d with
fellowship with the blessed Lord, that, whether present or absent, you
will live together with Him. It is the man who is really filled with
the Spirit of God who can follow Jesus, as Peter afterward did, to
prison and to death, who can drink of the cup of which He drank, and be
baptized with the baptism with which He was baptized.

"Why should I fear?" asked Basil, of the Roman prefect. "Nothing you
have spoken of has any effect upon me. He that hath nothing to lose is
not afraid of _confiscation_. You cannot banish me, for the earth is
the Lord's. As to _torture_, the first stroke would kill me, and _to
kill me is to send me to glory_."

IV

"Many Mansions"

"I go to prepare a place for you."--JOHN xiv. 2.

The cure for heart-trouble, when the future is full of dread, is
faith--faith directed to Jesus; and just such faith as we give God, for
He is God. He has shown Himself well worthy of that trust; all His
paths toward us have been mercy and truth; and we may therefore safely
rest upon His disclosures of that blessed life, of which the present is
the vestibule. "Let not your heart be troubled," He says, "ye believe
in God, believe also in Me." Or it might be rendered, "Believe in God,
believe also in Me."

Let us listen to Him, as He discourses of the Father's house and its
many mansions.

_Heaven is a home._--"My Father's house." What magic power lies in
that word! It will draw the wanderer from the ends of the earth; will
nerve the sailor, soldier, and explorer with indomitable endurance;
will bring a mist of tears to the eyes of the hardened criminal, and
soften the heart of stone. One night in the trenches of the Crimea the
bands played "Home, sweet Home," and a great sob went through the army.

But what makes home home? Not the mere locality or building; but the
dear ones that lived there once, now scattered never to be reunited,
only one or two of whom are still spared. It was father's house,
though it was only a shepherd's shieling; he dwelt there, and mother,
and our brothers and sisters. And where they dwell, or where wife and
child dwell, there is home.

Such is Heaven. Think of a large family of noble children, of all
ages, from the little child to the young man beginning his business
career, returning after long severance to spend a season together in
the old ancestral home, situated in its far-reaching grounds, and you
can form some idea of what it will be, when t