I shall not stop to point out what a wreck our common Christianity would be if there were no future life of blessedness for the Christian. In contemplating such a possibility, the apostle Paul exclaims: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." _We_: for we have expected heaven; the fair vision has been put before us as a great hope, and we lose in proportion to what we thought we had gained. _We_: for we have prepared for it, through a life--in many instances a _long_ life--of self discipline, of loyalty to God, of the mortification of sin, of the cultivation of goodness. _We_: for we have suffered for it, sometimes directly through ills endured for Christ's sake, and always indirectly by the sacrifice of that which the world distinctively calls its own, and on which it sets its supreme regard. Our Christianity has promised this heaven to us; and the promise has enhanced many an earthly joy, and charmed away many an earthly sorrow. No heaven? Then we have been shamefully deceived--miserably disappointed; and there is no hope for us any more! But no! The words of the great consolation are sounding still, and we can trust them: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: _if it were not so, I would have told you_. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also." It is one of the characteristic glories of the Bible that it meets the renewed heart's desires in regard to the future, by revealing, not only the fact of the future, but also some of its resplendent mysteries; so that, after taking man through the several stages of his progress on earth, it conducts him at last to the heaven of his hopes, the home of the good. Perhaps no Scripture disclosure of Heaven is more wonderful, more complete, more entrancing than the one we have in the vision of the apostle John as recorded in the verses before us. True, it is put before us, like the other revelations of this book, in poetical and pictorial form. Nevertheless, the spiritual teaching is sufficiently plain. Let us seek the help of that good Spirit by whom John was inspired, whilst we try to learn something of that which is revealed to us in this chapter. In the light of it we see an innumerable multitude of persons who, having travelled this world in trial and in sorrow, are now before the throne of God, safe in the heaven of the redeemed.