Many Mansions! # 1

Many Mansions! # 1

"In my Father's house are many mansions." (John 14:2).

The Scriptures give us no information which enables us to determine with certainty what the "many mansions" are, so that we are left exclusively to our own conjectures. I do not think, however, that, if our conjections be not formed in utter regardlessness of what we know, they are likely to be very far wrong; and while we do not wish to invest them with an air of certainty, or induce you to receive them as the truth, they may nevertheless tend to exalt your conceptions of, and increase your interest in, Heaven, by showing you what, so far as man can judge, Heaven may be.

From the changing position of our sun in relation to the fixed stars, as they are called, the supposition have been entertained and expressed by astronomers, that as the earth with its moon, and other planets with their satellites, move around the sun, so the sun with its planets, and other suns with their planets, are moving around some other world which is the center of the universe.

If there is such a world, it must be incomparably vast in its dimensions to sustain the revolution of so many suns and systems many times larger, in all probability, than all the worlds combined; and it has been suggested that this may be Heaven that there the glorified body of the Saviour may have taken up its station as the head of all principalities and powers; that there the grandeur of the Deity, the glory of His natural and moral perfections, may strike the mind with more bright effulgence, and excite more elevated emotions of admiration and rapture than in any other province of universal nature; that this vast and splendid central world may constitute that august mansion referred to in Scripture under the designation of the third Heaven, the throne of the Eternal, the Heaven of heavens, the light that is inaccessible and full of glory.k

Now, supposing this suggestion to be true, it would afford a good interpretation of the language, "In my Father's house ae many mansions." Regarding that world as the Father's house of which the Saviour speaks, within its vast limits there would be space enough to admit of mansions sufficient for a number of inhabitants far beyond the power of arithmetic to compute a number more equal to what the boldest mind and the largest heart have thought of as constituting the population of Heaven.

But while this would admit of a fair interpretation of the words, I see no reason for regarding Heaven as confined to one locality or one world, however vast, and however glorious. There appears to me good reason for supposing that Heaven will extend throughout the universe of holy worlds, that is, every world into which sin has not entered, or from which it has been expelled.

Prior to the entrance of sin into this world man enjoyed during the brief morning of his life something like Heaven upon earth. We always speak of the paradisiacal state as something closely akin to Heaven, as a first lower stage of heavenly enjoyment, and of the garden in which the first pair dwelt as a kind of outward heavenly temple; else why speak of them as dwelling in "paradise," when the Saviour applies that term to the glory into which he entered and to which He raises the believer after death?

Now, on the supposition, which we do not think unreasonable, that other worlds are peopled with sinless intelligences, the conclusion cannot be easily avoided that they experience a similar or a superior happiness to that which Adam enjoyed in his state of innocence; that as in Eden, so throughout the different provinces of God's dominions, around whatever suns they move, and in whatever relations they stand the light of Heaven shines there, the calm of Heaven prevails there, and the happiness of Heaven is experienced there.

The very magnitude of creation appears to me to demand this conclusion. When we think of the thousands of worlds, some of them so immense in magnitude, which the naked eye sees sparkling in our own heavens; when we consider that these are but a fraction, compared with those which the telescope reveals, and that even these dwindle into insignificance compared with the myriads which people those fields of immensity into which the eye never penetrated; when we think that, as compared with the universe, this earth is but a single leaf compared to the multitudes that cover the trees of the forest, or as one grain of sand compared to the vast accumulations that belt the ocean waves; when we consider that were the space that lies within the limites of our solar system to become one mass of light, there are parts of creation so distant that, to a spectator placed there, that immense mass of light would be no greater than some of the least brilliant stars appear to us yes, that there are worlds in which, though the mass of light were suddenly extinguished, the event would be unnoticed and unknown; when we think of this, it is difficult to conceive, I think, that that immense creation isa desolate waste; that those numberless worlds are so many unpeopled solitudes, that they have been created for no higher purpose than to roam in silent grandeur through the spheres, at best splendid toys for the gratification of a few favored creatures, or as a home of beings who can render God no intelligent adoration, or to people regions which lie far beyond the range of creature's cognizance.

~W. Landells~

(continued with # 2)