THE MANY MANSIONS IN THE HOUSE OF THE FATHER, SCRIPTURALLY DISCUSSED, AND PRACTICALLY CONSIDERED. By G. S. FABER, B.D., MASTER OF SHERBURN HOSPITAL AND PREBENDARY OF SALISBURY. With a Prefatory Memoir of the Author, BY FRANCIS A. FABER, B.D., RECTOR OF SAUNDERTON, BUCKS, AND LATE FELLOW OF ST. MARY MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD. "In my Father's HOUSE are MANY MANSIONS. If it were not so, I would have told you. Ὁ αἰσθητὸς οὗτυσε Κόσμος οὐδὲν ἄρα ἄλλο ἐστιν, ἢ Οἶκος Θεοῦ. Phil. Jud. de Somn. Si Domus pulchra sit, intelligamus eam dominis ædificatam esse, non muribus: sic igitur ROYSTON & BROWN, 40 & 41, OLD BROAD STREET; RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE; T. HATCHARD, PICCADILLY; To the Most Reverend JOHN BIRD SUMNER, D.D., Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of all England. My dear Lord Primate, You must permit me to inscribe to your grace the last, perhaps I may say the dying, Performance, of a very old man, and I trust I may add a very old friend. It is to me a matter of rejoicing, that, in point of age, I believe I am your senior: and this, for two abundantly sufficient reasons. The first cause of my rejoicing is: that, for the good of the English Church over which you have so worthily been called to preside, it may, from your juniority to myself, be reasonably anticipated, that your life will be far prolonged beyond my own: the second cause is; that I may blamelessly express my feelings in a manner, which I should have shrunk from doing had I been a younger man. At present, with reference to both our ages, any expressions, on my part, of sentiments of true attachment and veneration for one whom I have long deemed a pattern Apostolical Bishop, can, by no possibility, be misconstrued into the baseness of mere adulation. In truth, I write only as I think. My subject is somewhat singular: yet, I trust, it cannot but be interesting to the old, and may be profitable to the young. We must all, whether young or old, be anxious to know, so far as SCRIPTURE will inform us, something definite respecting the tangible locality of the blessedness prepared for the just. It is perfectly true, that, with our present faculties, we can form but a very inadequate idea of the happiness prepared for those who love God: but still we may wish to obtain some more distinct apprehension of the locality of Heaven than the vagueness, which, I believe, we usually attach to the word Heaven. At all events, so long as we studiously adhere to SCRIPTURE, and (as our Article expresses it) to what, apparently at least, may be fairly proved thereby in the way of legitimate Deduction: we cannot, I suppose, very widely or very dangerously err. In my seventy-eighth year, I must expect soon to be initiated into what, if I recollect aright, the Ancients, contradistinctively to the Lesser Mysteries |