI ing, yon know, that is the place we ' now meet. Though every member of the household have a separate room, in the family room they all gather, and joys and sorrows and experiences of all styles are there rehearsed. Sacred room jin all onr dwellings! Whether it be j luxurious with ottomans and divans and books in Russian lids standing in i mahogany case, or there be onlv a few Elain chairs and a cradle. 'So the imily room on high will be the place where the kinsfolk assemble and talk over the family experiences of earth, th© weddings, the births, the burials, j the festal days of Christmas and Thanksgiving reunion. Will the .children ! departed remain children there? Will the aged remain aged there? Oh, no; every thing is perfect there. The child will goahead to glorified maturity and the aged wiil go back to glorified maturity. The rising sun of the one will rise to meridian and the discending snn of the other will return to meridian. However much we love onr children on earth, we wonld consider it a domestic disaster if they stayed children, and so we rejoiced at their growth here. And when we meet in the family loom of onr Father’s house we will be glad that they have grandly and gloriously matured, while our parents, who were aged and infirm here, we shall be glad to find restored to the most agile ana vigorous Immortality there. If forty or forty-five or fifty years be the apex of physical and mental life on earth, then the heavenly childhood will advance to that, and the heavenly old age will retreat to that How would it do for my sermon to leave you in that family room to-day? I *m sure there is no room in which yon would rather stay than in the enraptnred circle of your ascended and glorified kinsfolk. We might visit other rooms in onr Father’s house. There may be picture galleries penciled, not by earthly art, but by some process unknown in this world, preserving for the next world the brightest and most stupendous scenes of human history. And there may be lines and forms of earthly beauty preserved for heavenly inspection in something whiter and chaster and richer than Venetian sculptor ever wrought. Rooms beside rooms. Rooms over rooms. Large rooms. Majestic rooms, opalescent rooms, amethystine rooms. “In my Father s home are many rooms.” I hope none of us will be disappointed about getting tbpre. There is s room

for us if we will go ana take it, but 1m order to reach it it Is absolutely necessary that we take the right way, and Christ is the way; and we must enter at the right door, and Christ is the door; and we must start in time, and the only hour you. are sure of is the hour tire dock now strikes and the only second the one that your watch is now ticking. I hold in my hand a roll of letters inviting you all to make that your home forever. The New Testament is only a roll of letters inviting you, as the spirit of them practically says: “My dying yet imtnortal child in earthly neighborhood, I have built for you a great residence. It is full of rooms. I have furnished them as no palace was ever furnished. Pear Is are nothing,emeralds are nothing, chryaophrasus is nothing, illumined panels of snnrise and snnset, nothing; the aurora of the northern heavens, nothing—compared with the splendor with which I have garnitured them. Butyoumust be clean before you can enter there, and so I have opened a fountain where yon can wash ail your sins away. Come now! Pat yoar weary but cleansed feet on the upward pathway. Do you not see amid the thick foliage on the heavenly hill tops the old family homestead?” “In my Father’s house are many rooms.”