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Conference meetings this afternoon form part of the extended meetings of the weekend, in which, for my part, I am considering with you those lessons on sanctification that our Lord taught us in John's Gospel, chapter thirteen to sixteen. On our last occasion, we had considered in detail our Lord's handing of the sop to Judas. We had seen therein our Lord's exposure of human sin in its darkest colors. We had noticed how important it is that we should take Christ's diagnosis of sin seriously, if we would make genuine progress in the school of holiness. No man will really come to grips with increasing holiness unless he is prepared seriously to consider that spiritual disease from which he basically suffers. And therefore, our Lord took the occasion, by his deliberate providence, to give us this startling diagnosis of sin in the person of Judas the traitor, that we might see every human heart writ large. Judas' sin, we discovered, was his willingness to take all the gifts that Christ had to give him, including at last, uh, including his friendship for three years, and then at last, taking the gifts, reject the giver. We saw also, however, that in our Lord's exposure of Judas' sin, he himself and God at the same time were glorified. For our Lord exposed this terrible attitude of heart in Judas, not by some withering denunciation, but by the genuine offer, repeated and renewed, of his personal friendship. As he deliberately took the sop and in Eastern fashion and with Eastern significance, handed it to Judas, offering him once more the friendship that his treachery was forsaking. We saw how that was, in fact, the message of Calvary. God in Christ saying to a world that was prepared to take God's gifts and reject God himself, God himself saying that he loved them yet, and that his response to such an attitude was but to offer his friendship once more. Never was human sin seen in darker light than at Calvary. Never was God's character seen more glorious than in Calvary. But now notice, will you, that when Judas had gone out, Christ not only said that his, uh, giving of the salt to Judas was a thing that glorified him and his father, but he forthwith and immediately announced his own resurrection and ascension. And God shall glorify him in himself and shall straightway glorify him. He was referring, of course, to our Lord's resurrection and ascension. I want us to begin here and to consider the significance of our Lord's ascension in this context. He had loved Judas to the end, to the very brink of hell, and Judas had betrayed him to his enemies and to the cross. In what kind of spirit do you think, uh, Christ got up and moved to that cross? Well, the answer is with absolute triumph. God shall immediately glorify me, he said. There was no broken-hearted, down-in-the-mouth figure, but one quite exultant. He shall immediately glorify me. From which we perceive the nature of the love of Christ. We do well to perceive it because now he tells us that we have to learn to love each other as he has loved us. That will mean that we must be prepared to love when other people trample on our love, when other people are ungrateful for our love. We must prepare, be prepared for people to take all we give them and find that they have no gratitude to us and still keep on love. And you say that's a fool's job to love like that, to love and get no response. Oh, but Christ didn't feel it was a fool's job. He loved in the certainty that God would immediately raise him from the dead and glorify him. You'll say Christ's love, heroic if you like, was not stupid, nor was it masochistic. He wasn't a somebody that gloried in being downtrodden underfoot, being slighted and hurt so that he could creep away into a corner and lick his wounds and somewhat enjoy being stamped on. This figure of our blessed Lord is an exceedingly healthy psychological figure. He could afford to love Judas, because he was persuaded in his heart that God would forthwith and immediately answer Judas' treachery by raising him to his right hand. What had he lost through loving Judas? So in this context, let us lay hold once more of the certainty of our Lord's resurrection and ascension. You see, if Christ is not risen, then perhaps Judas did in the end get the best of the bargain. He got all that Christ gave him, money bags and all. He got what the, uh, Pharisees and scribes gave him. He made his pile of money. And if Christ's body be still rotting in the grave, then perhaps Judas got the best of the bargain. And it was a pity that he lost his head and lost his nerve and went and committed suicide. For we can't afford to be sentimental in this attitude to life. If Christ be no risen, if be be not risen, if there is no resurrection, if this life is all and the grave ends all. Well, in the end, you needn't be too squeamish about treading down the other fellow and being ungrateful and taking all you can get. For in the end, if the grave ends all and you've had a jolly good time, and you've just used people, well, you've had a good time. And the other four chap that you've used and stamped on, well, he's in the grave now. Well, what about that? He's dead. Ah, but if Christ be risen, then Judas had a very sorry bargain indeed. He got his thirty pieces of silver, to be sure, but now has God demonstrated that the friendship he rejected is not the friendship merely of a carpenter from Nazareth with a few bright ideas on ethics. It is the friendship of God's son and heir of all things, and thirty pieces of silver beside that is a very poor bargain. Do not mistake me, the pains of Calvary were beyond description, beyond our measure. But oh, tell me, what has Christ lost by loving Judas, by loving you, by loving me, when God honored that love and glorified him at his right hand? Here I perceive an insight into the very heart, I nearly said the psychology of Christ. Where did he get his tremendous strength from to love men like that? I speak with due reverence. He got that strength in his unshakable faith, in the reliability of God, that God would honor him. So be it. He honored God and glorified God and told out the love of God and loved like God loves. Then he was persuaded that God wouldn't leave him in that tomb, but would honor him, vindicate him, glorify him, and set him at God's right hand. Have I got to follow his example and love like he loves? And I must make up my mind what I think about God. Because loving like Christ loves is costly here and now, isn't it? Will God vindicate me? Can I afford to love? Oh, but if he's going to glorify me along with Christ. Then suppose those I love are ungrateful and give me nothing back in return. Suppose ins- instead of my love for them, they spitefully slander me. Oh, it's hurtful, isn't it? But my good brother, what have you lost in the end? If God's going to glorify you, you can afford, can't you? You can afford to love like Christ. You know, loving is not just a thing that comes suddenly spouting up from within our hearts, a kind of an emotion. Loving as Christ loves is a deliberate, intentional, calculated thing, for all its worth. He loved in the firm conviction that God was about to compensate him and glorify him. And it would seem that as Peter listened to all this, Peter's ideas began to advance. He had now received this stunning revelation of the evil of a human heart that could take Christ's gifts and have no time for Christ, and began to perceive, dimly maybe, that true holiness is the contrary. It is devotion to a person. It is devotion to Christ. And he heard Christ saying, I'm going away, and you can't follow me. Why can't I follow you, Lord, he said? Do you know I'm so devoted to you? I would, I would go anywhere with you. I would lay down my life for you, Lord. Why can't I follow you? He meant it well. Now, these were the early days for Peter in the school of God's holiness. And Peter was yet unaware of that fateful weakness within his personality. His holiness, his true holiness, devotion to the person of Christ. Oh, thank God, if God has stirred in our own hearts that sense, yes, and I want to be devoted to him. I really mean it. Oh, thank God. These are the beginnings of the workings of his Holy Spirit. But let us take this example seriously. Hidden may be in many of us who are younger, the older ones have found it out already. There are weaknesses of personality that will open up great chasms, seemingly, between us and Christ. The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied me thrice. Then, having said that to Peter, there follows, at least in our Bibles, there follows a remark of our Lord which comes with... marvelous comfort. I can't guarantee to you that this was in fact the next sentence that Christ uttered in the upper room, but it is the next sentence as John was inspired to put it down, you shall deny me thrice, let not your heart be troubled. Now, of course, our Lord wasn't saying that, uh, we needn't be disturbed about our shortcomings. They are serious enough. There's heartbreak enough in them. But what he was about to say is this: if true holiness, Peter, is a matter of devotion to me, personal devotion to me, following me through thick and thin, being with me, then Peter. Oh, thanks be to God for your desire to follow me, but your desire by itself, Peter, would be woefully inadequate. But I have made provision for you, so that your heart needn't be troubled. But poor old Peter. There was this weakness, but you know, if Peter had been perfect, how could he possibly have followed Christ of his own steam where Christ was going? Christ, in going away, was not merely moving his house in Palestine, but he was going to the Father's house on high. Had Peter been absolutely perfect, how could he have followed him there? Now hear the wonder. If holiness is attachment and devotion to the person of Christ, hear Christ's provision. I'm going to settle it, Peter. Doubts and fears and everything that you may have, Peter, I want to tell you, I'm going to do a something that will guarantee that you will be with me. Listen. In my father's house are many abiding places. Peter would have heard that phrase before, wouldn't he? His father's house. Our Lord had described the temple like that. Make not my father's house a house of merchandise. And in that temple where God himself dwelt, on that sacred ground, where all was devoted to God, where the very pots in the temple were sacred, the very utensils in which the flour was cooked was sacred, the wood that was burned on the sacrifice was sacred because it was God's house. In that house, there were many chambers around the house, weren't there? Where the priests on duty could live. So that they might be uninterruptedly, uninterrupted in their service for God. When they were on their course, they could live there. There were many abiding places in his father's house on earth. In a deeper and truer sense, in the father's home on high, in the father's house on high, there are many abiding places. And I go to prepare an abiding place for you, and if I go, I come again to take you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Permanently and eternally. In the house of the Father, ever serving him, ever devoted to him. In one of the lovely descriptions of that great temple, that great tabernacle that yet shall be, there is this phrase of the redeemed, his servants shall serve him. And how may I get there, you say? And how can I secure that I shall be there, eternally there, always serving him, never to go out? I and Peter and the likes of us, or here upon what it rests, I go to prepare the place for you. And if I go, I will come again, and I shall receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also. Oh, what a lovely lesson in the school of God's holiness. We start too quickly, who think of our responsibility. Why, brethren, if it had depended upon us, we should have been lost long since. I have entitled this series Christ the Overcomer in the fight for our sanctification. I trust I show you not without reason. On him it rests. He has prepared, is preparing the place he shall come and take us to him. But then the conversation moved on. On. With Whither our I go, said our Lord, you know the way. I wonder, did he have a twinkle in his eye, like the very good teacher he was? He didn't know the way, of course. He knew they didn't know the way. But it is remarkable, you know, how, um, congregations and lecture rooms and so on will look as if they did understand when they don't. And we may be grateful that in the upper room that night with our Lord were some very honest men, who, if they didn't understand what he meant, said so. We're not content just to use and repeat pious phrases and not quite sure what they meant, but they sounded good. And whither I go, you know, don't you? said Christ. I expect there was a pause. You know the way, don't you? Thomas said, no, in matter of fact, we don't know the way. In fact, we don't even know where you're going. Where are you going? How on earth should we know the way there if we don't know where you're going? Do you know the way? Do you know the way to the Father's house? How'd you get there? Now, obviously, we can't think in crude terms, a space flight or something like that, can we? It's not sort of up from Cambridge, two hundred million light years, and turn to the left. No, you say, but uh, oh, no, no, fancy you're saying like that, so we've got beyond that stage. Isn't it a state? Isn't heaven a state? I mean, it's not a place at all. Oh. Oh, not so quick. I fancy there'll be some traveling to do to get there. But did you notice how our Lord speaks about things, as we shall presently see, he said, the Father is in me, as he sat at the table. As he sat very much on terra firma, on that table on earth, he could say, the Father is in me. And his nearness and fellowship with the Father absolutely uninterrupted. The Father was in him. A heaven on earth, you say. Oh, but in the very next breath he said, yes, but you see, I have to go to the Father, and I'm leaving you presently, and I am going to the Father. How could the Father be already in him, and yet... he had come from the Father and had got to go back to the Father, and when he went to the Father, he wouldn't be with us anymore. I myself can only solve that by saying, yes, I can't explain to you, certainly not in terms of geography or astrophysics, where the Father's house is, but I do believe it has objective reality. I believe our Lord did ascend and left this world and went. How should we describe it? We don't know. But I think the Father's house is something more than a state to be experienced. I'm glad Thomas said he didn't know, because it gave the Lord a time, uh, opportunity to explain, and if you notice, when our Lord starts to explain, he slightly rephrases the situation, doesn't he? He said, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one cometh unto... and he didn't say unto the Father's house except by me, did he? He said, no one cometh unto the Father but by me. Surely I'm not splitting hairs when I say there's a difference between coming to the Father's house and coming to the father. You see, it would be possible, wouldn't it, for you to be invited to some, to the house of some grandee here in the city, and you to come to his house and be ushered to his table by liveried servants, and you all dressed up in your very Sunday best, and to be sat at his table and to receive of his benefit, and yet not get anywhere near the heart of the Grandee himself, and come away without even knowing him. And you know, it won't be enough to go to heaven, will it? Oh, I know you're thinking in terms of golden streets and whatnot, but you know, it's extraordinary how easily you can get used to that kind of thing. Driving on tar macadam is can be, you know, a bit rough. Drive on gold for, for a year or so, and you'll soon get used to it. It ain't going to be the things that make heaven heaven, is it? But to find yourself in heaven and not really near the Father, in terms of friendship, that wouldn't be heaven. It's a matter then not only of finding our way to the Father's house, but finding our way to the Father. How does a man come to the Father? We need to know that because if holiness be devotion to God, be devotion to a person, then it's to the Father we must come. Our Lord then said three things. He said, I am the way. No man cometh to the Father but by me. I am the truth. No man cometh to the Father but by me. And then he spent the rest of this chapter expounding what he meant. I am the way to the Father. In what sense? Oh, well, he said, um, you see, if you had known me, you would have known the Father. That's the sense in which I'm the way to the Father. You want to find your way to the Father? Come to me. And from henceforth, you have seen him, and you know him. Now that is a point, said Thomas, I said Philip. I was thinking, Lord, just as you said that, I was thinking, look, uh, that would save a lot of theological and difficult argument. Look, why don't you show us the Father here and now? A- and that would be the end of everything, wouldn't I? I mean, then we should understand. Show us the Father. That's an idea, Lord. But Philip, he said, what do you mean, show us the Father? Have I been such a long time with you and you haven't seen me and haven't known me? I'm telling you that if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. You don't believe me? Well now, Philip, he said, you've seen me do some works, haven't you? Some marvelous miracles. Tell me, Philip, how do you think I do these miracles? You've watched me do them down these years. You've watched seen me feed the thousand, raise the dead. How do you think I do these miracles? Let me tell you, Philip, this is the secret of them. The, uh, works, the words that I say unto you, I speak not from myself, but the Father abiding in me, he doth his works. That's how it's done, Philip. All these years I've been with you, now you've been sleeping with me, haven't you, in the same house, and I've slept in your boat, and we've traveled together, and Philip, it didn't ever dawn on you before that as you traveled alongside me, you were right alongside the Father. What'll God be like, you say, when I see him? What's he like as a person? How may I find my way to him and get to know him? And the answer comes back from Christ, he like me, because he dwells in me and does his works through me. The way to the Father, and they had been thinking it was a long way out through space and out into the outer blue. And that night they found that heaven was just across the table. The Father. In Christ. What do you imagine heaven's going to be? Sort of a Buckingham Palace, a thousand times improved? Antique furniture and all that? Heaven, the person you'll meet there, is the kind of person Jesus was. Ah, no, no, no, I got it wrong. It is Jesus. It's the kind of company we're going to. But now he had to leave them, so that he has something even more marvelous to say. I've got to go, he said, but verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me the works that I do, he shall do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go to the Father. Oh? So we may learn to live as Christ lived and do as he did. How is that? It shall come about this way, says Christ, that whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. Now, you know these verses have caused a lot of folks a good deal of frustration. And we must be honest with ourselves, mustn't we? People have found these promises made by the Lord, and they have said, look, let's take them at their face value, and they have asked and asked, and sometimes they have had answers to their prayers, and sometimes they haven't. And then they said, you know, I asked and asked, but I didn't get any answer. Does it really work? What does the verse mean? The blank check that we can ask any old thing and God will do it? No, indeed not. And please let us read it in its context. The whole point of this exercise, says Christ, why you may ask in my name and I will do what you ask. The point of the exercise is this, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. While I was on earth, I did these marvelous works. What for? That the Father might be glorified. I did it to show what God was like. Now Christ is gone. Now Jesus is gone. I say, is God still the same? Or was that, uh, thirty three years just a flash in a pan when God, I say it reverently, got a little bit excited more than usual and did some extra miracles, and now has, uh, got tired of it and stopped doing it. I tell you, if God could change character, then heaven would cease to be heaven. For the first week might be good, and then he... Why, if God could change character, then it might all go down and God get tired of the whole show. No, says Christ, I shall see to it after I've gone, that there will be these demonstrations that God is still the same as I have shown him to be. And you may ask in my name, and God will do. I shall do it, that the Father still may be glorified in the Son, that God is still as Jesus said God was, as Jesus demonstrated God to be. Ask in my name. Yes, ask as he asked. And you will observe from the very elementary reading of the gospel narrative that, uh, Christ's request. He didn't ask for the world to be converted, not that we read of, did he? He didn't cure every leper. In fact, he himself made the contrary observation. He said to the people at Nazareth, did he not? There were many lepers, you know, in the days of Elisha the Syrian. None of them was, uh, cleansed except Naaman, and, uh, gentlemen, you take the point, please. There are very few lepers cleansed in Nazareth, I might tell you. Christ didn't ask for just any old thing. That isn't the point of the exercise. When he saw that the name of God could be glorified thereby, then he asked. Still today is it true. And Christ shall see that such prayers are answered, that God's character might be demonstrated as a constant. Happy the people that thus prove the Father, for they are taking heaven on the road home to heaven with them. I am the way to the Father, then, in that sense. If you want to come to the Father, you come to me. I am the truth, said he, no one comes to the Father except by me. In consequence, if you love me, you will keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another comforter that he may be with you forever, even the spirit of truth. I will give you the Spirit of truth. You see, I am the truth. You can't come to the Father except by me, and therefore I shall send you and give you the Spirit of truth that he may be with you, for he abideth with you, and he shall be in you. Why do I need the Spirit of truth if I'm going to come to the Father? Well, because as a natural man, my mind is full of the most curious ideas about God, and some of them slanderous ideas about God. Ignorance is pos- is responsible for some of those ideas, and Satan, Satan slanders for a good many more. And you know, as a Christian of thirty uh years and more, thirty five years, you know, I still find on times I've got very funny ideas about the Father. I'm all right in meetings like this, particularly when the singing's good. I think God's marvelous, but you put me a day in very bad pain, and I'm not so sure about the Father. Well, I ought to be. Because it's a very serious thing not to be, the Bible tells me that I must not murmur as some of them murmured. Oh, I know that. But you see, if you carry on the difficult circumstance long enough, I start saying why, and I can't understand it. And that does but show that somewhere deep down inside me, I'm not quite so sure of the Father, that he really is doing something sensible that I can trust him in, and doing something loving that I may praise him for. Sin has marred me, you know. And oh, it wouldn't be a good thing perhaps to take me straight to heaven right now, to the Father's house, because I should be marching around on the streets of gold, but not quite sure about the occupant of the house. They tell me that when I get home to heaven, I shan't need faith anymore. Isn't that a curious idea? I get into trouble wherever I go for saying it, but you know, we shall need faith in heaven. Of course we shall. Oh, it is true that in a good many things, faith will be unnecessary because we shall see, but you put it to yourself the other way round. Will you have liberty when you get home to heaven to distrust God? Will you be at liberty not to believe in him? Suppose you're doing a development job for God in Alpha Centauri, ten thousand light years from now. Some scheme God has on. Won't you have to trust his wisdom and his way of doing it implicitly? Of course you will. Heaven will be heaven, because then we shall know God and understand him and be willing to trust him even where we can't understand. And don't let's imagine the moment we get to heaven, we're going to understand all there is to be known about God, for heaven would be a dreary place then. We shall never be infinite, shall we? There'll always be something more about God, by very definition. We shan't be infinite. And the fact that there always remains something more about God will mean that we shall have to trust God, eternally trust him. Between now and then, somehow Christ has got to get in under my doubts, my neuroses, and all those other strange notions I've got, and he's got to tell me the very truth about the Father. Oh, I remember being in Scotland. The dear brother there who works in a home for unwanted children and takes the Sunday school for them told me of one case where, as he went into the room, the nurse had a child in the reception center, and the child, as he soon as he saw this big bulky Scotsman, cried his eyes out. Well, perhaps that's true of Scotsmen, I don't know. But, uh, there was a tragic case to this. He had to go out, and when at last they got the child pacified and away, the nurse explained, you see, she said, sir, this little lad's father used to beat him with a red hot poker. When at last the child did talk to him, he says, my dad, uh, he burns me. And there are people that feel like that about God, you know. Life has been hard, and they think of God as a monster. How to clear away and get the true picture of what God really is? Well, thank God it's more than facts and information. You know, the facts and information coming from without would be filtered by my queer ideas inside, and they would get perverted. And so, in his mercy, that I might come to the Father really close and nestled in his bosom, unafraid and trustful. He gives me the spirit of truth within to get underneath it all and gradually through it all, that I might learn God as God really is. I shall not leave you comfortless, I come to you. Not now in the sense of coming again, but in his when he shall come to take us home, but constantly come. You see, he said, no man comes to the Father except by me. You see, I am the life. No man comes to the Father except by me. If you would enjoy God and come to God, then the secret is to have the same life as God. How will a dog understand a man? It is only a child that will understand the Father. He must have the same life, and that life must be maintained and grow. No one comes to the Father except I give him life to come. And I shall not leave you orphans. I come, and because I live, you shall go on living. He gave a beautiful demonstration of that, didn't he? As tired and weary men toiling on the Lake of Galilee had caught no fish, and he appeared on the shore. He came to them. And when they got to shore, they found that there on the shore there was a fire and there were some fish. He prepared their breakfast. Were tired, weren't they? They were frustrated, down in the mouth men. And he was there to feed them, minister to their life, and by his friendship to keep going that life that he implanted. He got things with Peter to correct, but you know, as a wise surgeon wouldn't think of operating if the heart were liable to give out. So Christ first fed that flickering flame of life in Peter and boosted it, that it could stand the surgical operation that followed. Because I live, you shall live also. I am the way, the truth, and the life. So it all depends on him. Yes, it does in a sense, and yet there is a condition, isn't there? For it's not merely a question of our going to the Father and to the Father's house, but it is a question also of the Father coming to me and my house. Listen, says Christ, man love me, he will keep my commandment, and I will manifest myself to him. Now that's a point, said Judas, not the Ascaric one, the other one, you know. Um, I get that, you see, Lord, he said, because if you manifest yourself to to us, how is it that the world doesn't see you? What do you mean you'll manifest yourself to us? And I'm glad he asked. Do you understand what it means? That Christ talks about manifesting himself to you? And he last do it, my good brother? When did you last see the Lord? Want to know how it happened to you, said, uh, uh, Judas? Well, it's like this, you see. Um, if a man love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. The Father making his mansion with me. It's the same word, isn't it? As I journey home to heaven, to his home. On what condition does the Father come? Oh, please observe it. It is conditional. I dare not make it anything else, for this is what our Lord said, if... if a man love me, he will keep my commandment, and my Father will love him in return and come and make his abode. This is conditional. Do I want the Lord, do I want the Father to come and make that abode with me? Depends on whether you love me in a practical, down-to-earth way, says Christ, and you're prepared to do my commandments. Then you will know that reciprocated love, and we will come and make our abode. Stay in your home. You know, you learn a lot about preachers. You learn more about them off the platform in your home than you do from the platform. They're not always what they seem to be, you know, from the platform. I go into a lot of homes. Let me here pay tribute to the wonderful kindness that I there receive. Marvelous consideration. Oh, so very frequently my hostess will appear, and she'll say, now, we'll have lunch about one, and uh, now is there anything you don't like? You say, I normally say yes, well, there are not many things I don't like, but there are one or two things, um, uh, pancakes, the sort that start as Yorkshire puddings and then turn out as a sweet. Marmalade puddings. Oh, that tests my Christian grace. And black pudding. And of course, my hostess is very careful for the next while not to have the aforementioned monstrosities. But, you know, suppose my hostess, having inquired at nine o'clock in the morning, is there something you don't like? Oh, pancakes. Turned up at lunch, and on the table for sweet she put pancakes. That would make conversation a little bit difficult for the next five minutes, wouldn't it? And if she inquired the next morning, what, uh, anything you don't like now? He said, yes, marmalade puddings. And lo and behold, on, for dinner it was marmalade pudding. The kind of thing kept going on. You can see from a very practical point of view, it would interfere with communication somewhat, wouldn't you? So you love Christ? You would like Christ to come and make his abode in your heart and show himself to you. But how do you think it can be done in a how other than this way? If you love me, you'll keep my commandments. He has said this plainly what he likes, what he doesn't like. You said I haven't got time to read all that, goodness me. Not really. I don't know, but then you find out that the Lord is sitting at your table, that he doesn't like something you've done or said, and you turn around and say, I didn't know that I said it, didn't I? I think I couldn't possibly dare. Or come, waiting to do for us what he did with Mary Magdalene and other people. In another idiom to the two who were discussing the scriptures on the road through Mass, in yet another idiom, what he did for those who were toiling on the sea in their work that day, to make himself known and appear. I wonder if our poverty sometimes is this, that we shop- stop short with the certain hope that we're going home to his home, haven't really bothered to set out the home of our heart, wherein to entertain. Well, would you know, if I'm not keen on entertaining the Lord in my own heart now, setting my store out to do it, and learning his commandments and doing them that he may communicate, do you think I would be really sincere in my claim that I'm expecting to go home to heaven and enjoy? But he isn't meant to. And if we find his conversation now a bore, well, that will it is any more we turn to you. God with a figure. We who he has prepared for his father's home on earth. But here on earth, we should show the genuineness of our holiness and our devotion by deliberate, studied, careful, intended, and persevered preparation to entertain both the Son and the Father in the welfare of our heart.