See whether, in proportion as you trust Christ more, you become not, in yourself, happier, holier, stronger, gentler. And here is love again. )Heaven the Christian's homeJ. But for sin, however, we might never have known, in this world, the sublime Triunity of God. And we cannot help wondering how they are all to be provided for!II. What he promised is just as sure as if I had it in my hand." Now, he can add the sufferings of his father to their charge sheet. Not distinct cells, but —(1) That there is room enough for many. Here, too, is His love; "If it were not so, He would have told them." Faith in God. By and by men will be looking back and wondering that we so poorly understood the gospel, overlaying it, some of us with ritual, others with dogma. "Do I love the Lord, or no?" If Christendom were only Christian really, how much longer would China probably be Confucian? Standing without you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendour.(Bp. His hearers were about to be launched into a lifelong service, and their last necessity was absolute, child-like faith.I. You cannot eliminate the fact that Christ claimed as His own the emotions of the heart, to which only God has a right and which only God can satisfy.4. In these times of daring denial and of timid doubt it is well to be reminded that in the great crises of life — poverty, bereavement, affliction — denial is mockery and doubt is impotence, and that only an honest and hearty belief will secure sufficient solace. These facts disturb our impression of the Divine holiness. "Men seem unwilling to be without troubleMen do not avail themselves of the riches of God's grace. Thus it may be that sorrows shall turn to riches; for heart troubles, in God's husbandry, are not wounds, but the putting in of the spade before the planting of seeds.(H. Don't be unduly troubled about earthly things. It isn't true;" but the moment you leave the mind under the gracious influence of such a scene it rises above the sphere of doubt or proof, and he says, "I accept it."(H. OF HOPE. (c)And so turn them to thy gain (2 Corinthians 4:17). As her editors note, one of this text’s curiosities is that Elizabeth interprets Boethius’s temeritas and its cognates as connoting “rashness”. He saw his mistake. Christ brings us near to God as an object of knowledge. All that the boat could do to me could not keep down the exultation and joy which rose up in me. When Tyndall was walking among the clouds during a sunset upon the Alps his companion said to him, "can you behold such a sublime scene as this and not feel that there is a God?" So it is with us for the most part: every trifle, every profit, every bauble, every matter of pleasure, every delight, is enough to divert and turn aside our thoughts from death, from home, from heaven, from our God; and we are taken up and lose ourselves, I know not where.(R. then for the first time men dared to think of death as a going home. He could not countenance a delusion. If it were possible to enter heaven and find no Father there, heaven would be the grave of hope.2. Julius Caesar, along with Troilus and Cressida the play that is in all respects closest to Hamlet, even shows Shakespeare the professional man-­of-­the-­theatre cracking some wry jokes about them. "(3) If we think of its extent and variety, our imagination might be bewildered, and our soul chilled by boundless fields of knowledge, which stir the intellect and famish the heart; but where He is, knowledge becomes the wisdom of love — the daylight softened; and a heart beats in the universe which throbs to its remotest and minutest fibre; for "in Him is life, and the life is the light of men. Heaven is a home. For every single hour was carrying me nearer and nearer to the spot where was all that I loved in the world. That is what the comforts which the world supplies may fairly be likened to. There is a singular tone about all our Lord's few references to the future — a tone of decisiveness. (4) Losses and crosses? Let us think of the dwelling of the child, where it looks from its little window on the few houses or fields which make up its world, and then let us compare it with what the man knows of his present world residence, when he has surveyed with his eye or his mind the breadth of the earth with its oceans and lands that stretch over continents by Alps and Andes. But in considering Hamlet, the status of humankind as a rational and therefore moral animal is key. Note in these words —I. His portrait resembles a diseased husk (i.e., ear) of wheat, barley or corn, infecting Old Hamlet’s portrait with its blight. When Seneca is trying to console a lady who is suffering agonies of mind under a severe bereavement, he can only suggest to her that she had better try as soon as possible to forget her trouble. It is really as though He had said, "Heaven won't be a complete home to Me till you are there, and I am sure it will not be to you till I am there; we must be together."2. THE WAYS WHEREBY WE MUST LABOUR TO COMFORT OUR HEARTS.1. "I thank thee for thy question. But no! Of course the answer is that belief may be real and yet wholly ineffective. BELIEVE ALSO IN ME.1. The thought of it has proved a sevenfold shield to virtue: the very name of it has been a spell to call back the wanderer from the paths of vice. I could see nothing. It is from such changes that the promise of Christ carries us to a fixed place of abode. "Home" — oh, how sweet is that word! Inferentially a proof of Christ's Divinity. Shall we dare, we the guilty and helpless ones, to say that, with nothing but poor human tears and cries and paltry efforts, the stain of sin can be wiped out? Whole communions apostatize. Here we are strangers — it may be, perhaps, surrounded by enemies; there all is love. thought the gentleman, who knew that his father's home was but a poor mud cottage. Now whilst this shows the love of Christ to His people, the simple fact of His going to prepare a place for us you see involves too His knowledge of our love to Him. WHAT PROMISES ARE WE TO TRUST TO? Christ was not manifested when those thoughts of eternal fulness glowed and throbbed in the big heart of David. )My Father's houseJ. We have to take that into account if we would estimate the character of Jesus Christ as a teacher and as a man. After giving up on the prospect of sleep, Hamlet dresses himself and goes to look for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Take your sop, Judas, and be gone. And they had reason to be. For now, what can be said without fear of contradiction is that there has been little agreement as to what Hamlet’s soliloquy is actually about: numerous candidates have been proposed, including suicide, murder, mortality (general), mortality (Hamlet’s), and revenge. Next, Christ says He would have told us if there had been no heaven. Observe, there is a two-fold reception which Christ will give us — first, that which we may call our personal reception in heaven; and next that public, glorious reception that He will give us at the last great day, when He shall come a second time without sin unto salvation.V. A peculiar, most tranquillizing revelation of the heaven to which He is going — "a place." Hence Philip's request. Death, as a natural event, always seems so. There are those, even among Christian people who confide to us, in the tone of sincere and humble regret — "I cannot see why a Saviour was needed. The word of the Saviour promises a reversal of this long, sad history. More Pentecosts than one have come already. (b)Why (Hebrews 12:10). Beyond making use of his well-­honed imagination, might not the Ghost also have followed the advice of the handbooks in turning to poetry and drama when making his narration as visually expressive as possible? In the present world the children of God are far apart, separated by the emergencies of life, by death, by misunderstandings and prejudices, by chills of heart and jealousies; and they rear their many little mansions, forgetful of the one house. Porteous. One day her difficulty was greater than she could bear, and she sat down with a feeling of hopelessness, and allowed her tears to flow unchecked. No limitation is suggested by the indefinite plural, "many." Conclusion: The love of heaven has been derided by some as a selfish passion. CHRIST ABIDES AND BECOMES HEAVEN TO US. Christ points to the old well of comfort — a firm belief in one ever-living God. Yet the moment we came into still water I rose from my berth and got up on deck. But the place to which we were going was my home; there was my family; there was my church; there were my friends, who were as dear to me as my own life. (2) We do dishonour to God, mistaking His goodness, murmuring at tits providence, wronging His graciousness and nursing a rebellious pride. (1)We cannot ignore it. All shall be alike in respect of —(a)Their freedom from evil (Revelation 21:4). This refusal to the "one" was a blow to "the many." "That where I am there ye may be also." We venture to dispute the very fact taken for granted. The variety existing in God's works here is one of the principal charms of the natural world. THESE MANSIONS ARE CONVENIENT AND SUITABLE —1. We would not, I think, be stretching a point to conclude that Shakespeare is having some fun here. Polonius proposes to use Ophe­lia to flush Hamlet’s purportedly romantic agony into the open.