Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/236

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

ing for, a peaceful and happy home. To say of any man that he is homeless, is to picture him as forlorn and desolate, an exile and a wanderer, not yet having reached the goal of his earthly hopes.

Now, God has implanted no deep want in the human breast without providing for its gratification. As a wise and beneficent Being, he must provide for the ultimate satisfaction of every desire which his own boundless love has placed within us. And this universal desire for a home, is one which belongs to the soul's nature. It is rooted in our spiritual constitution,—so deeply rooted, too, that we may be sure it will not perish with the death of the body. And when we consider that this desire increases rather than diminishes in strength as we advance in the regenerate life, or approximate the heavenly state, how can we resist the conclusion that it will exist in heaven also, and be even stronger there than here?

And if this universal desire for a home goes with us into the other world (as it must, if it belongs to our spiritual constitution), we may be sure that the Lord, in the plenitude of his love and wisdom, will not fail to provide for its gratification in heaven. For the angels would be unhappy, and heaven would be no heaven to them, if, endowed with an intense longing for a home, the means and opportunity of satisfying this thirst were denied them.

The conclusion, therefore, is forced upon us, that there are and must be homes in heaven, as there are in all the best and happiest portions of earth.

But the moment we think of the angels as having homes, we think of them as dwelling in houses,—so inti-