How freely God has given us this great blessing! His air is all around us, as is His presence. When people wish to speak of what belongs to everyone alike they sometimes say, "It's as free as the air you breathe"--this wonderful air, which we cannot see, but which helps to make the sky so blue, without which no fire could burn, no robin sing to its mate, no lamb bleat after its mother, no merry voices of boys and girls at play be heard. God has indeed made it free to us; but let us never forget that we are, as His creatures, dependent upon Him for every breath we draw. Now while we speak of the way in which this world was created by God, and fitted to become the dwelling-place of His creatures, we may remember how the Lord Jesus spoke to His disciples, after He had told them that He would be only a little while with them, about the place He was going to prepare for them. This reminds me of a little incident which I should like to tell you, because it is so beautiful to know that the Lord of glory, who was allowed no place here, He who "Wandered as a homeless stranger, In the world His hands had made," has indeed gone to prepare a place for those whom He has, by His death and resurrection, made ready to dwell there. In a quiet market-town in the North of England an aged Christian had invited a number of those of whom our Lord says, "whensoever ye will ye may do them good," to take tea with him and his friends. After they had enjoyed what loving hands had made ready, their host took out God's book, and turning to the second verse of the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel, read it, and then said, "It comes to me in this way, dear friends: If our Lord is preparing a place, He wants a prepared people." He then went on to say that we all need preparing, that is making ready, to dwell in the place of which the Lord Jesus Christ spoke as "My Father's house"--the place which was always His own home--and then he told once again the story which you have so often heard-- "... the old, old story Of Jesus and His love." The Lord often spoke to His own disciples about His Father. He said, "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father," and when He spoke of leaving them He said, "If ye loved Me ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father." But we know that those who had been with their Master for so long did not rejoice when He spoke of going away: their hearts were filled with sorrow. When He said to them, "Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," Thomas replied; "Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?" What did the Lord say? He said that He was Himself the way to the Father--"I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me."