Let us rejoice in the power of this God-man Mediator, that He is as able as He is willing, and as willing as He is able. "Him the Father heareth always." "Father, I will," is His own divine formula for every needed boon for His people.

How it ought to make our sick-chambers and death-chambers consecrated to prayer! leading us to make our every trial and sorrow a fresh reason for going to God. Laying our burden, whatever it may be, on the mercy-seat, it will be considered by Him, who is too wise to grant what is better to be withdrawn, and too kind to withhold what, without injury to us, may be granted.

Let us imitate Martha's faith in our approaches to Him. Ah, in our dull and cold devotions, how little lively apprehension have we of the gracious willingness of Christ to listen to our petitions! Standing as the great Angel of the Covenant with the golden censer, His hand never shortened—His ear never heavy—His uplifted arm of intercession never faint. No variety bewildering Him—no importunity wearying Him—"waiting to be gracious"—loving the music of the suppliant spirit.

Would that we had ever before us as the superscription of faith written on our closet-devotions, and domestic altars, and public sanctuaries, whenever and wherever the knee is bent, and the Hearer of prayer is invoked—"I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee."



VIII.

THE MOURNER'S COMFORT.

Martha's tearful utterances are now met with an exalted solace.

"Thy brother shall rise again." It is the first time her Lord has spoken. She now once more hears those well-remembered tones which were last listened to, when life was all bright, and her home all happy.

It is the self-same consolation which steals still, like celestial music, to the smitten heart, when every chord of earthly gladness ceases to vibrate. And it is befitting too that Jesus should utter it. He alone is qualified to do so. The words spoken to the bereaved one of Bethany are words purchased by His own atoning work. "Thy brother—thy sister—thy friend, shall rise again!"

This brief oracle of comfort was addressed, in the first instance, specially to Martha. It had a primary reference, doubtless, to the vast miracle which was on the eve of performance. But there were more hearts to comfort and souls to cheer than one; that Almighty Saviour had at the moment troops of other bereaved ones in view; myriads on myriads of aching, bleeding spirits who could not, like the Bethany mourner, rush into His visible presence for consolation and peace. He expands, therefore, for their sakes the sublime and exalted solace which He ministers to her. And in words which have carried their echoes of hope and joy through all time, He exclaims—"I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die!"

If Bethany had bequeathed no other "memory" than this, how its name would have been embalmed in hallowed recollection! Truly these two brief verses are as apples of gold in pictures of silver. "Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life." Himself conquering death, He has conquered it for His people—opening the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

The full grandeur of that Bethany utterance could not be appreciated by her to whom it was first spoken. His death and resurrection was still, even to His nearest disciples, a profound mystery. Little did that trembling spirit, who was now gazing on her living Lord with tearful eye, dream that in a few brief days the grave was to hold HIM, too, as its captive; and that guardian angels were to proclaim words which would now have been all enigma and strangeness, "The Lord is risen!" With us it is different. The mighty deed has been completed. "Christ has died; yea, rather has risen again!" The resurrection and revival of Lazarus was a marvellous act, but it was only the rekindling of a little star that had ceased to twinkle in the firmament. A week more—and Martha would witness the Great Sun of all Being undergoing an eclipse; in a mysterious moment veiled and shrouded in darkness and blood; and then all at once coming forth like a Bridegroom from his chamber to shine the living and luminous centre of ransomed millions!

Christians! we can turn now aside and see this great sight—death closing the lips of the Lord of life—a borrowed grave containing the tenantless body of the Creator of all worlds! Is death to hold that prey? Is the grave to retain in gloomy custody that immaculate frame? Is the living temple to lie there an inglorious ruin, like other crumbling wrecks of mortality? The question of our eternal life or eternal death was suspended on the reply! If death succeeds in chaining down the illustrious Victim, our hopes of everlasting life are gone for ever. In vain can these dreary portals be ever again unbarred for the children of fallen humanity. He has gone there as their surety-Saviour. If his suretyship be accepted—if He meet and fulfil all the requirements of an outraged law, the gates of the dismal prison-house will and must be opened. If, on the other hand, there be any flaw or deficiency in His person or work as the Kinsman-Redeemer, then no power can snap the chains which bind Him; the tomb will refuse to surrender what it has in custody; the hopes of His people must perish along with Him! Golgotha must become the grave of a world's hopes!

But the stone has been rolled away. The grave-clothes are all that are left as trophies of the conqueror. Angels are seated in the vacant tomb to verify with their gladdening assurance His own Bethany oracle, "The Lord has risen." "He is indeed the resurrection and the life; he that liveth and believeth on Him shall never die!"

Yes! however many be the comforting thoughts which cluster around the grave of Lazarus, grander still is it to gather, as Jesus Himself here bids us, around His own tomb, and to gaze on His own resurrection scene! It was the most eventful morning of all time. It will be the focus point of the Church's hope and triumph through all eternity.

"The Lord is risen!" It proclaimed the atonement complete, sin pardoned, mediation accepted, the law satisfied, God glorified! "The Lord is risen!" It proclaimed resurrection and life for His people—life (the forfeited gift of life) now repurchased. That mighty victor rose not for Himself, but as the representative and earnest of countless multitudes, who exult in His death as their life—in His resurrection as the pledge and guarantee of their everlasting safety;—"I am He that liveth," and "because I live ye shall live also."

Anticipating His own glorious rising, He might well speak to Martha, standing before Him as the representative of weeping, sinful, woe-worn humanity, "He that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die." "In Me, death is no longer death; it is only a parenthesis in life—a transition to a loftier stage of being. In Me, the grave is the vestibule of heaven, the robing-room of immortality!"

Reader, yours is the same strong consolation. "Believe," "Only believe" in that risen Lord. He has purchased all, paid all, procured all! Look into that vacant tomb; see sin cancelled, guilt blotted out, the law magnified, justice honoured, the sinner saved!

Ay, and more than that, as you see the moral conqueror marching forth clothed with immortal victory, you see Him not alone! He is heading and heralding a multitude which no man can number. Himself the victorious precursor, he is shewing to these exulting thousands "the path of life." He tells them to dread neither for themselves or others that lonesome tomb. The curse is extracted from it; the envenomed sting is plucked away. In passing through its lonesome chambers they may exult in the thought that a mightier than they has sanctified it by His own presence, and transmuted what was once a gloomy portico into a triumphal arch, bearing the inscription, "O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction!"



IX.

THE MOURNER'S CREED.

How stands our faith?

These mighty thoughts and words of consolation—are they really believed, felt, trusted in, rejoiced over?

Christian, "Believest thou this?"[13] Art thou really looking to this exalted life-giving Saviour? Hast thou in some feeble measure realised this resurrection-life as thine own? Hast thou the joyful consciousness of participating in this vital union with a living Lord? In vain do we listen to these sublime Bethany utterances unless we feel "Jesus speaks to me," and unless we be living from day to day under their invigorating power.

He had unfolded to Martha in a single verse a whole Gospel; He had irradiated by a few words the darkness of the tomb; and now, turning to the poor dejected weeper at his side, He addresses the all-important question, "Believest thou this?"

Her faith had been but a moment before staggering. Some guilty misgivings had been mingling with her anguished tears. She has now an opportunity afforded of rising above her doubts,—the ebbings and flowings of her fitful feelings,—and cleaving fast to the Living Rock.

It elicits an unfaltering response—"Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world."[14]

Remarkable confession! We should not so much have wondered to hear it after the grave, hard by, had been rifled, and the silent lips of Lazarus had been unsealed; or had she stood like the other Mary at her Lord's own sepulchre in the garden, and after a few brief, but momentous days and hours, seen a whole flood of light thrown on the question of His Messiahship.

But as yet there was much to damp such a bold confession, and lead to hesitancy in the avowal of such a creed. The poverty, the humiliations, the unworldly obscurity of that solitary One who claimed no earthly birthright, and owned no earthly dwelling, were not all these, particularly to a Jew, at variance with every idea formed in connexion with the coming Shiloh?

Was Martha's then a blind unmeaning faith? Far from it. It was nurtured, doubtless, in that quiet home of holy love, where, while Lazarus yet lived, this mysterious Being, in an earthly form and in pilgrim garb, came time after time discoursing to them often, as we are warranted to believe, on the dignity of His nature, the glories of His person, the completeness of His work. It was neither the evidence of miracle or prophecy which had revealed to that weeping disciple that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God. With the exception of Micah's statement regarding Bethlehem-Ephratah as His birthplace, we question if any other remarkable prediction concerning Him had yet been fulfilled; and so far as miracles were concerned, though she may and must have doubtless known of them by hearsay, we have no evidence that she had as yet so much as witnessed one. We never read till this time of their quiet village being the scene of any manifestations of His power. These had generally taken place either in Jerusalem or in the cities and coasts of Galilee. The probability, therefore, is that Martha, had never yet seen that arm of Omnipotence bared, or witnessed those prodigies with which elsewhere He authenticated His claims to Divinity.

Whence then her creed? May we not believe she had made her noble avowal mainly from the study of that beauteous, spotless character—from those looks, and words, and deeds—from that lofty teaching—so unlike every human system—so wondrously adapted to the wants and woes, the sins, the sorrows, and aching necessities of the human heart. All this had left on her own spirit, and on that of Lazarus and Mary, the irresistible impression and evidence that he was indeed the Lord of Glory—"the Hope of Israel, and the Saviour thereof."

And is it not the same evidence we exult in still? Is this not the reason of many a humble believer's creed and faith—who may be all unlettered and unlearned in the evidences of the schools—the external and internal bulwarks of our impregnable Christianity? Ask them why they believe? why their faith is so firm—their love so strong?

They will tell you that that Saviour, in all the glories of His person, in all the completeness of His work, in all the beauties of His character, is the very Saviour they need!—that His Gospel is the very errand of mercy suited to their souls' necessities;—that His words of compassion, and tenderness, and hope, are in every way adapted to meet the yearnings of their longing spirits. They need to stand by the grave of no Lazarus to be certified as to His Messiahship. His looks and tones—His character and doctrine,—His cures and remedies for the wants and woes of their ruined natures, point Him out as the true Heavenly Physician.

They can tell of the best of all evidences, and the strongest of all—the experimental evidence! They are no theorists. Religion is no subject with them of barren speculation; it is a matter of inner and heartfelt experience. They have tried the cure—they have found it answer;—they have fled to the Physician—they have applied His balm—they have been healed and live! And you might as well try to convince the restored blind that the sunlight which has again burst on them is a wild dream of fancy, or the restored deaf that the world's joyous melodies which have again awoke on them are the mockeries of their own brain, as convince the spiritually enlightened and awakened that He who has proved to them light and life, and joy and peace—their comfort in prosperity—their refuge in adversity—is other than the Son of God and Saviour of the world!

Reader, is this your experience? Have you tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious? Have you felt the preciousness of His gospel, the adaptation of His work to the necessities of your ruined condition?—the power of His grace, the prevalence of His intercession, the fulness and glory and truthfulness of His promises? Are you exulting in Him as the Resurrection and Life, who has raised you from the death of sin, and will at last raise you from the power of death, and invest you with that eternal life which His love has purchased?

Precious as is this hope and confidence at all times, specially so is it, mourners in Zion! in your seasons of sorrow. When human refuges fail, and human friendships wither, and human props give way, how sustaining to have this "anchor of the soul sure and steadfast"—union with a living Lord on earth, and the joyful hope of endless and uninterrupted union and communion with Him in glory! Are you even now enjoying, through your tears, this blessed persuasion, and exulting in this blessed creed? Do you know the secret of that twofold solace, "the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings?"—the "fellowship of His sufferings" telling of His sympathy with your sorrows below;—the "power of His resurrection" assuring you of the glorious gift of everlasting life in a world where sorrow dare not enter. Rest not satisfied with a mere outward creed and confession that "Jesus is the Saviour." Let yours be the nobler formula of an appropriating faith—"He is my Saviour; He loved ME, and gave Himself for ME." Let it not be with you a salvation possible, but a salvation found; so that, with a tried apostle, you can rise above the surges of deepening tribulation as you glory in the conviction, "I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him."

Sad, indeed, for those who, when "deep calleth unto deep," have no such "strong consolation" to enable them to ride out the storm; who, when sorrow and bereavement overtake them—the lowering shadows of the dark and cloudy day—have still to grope after an unknown Christ; and, amid the hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for the first time, the only true One.

Oh! if our hour of trial has not yet come, let us be prepared for it—for come it will. Let us seek to have our vessels moored now to the Rock of Ages, that when the tempest arises—when the floods beat, and the winds blow, and the wrecks of earthly joy are seen strewing the waters—we may triumphantly utter the challenge, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"

"Say, ye who tempt The sea of life, by summer gales impell'd, Have ye this anchor? Sure a time will come For storms to try you, and strong blasts to rend Your painted sails, and shred your gold like chaff O'er the wild wave. And what a wreck is man, If sorrow find him unsustain'd by God!"



X.

THE MASTER.

Martha can withhold no longer from her sister the joyful tidings which she has been the first to hear. With fleet foot she hastens back to the house with the announcement, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee." Mary hears, but makes no comment. Wrapt in the silence of her own meditative grief, "when she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto Him."

"To her all earth could render nothing back Like that pale changeless brow. Calmly she stood As marble statue.

In that maiden's breast Sorrow and loneliness sank darkly down, Though the blanch'd lips breathed out no boisterous plaint Of common grief."

The formal sympathisers who gathered around her had observed her departure. They are led to form their conjectures as to the cause of this sudden break in her trance of anguish. She had up till that moment, with the instinctive aversion which mourners only know, and which we have formerly alluded to in the case of Martha, been shrinking from facing the gladsome light of heaven, caring not to look abroad on the blight of an altered world. But the few words her sister uttered, and which the other auditors manifestly had not comprehended, all at once rouse her from her seat of pensive sadness, and her shadow is seen hurrying by the darkened lattice. They can form but one surmise: that, in accordance with wont, she has betaken herself to the burial-ground to feed her morbid grief "She goeth unto the grave to weep there." Ah! little did they know how much nobler was her motive—how truer and grander the solace she sought and found.

There is little that is really profitable or hallowed in visiting the grave of loved ones. Though fond affection will, from some false feeling of the tribute due to the memory of the departed, seek to surmount sadder thoughts, and linger at the spot where treasured ashes repose, yet—think and act as we may—there is nothing cheering, nothing elevating there. The associations of the burial-place are all with the humiliating triumphs of the King of Terrors. It is a view of death taken from the earthly entrance of the valley, not the heavenly view of it as that valley opens on the bright plains of immortality. The gay flowers and emerald sod which carpet the grave are poor mockeries to the bereft spirit, shrouding, as they do, nobler withered blossoms which the foot of the destroyer has trampled into dust, and which no earthly beauty can again clothe, or earthly spring reanimate. They are to be pitied who have no higher solace, no better remedy for their grief, than thus to water with unavailing tears the trophies of death; or to read the harrowing record which love has traced on its slab of cold marble, telling of the vanity of human hopes.

Such, however, was not Mary's errand in leaving the chamber of bereavement. That drooping flower was not opening her leaves, only to be crushed afresh with new tear-floods of sorrow. She sought One who would disengage her soiled and shattered tendrils from the chill comforts of earth, and bathe them in the genial influences of Heaven. The music of her Master's name alone could put gladness into her heart—tempt her to muffle other conflicting feelings and hasten to His feet. "The Master is come!" Nothing could have roused her from her profound grief but this. While her poor earthly comforters are imagining her prostrate at the sepulchre's mouth, giving vent to the wild delirium of her young grief, she is away, not to the victim of death, but to the Lord of Life, either to tell to Him the tale of her woe, or else to listen from His lips to words of comfort no other comforter had given. Is there not the same music in that name—the same solace and joy in that presence still? Earthly sympathy is not to be despised; nay, when death has entered a household, taken the dearest and the best and laid them in the tomb, nothing is more soothing to the wounded, crushed, and broken one, than to experience the genial sympathy of true Christian friendship. Those, it may be, little known before (comparative strangers), touched with the story of a neighbour's sorrow, come to offer their tribute of condolence, and to "weep with those that weep." Never is true friendship so tested as then. Hollow attachments, which have nothing but the world or a time of prosperity to bind them, discover their worthlessness. "Summer friends" stand aloof—they have little patience for the sadness of sorrow's countenance and the funereal trappings of the death-chamber; while sympathy, based on lofty Christian principle, loves to minister as a subordinate healer of the broken-hearted, and to indulge in a hundred nameless ingenious offices of kindness and love.

But "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." The purest and noblest and most disinterested of earthly friends can only go a certain way. Their minds and sympathies are limited. They cannot enter into the deep recesses of the smitten heart—the yawning crevices that bereavement has laid bare. But JESUS can! Ah! there are capacities and sensibilities in that Mighty Heart that can probe the deepest wound and gauge the profoundest sorrow. While from the best of earthly comforters the mind turns away unsatisfied; while the burial-ground and the grave only recall the deep humiliations of the body's wreck and ruin—with what fond emotion does the spirit, like Mary, turn to Him who possesses the majesty of Deity with all the tenderness of humanity. The Mighty Lord, and yet the Elder Brother!

The sympathy of man is often selfish, formal, constrained, commonplace, coming more from the surface than from the depths of the heart. It is the finite sympathy of a finite creature. The Redeemer's sympathy is that of the perfect Man and the infinite God—able to enter into all the peculiarities of the case—all the tender features and shadings of sorrow which are hidden from the keenest and kindliest human eye.

Mary's procedure is a true type and picture of what the broken heart of the Christian feels. Not undervaluing human sympathy, yet, nevertheless, all the crowd of sympathising friends—Jewish citizens, Bethany villagers—are nothing to her when she hears her Lord has come!

Happy for us if, while the world, like the condoling crowd of Jews, is forming its own cold speculations on the amount of our grief and the bitterness of our loss, we are found hastening to cast ourselves at our Saviour's feet; if our afflictions prove to us like angel messengers from the inner sanctuary—calling us from friends, home, comforts, blessings, all we most prize on earth—telling us that ONE is nigh who will more than compensate for the loss of all—"The Master is come, and calleth for thee!"

It is the very end and design our gracious God has in all His dealings, to lead us, as he led Mary, to the feet of Jesus.

Yes! thou poor weeping, disconsolate one, "The Master calleth for thee." Thee individually, as if thou stoodest the alone sufferer in a vast world. He wishes to pour His oil and wine into thy wounded heart—to give thee some overwhelming proof and pledge of the love he bears thee in this thy sore trial. He has come to pour drops of comfort in the bitter cup—to ease thee of thy heavy burden, and to point thee to hopes full of immortality. Go and learn what a kind, and gentle, and gracious Master He is! Go forth, Mary, and meet thy Lord. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning!"

We may imagine her hastening along the foot-road, with the spirit of the Psalmist's words on her tongue—"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God—for the living God!"



XI.

SECOND CAUSES.

With a bounding heart, Mary was in a moment at her Master's feet. She weeps! and is able only to articulate, in broken accents, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." It is the repetition of Martha's same expression. Often at a season of sore bereavement some one poignant thought or reflection takes possession of the mind, and, for the time, overmasters every other. This echo of the other mourner's utterance leads us to conclude that it had been a familiar and oft-quoted phrase during these days of protracted agony. This independent quotation, indeed, on the part of each, gives a truthful beauty to the whole inspired narrative.

The twin sisters—musing on the terrible past, gazing through their tears on the vacant seat at their home-hearth—had been every now and then breaking the gloomy silence of the deserted chamber by exclaiming, "If He had been here, this never would have happened! This is the bitterest drop in our cup, that all might have been different! These hot tears might never have dimmed our eyes; our loved Lazarus might have been a living and loving brother still! Oh! that the Lord had delayed for a brief week that untoward journey, or anticipated by four days his longed-for return; or would that we had despatched our messenger earlier for Him. It is now too late. Though He has at last come, His advent can be of little avail. The fell destroyer has been at our cottage door before Him. He may soothe our grief, but the blow cannot be averted. His friend and our brother is locked in sleep too deep to be disturbed."

Ah! is it not the same unkind surmise which is still often heard in the hour of bereavement and in the home of death?—a guilty, unholy brooding over second causes. "If such and such had been done, my child had still lived. If that mean, or that remedy, or that judicious caution had been employed, this terrible overthrow of my earthly hopes would never have occurred; that loved one would have been still walking at my side; that chaplet of sorrows would not now have been girding my brows; the Bethany sepulchre would have been unopened—'This my brother had not died!'"

Hush! hush! these guilty insinuations—that dethroning of God from the Providential Sovereignty of His own world—that hasty and inconsiderate verdict on His divine procedure.

"IF Thou hadst been here!" Can we, dare we doubt it? Is the departure of the immortal soul to the spirit-world so trivial a matter that the life-giving God takes no cognisance of it? No! Mourning one, in the deep night of thy sorrow, thou must rise above "untoward coincidences"—thou must cancel the words "accident" and "fate" from thy vocabulary of trial. God, thy God, was there! If there be perplexing accompaniments, be assured they were of His permitting; all was planned—wisely, kindly planned. Question not the unerring rectitude of His dealings. Though apparently absent, He was really present. The apparent veiling of His countenance is only what Cowper calls "the severer aspect of His love." Kiss the rod that smites—adore the hand that lays low. Pillow thy head on that simple, yet grandest source of composure—"The Lord reigneth!" It is not for us to venture to dictate what the procedure of infinite love and wisdom should be. To our dim and distorted views of things, it might have been more for the glory of God and the Church's good, if the "beautiful bird of light" had still "sat with its folded wings" ere it sped to nestle in the eaves of Heaven. But if its earthly song has been early hushed; if those full of promise have been allowed rather to fall asleep in Jesus, "Even so, Father; for it seems good in Thy sight!" It was from no want of power or ability on God's part that they were not recalled from the gates of death. "We will be dumb—we will open not our mouths, because Thou didst it."

Afflicted one! if the brother or friend whom you now mourn be a brother in glory—if he be now among the white-robed multitude—his last tear wept—for ever beyond reach of a sinning and sorrowing world—can you upbraid your God for his early departure? Would you weep him back if you could from his early crown?

Fond nature, as it stands in trembling agony watching the ebbing pulses of life, would willingly arrest the pale messenger—stay the chariot—and have the wilderness relighted with his smile.

But when all is over, and you are able to contemplate, with calm emotion, the untold bliss into which the unfettered spirit has entered, do you not feel as if it were cruel selfishness alone that would denude that sainted pilgrim of his glory, and bring him once more back to earth's cares and tribulations?

"We sadly watch'd the close of all, Life balanced in a breath; We saw upon his features fall The awful shade of death. All dark and desolate we were; And murmuring nature cried— 'Oh! surely, Lord! hadst Thou been here Our brother had not died!'

"But when its glance the memory cast On all that grace had done; And thought of life's long warfare pass'd, And endless victory won. Then faith prevailing, wiped the tear, And looking upward, cried— 'O Lord! Thou surely hast been here, Our brother has not died!'"

We have already had occasion to note the impressive and significant silence of the Saviour to Mary. We may just again revert to it in a sentence here. Martha had, a few moments before, given vent to the same impassioned utterance respecting her departed brother. Jesus had replied to her; questioned her as to her faith; and opened up to her sublime sources of solace and consolation. With Mary it is different. He responds to her also—but it is only in silence and in tears!

Why this distinction? Does it not unfold to us a lovely feature in the dealings of Jesus—how He adapts Himself to the peculiarities of individual character. With those of a bolder temperament He can argue and remonstrate—with those of a meek, sensitive, contemplative spirit, He can be silent and weep!

The stout but manly heart of Peter needed at times a bold and cutting rebuke; a similar reproof would have crushed to the dust the tender soul of John. The character of the one is painted in his walking on the stormy water to meet his Lord; of the other, in his reclining on the bosom of the same Divine Master, drinking sacred draughts at the Fountain-head of love!

So it was with Martha and Mary, "the Peter and John of Bethany;" and so it is with His people still.

How beautifully and considerately Jesus studies their case—adapting His dealings to what He sees and knows they can bear—fitting the yoke to the neck, and the neck to the yoke. To some He is "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, uttering His thunders"—pleading with Martha-spirits "by terrible things in righteousness;"—to others (the shrinking, sensitive Marys) whispering only accents of gentleness—giving expression to no needless word that would aggravate or embitter their sorrows.

Ah, believer! how tenderly considerate is your dear Lord! Well may you make it your prayer, "Let me fall into the hands of God, for great are His mercies!" He may at times, like Joseph to His brethren, appear to "speak roughly," but it is dissembled kindness. When a father inflicts on his wayward child the severest and harshest discipline, none but he can tell the bitter heart-pangs of yearning love that accompany every stroke of the rod. So it is with your Father in Heaven; with this difference, that the earthly parent may act unwisely, arbitrarily, indiscreetly—he may misjudge the necessities of the case—he may do violence and wrong to the natural disposition of his offspring. Not so with an all-wise Heavenly Parent. He will inflict no redundant or unneeded chastisement. Man may err, has erred, and is ever erring—but "as for God, His way is perfect!"



XII.

THE WEEPING SAVIOUR.

The silent procession is moving on. We may suppose they have reached the gates of the burial-ground. But a new scene and incident here arrest our thoughts!

It is not the humiliating memorials of mortality that lie scattered around,—the caves and grottoes and grassy heaps sacred to many a Bethany villager. It is not even the newly sealed stone which marks the spot where Lazarus "sleeps." Let us turn aside for a little, and see this great sight. It is the Creator of all worlds in tears!—the God-man Mediator dissolved in tenderest grief! Of all the memories of Bethany, this surely is the most hallowed and the most wondrous. These tears form the most touching episode in sacred story; and if we are in sorrow, it may either dry our own tears, or give them the warrant to flow when we are told—Jesus wept!

Whence those tears? This is what we shall now inquire. There is often a false interpretation put upon this brief and touching verse, as if it denoted the expression of the Saviour's sorrow for the loss of a loved friend. This, it is plain, it could not be. However mingled may have been the hopes and fears of the weeping mourners around him, He at least knew that in a few brief moments Lazarus was to be restored. He could not surely weep so bitterly, possessing, as He then did, the confident assurance that death was about to give back its captive, and light up every tear-dimmed eye with an ecstasy of joy. Whence, then, we again ask, this strange and mysterious grief? Come and let us surround the grave of Bethany, and as we behold the chief mourner at that grave, let us inquire why it was that "Jesus wept!"

(1.) JESUS WEPT out of Sympathy for the Bereaved.

The hearts around Him were breaking with anguish. All unconscious of how soon and how wondrously their sorrow was to be turned into joy, the appalling thought was alone present to them in all its fearfulness—"Lazarus is dead!" When He, the God-man Mediator, with the refined sensibilities of His tender heart, beheld the poignancy of that grief, the pent-up torrent of His own human sympathies could be restrained no longer. His tears flowed too.

But it would be a contracted view of the tears of Jesus to think that two solitary mourners in a Jewish graveyard engrossed and monopolised that sympathy. It had a far wider sweep.

There were hearts, yes—myriads of desolate sufferers in ages then unborn, who He knew would be brought to stand as He was then doing by the grave of loved relatives—mourners who would have no visible comforter or restorer to rush to, as had Martha and Mary, to dry their tears, and give them back their dead; and when He thought of this, "Jesus wept!"

What an interest it gives to that scene of weeping, to think that at that eventful moment, the Saviour had before Him the bereaved of all time—that His eye was roaming at that moment through deserted chambers, and vacant seats, and opened graves, down to the end of the world. The aged Jacobs and Rachels weeping for their children—the Ezekiels mourning in the dust and ashes of disconsolate widowhood, "the desire of their eyes taken away by a stroke"—the unsolaced Marys and Marthas brooding over a dark future, with the prop and support of existence swept down, the central sun and light of their being eclipsed in mysterious darkness! Think, (as you are now perusing these pages,) throughout the wide world, how many breaking hearts there are—how loud the wail of suffering humanity, could we but hear it!—those written childless and fatherless, and friendless and homeless!—Bethany-processions pacing with slow and measured step to deposit their earthly all in the cold custody of the tomb! Think of the Marys and Marthas who are now "going to some grave to weep there," perhaps with no Saviour's smile to gladden them—or the desolate chambers that are now resounding to the plaintive dirge, "O Absalom, Absalom, would God I had died for thee; O Absalom, my son! my son!" Think of all these scenes at that moment vividly suggested and pictured to the Redeemer's eye—the long and loud miserere, echoing dismally from the remotest bounds of time, and there "entering into the ear of the God of Sabaoth," and can you wonder that—Jesus wept!

Blessed and amazing picture of the Lord of glory! It combines the delineation alike of the tenderness of His humanity, and the majesty of His Godhead. His Humanity! It is revealed in those tear drops, falling from a human eye on a human grave. His Godhead! It is manifested in His ability to take in with a giant grasp all the prospective sufferings of His suffering people.

Weeping believer! thine anguished heart was included in those Bethany tears! Be assured thy grief was visibly portrayed at that moment to that omniscient Saviour. He had all thy sorrows before Him—thy anxious moments during thy friend's tedious sickness—the trembling suspense—the nights of weary watching—the agonising revelation of "no hope"—the closing scene! Bethany's graveyard became to Him a picture-gallery of the world's aching hearts; and thine, yes! thine was there! and as He beheld it, "Jesus wept!"

"Jesus wept! These tears are over, But His heart is still the same; Kinsman, Friend, and Elder Brother, Is His everlasting name.

Saviour, who can love like Thee, Gracious One of Bethany!

"When the pangs of trial seize us, When the waves of sorrow roll, I will lay my head on Jesus, Pillow of the troubled soul.

Surely none can feel like Thee, Weeping One of Bethany!

"Jesus wept! And still in glory, He can mark each mourner's tear; Loving to retrace the story Of the hearts he solaced here.

Lord! when I am call'd to die, Let me think of Bethany!

"Jesus wept! That tear of sorrow Is a legacy of love; Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow, He the same doth ever prove.

Thou art all in all to me, Living One of Bethany!"

(2.) JESUS WEPT when He thought of the triumphs of Death!

He was treading a burial ground—mouldering heaps were around Him—silent sepulchral caves, giving forth no echo of life!

It is a solemn and impressive thing, even for us, to tread the graveyard; more especially if there are there nameless treasures of buried affection. The thought that those whose smile gladdened to us every step in the wilderness, who formed our solace in sorrow, and our joy in adversity—whose words, and society, and converse were intertwined with our very being—it is solemn and saddening, as we tread that land of oblivion, to find these words and looks and tears unanswered—a gloomy silence hovering over the spot where the wrecks of worth and loveliness are laid! He would have a bold, a stern heart indeed who could pace unmoved over such hallowed ground, and forbid a tear to flow over the gushing memories of the past!

What, then, must it have been at that moment in Bethany with Jesus, when he saw one of those purchased by his own blood (dearest to him) chased by the unsparing destroyer to that gloomy prison-house?

If we have supposed that the tears of Martha and Mary were suggestive of manifold other broken and sorrowing hearts in other ages, we may well believe that graveyard was suggestive of triumphs still in reserve for the tomb, numberless trophies which in every age were to be reaped in by the King of Terrors until the reaper's arm was paralyzed, and death swallowed up in victory. The few silent sepulchres around must have significantly called to the mind of the Divine spectator how sin had blasted and scathed His noblest workmanship; converting the fairest province of His creation into one vast Necropolis,—one dismal "city of the dead!" The body of man, "so fearfully and wonderfully made," and on which he had originally placed His own impress of "very good," ruined, and resolved into a mass of humiliating dust! If the Architect mourns over the destruction of some favourite edifice which the storm has swept down, or the fire has wrapt in conflagration and reduced to ashes—if the Sculptor mourns to see his breathing marble with one rude stroke hurled to the ground, and its fragments scattered at his feet—what must have been the sensations of the mighty Architect of the human frame, at whose completion the morning stars and the sons of God chanted a loud anthem—what must have been His sensations as He thought of them, now a devastated wreck, mouldering in dissolution and decay, the King of Terrors sitting in regal state, holding his high holiday over a vassal world!

In Bethany He beheld only a few of these broken and prostrate columns, but they were powerfully suggestive of millions on millions which were yet in coming ages to undergo the same doom of mortality.

If even our less sensitive hearts may be wrung with emotion at the tidings of some mournful catastrophe that occupies, after all, but some passing hour in the world's history, but which has carried death and lamentation into many households—the sudden pestilence that has swept down its thousands—the gallant vessel that was a moment before spreading proudly its white wings to the gale, the joyous hearts on board dreaming of hearth and home, and the "many ports that would exult in the gleam of her mast"—the next! hurrying down to the depths of an ocean grave, with no survivor to tell the tale!—or the terrible records of War—the ranks of bold and brave laid low in the carnage of battle—youth and strength and beauty and rank and friendship blent in one red burial!—if these and such like mournful tales of death, and the power of death, affect at the moment even the most callous amongst us, causing the lip to grow pale, and demanding the tribute of more than a tear, oh! what must it have been to the omniscient eye and exquisitely sensitive spirit of Jesus, as, taking in all time at a glance, He beheld the Pale Horse with its ghastly rider trampling under foot the vast human family; converting the globe in which they dwelt into a mournful valley of vision, filled with the wrecks and skeletons of breathing men and animated frames!

The triumphs of death are, in ordinary circumstances, to us scarcely perceptible. He moves with noiseless tread. The footprint is made on the sands of time; but like the tides of the ocean, the world's oblivion-power washes it away. The name of yonder churchyard is "the land of forgetfulness!" Not so with the Lord of Life, the great Antagonist of this usurper! The future, a ghastly future, rose in appalling vividness before Him.—Death (vulture-like) flapping his wings over the multitudes he claimed as his own,—vessels freighted with immortality lying wrecked and stranded on the shores of Time!

Yes! we can only understand the full import of these tears of Jesus, as we imagine to ourselves His Godlike eye penetrating at that moment every churchyard and every grave: the mausoleums of the great—the grassy sods of the poor; the marble cenotaph of the noble and illustrious slumbering under fretted aisle and cathedral canopy—the myriads whose requiem is chanted by the bleak winds of the desert or the chimes of the ocean! The child carried away in the twinkling of an eye—the blossom just opening, and then frost-blighted; the aged sire, cut down like a shock of corn in its season, falling withered and seared like the leaves of autumn; the young exulting in the prime of manhood; the pious and benevolent, the great and good, succumbing indiscriminately to the same inexorable decree; the erring and thoughtless, reckless of all warning, hurried away in the midst of scorned mercy—Oh! as He beheld this ghastly funeral procession moving before Him, the whole world going to the same long home, and He Himself alone left the survivor, can we wonder that Jesus wept?

(3.) Once more, JESUS WEPT when He thought of the impenitence and obduracy of the human heart.

This may not be at first sight patent as a cause of the tears of Jesus, but we may well believe it entered largely as an element into this strange flood of sorrow.

He was about to perform a great (His greatest) miracle; but while He knew that, in consequence of this manifestation of His mighty power, many of those who now stood around Lazarus' tomb would believe, He knew also that others would only "despise, and wonder, and perish;" that while some, as we shall afterwards find, acknowledged Him as the Messiah, others went straightway into Jerusalem to concert with the Pharisees in plotting His murder. When He observed the impenitence of these obdurate hearts at His side, He could not subdue His tenderest emotion. We read that, when He saw the sisters weeping, and the Jews that were with them weeping, Jesus wept. These Jews could weep for a fellow-mortal, but they could not weep for themselves, and therefore for them, Jesus wept!

One soul was precious to Him. He who alone can estimate alike the worth and the loss of the soul, might have wept, even had there been but one then present found to resist His claims and forfeit His salvation. But these tears extended far beyond that lonely spot in a Jewish village, and the few impenitent hearts that were then flocking around. These obdurate Jews were types of the world's impenitency. There was at that moment summoned before Him a mournful picture of the hardened hearts in every age—those who would read His gospel, and hear of His miracles, and listen to the story of His love all unmoved—who would die as they had lived, uncheered by His grace and unmeet for His presence.

Ah! surely no cause could more tenderly elicit a Redeemer's tears than this—the thought of His Redemption scorned, His blood trampled on, His work set at nought.

If we have thought of Him shedding tears over the ruin of the body, what must have been the depth and intensity of those tears over the sadder, more fearful ruin of the soul? Immortal powers, that ought to have been ennobled and consecrated to His service, alienated, degraded, destroyed!—immortal beings spurning from them the day of grace and the hopes of heaven! Bitter as may have been the wail of mourning and sorrowing hearts that may then have reached His ear from future ages, more agonising and dismal far must have been the wailing cry which, beyond the limits of time, came floating up from a dark and dreary eternity; those who might have believed and lived, but who blasphemed or trifled, neglected and procrastinated, and finally perished!

If we think of it, it is not the loss of health, or the loss of wealth, or the loss of friends, which forms the heaviest of trials, the deepest ground of soul sadness. We put on the sable attire as emblems of mourning; but if we saw it as a weeping Jesus sees it, there is more real cause for sackcloth and ashes in the heart at enmity with God, and despising His salvation, trampling under foot His Son, and enacting over again the sad tragedy of Calvary.

Reader! are you at this moment guilty of living on in a state of presumptuous impenitence—salvation unsought—Jesus a stranger—His name unhonoured—His Bible unread—His promises unappropriated—His wrath undreaded—defeating all His marvellous appliances of love, and remonstrance, and forbearance—meeting a prodigal expenditure of patience and long-suffering with cold and chilling indifference and neglect—casting away from you the hoarded riches of eternity which He has been holding out for your acceptance? In that sacred Bethany ground, as ye mark these falling tear-drops which dim His eye, there may have been a tear for you! Eighteen hundred years have since elapsed, but He to whom "a thousand years are as one day," marked even then your present ungrateful apostacy or guilty alienation—there was a tear then which stole down that cheek on account of unrequited love?

Is that tear to flow in vain? Are you to mock His tender sympathy still with cold formalism, or persisted-in impenitency? Are you to think of Bethany and its tear-drops and still go on in sin?

Ah, never was sermon preached to an erring or impenitent sinner half so eloquent as this. Paul was not given to weeping, and it makes his fervid love of souls all the more striking when we find him confessing that he had wept like a child over those who were "enemies to the cross of Christ." We have often felt Paul's burning tears over hardened sinners to be touching and impressive. But what are they, after all, in comparison with those of Paul's Lord?

He, the Great Sun of the World—the Sun of Righteousness, was to set in a few brief days behind the walls of ungrateful Jerusalem in darkness and blood—His last rays seem now lingering over the crest of Olivet—His tears seem to tell that He has clung till He can cling no more to the fond hope that an impenitent nation and guilty city will yet turn at His reproof, believe and live.

And still does He linger among us. Though the night cometh, the beams of mercy are still tardily lingering, as if loth to leave the backsliding to their wanderings, or the impenitent to their own midnight of despair.

O Reader! leave not this subject—leave not the graveyard of Bethany till you think of Jesus as then weeping for thee. Yes! for thee—thy pitiable condition—thy perverse ingratitude—thy slighting of His warnings—thy grieving of His spirit—thy unkindness to Him—thine obstinate disregard of thine own everlasting interests. Let it be the most wondrous and heart-searching of all the memories of Bethany, that for thy soul—that traitor, truant, worthless soul—which like a stray planet He might have suffered to drift away from Himself into the blackness of eternal darkness—helpless, hopeless, ruined, lost!—Yes! that for thee, JESUS WEPT!

"And doth the Saviour weep Over His people's sin, Because we will not let Him keep The souls He died to win? Ye hearts that love the Lord, If at this sight ye burn, See that in thought, in deed, in word, Ye hate what made Him mourn."



XIII.

THE GRAVE STONE.

They have now reached the grave. It was a rocky sepulchre. A flat stone (possibly with some Hebrew inscription) lay upon the mouth of it.

In wondering amazement the sorrowing group follow the footsteps of the Saviour. "Behold how He loved him," whisper the Jews to one another as they witness His fast falling tears. Can His repairing thus to the tomb be anything more than to pay a mournful tribute to an honoured friendship, and behold the silent home of the loved dead? Nay; He is about, as the Lord of Life, to wrench away the swaddling-bands of corruption, to vindicate His name and prerogative as the "Abolisher of death"—to have the first-fruits of that vast triumph which, ages before the birth of time, He had anticipated with longing earnestness—"I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction."

Does He proceed forthwith to speak the word, and to accomplish the giant deed? He breaks silence. But we listen, in the first instance, not to the omnipotent summons, but to an address to the bystanders—"Jesus said, Take ye away the stone!"[15]

What need of this parenthesis in His mighty work? Why this summoning in any feeble human agency when His own independent fiat could have effected the whole? Would it not have been a more startling manifestation of Omnipotence, by a mandate similar to that which chained the tempests of Tiberias, or the demoniac of Gadara, to have hurled the incumbent stone into fragments? Might not He who has "the keys of the grave and of death" have Himself unlocked the portals preparatory to the vaster prodigy that was to follow?

Nay, there was a mighty lesson to be read in thus delegating human hands to remove the intervening barrier. The Church of the living God may, in every age, gather from it instruction!

What, then, does the Saviour here figuratively, but significantly, teach His people? Is it not the important truth that, though dependent on Him for all they are, and all they have, they are not thereby released and exempted from the use of means? He alone can bring back Lazarus from his death-sleep. Martha and Mary may weep an ocean of tears, but they cannot weep him back. They may linger for days and nights in that lonely graveyard, making it resound with their bitter dirges, but their impassioned entreaties will be mocked with impressive silence. Too well do they know that spirit is fled beyond their recall—the spark of life extinguished beyond any earthly rekindling!

But though the word of Omnipotence can alone bring back the dead, human hands and human efforts can roll away the interjacent stone, and prepare for the performance of the miracle; and after the miracle is performed, human hands may again be called in to tear off the cerements of the tomb, to ungird the bandages from the restored captive, to "loose him and let him go!"

This simple incident in the Bethany narrative admits of manifold practical applications. Let us look to it with reference to the mightier moral miracle of the Resurrection of the soul "dead in trespasses and sins." Jesus, and Jesus alone, can awake that soul from the deep slumber of its spiritual death, and invest it with the glories of a new resurrection-life. In vain can it awake of itself; no human skill can put animation into the moral skeleton. No power of human eloquence, no "excellency of man's wisdom," can open these rayless eyes, and pour life, and light, and hope into the dull caverns of the spiritual sepulchre. "Prophesy to the dry bones!"—We may prophesy for ever—we may wake the valley of vision by ceaseless invocations, but the dead will hear not. No bone of the spiritual skeleton will stir, for it is "not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."

But though it be a Divine work from first to last which effects the spiritual regeneration of man, are we from this presumptuously to disregard the use of means? Are prayer, and preaching, and human effort, and strenuous earnestness in the work of our high calling, are these all to be superseded, and pronounced unavailing and unnecessary?

Nay, though man cannot wake to life his dormant spiritual energies—though these lie slumbering in the deep sleep of the sheeted dead, and nothing but Lazarus' Lord can break the moral trance—yet he can use the appointed means. He dare not be guilty of the monstrous inconsistency and crime of willingly allowing impediments to stand in the way of his spiritual revival which his own efforts may remove! He cannot expect his Lord to sound over his soul the gladdening accents of peace, and reconciliation, and joy, if some known sin be still lying, like the superincumbent grave-stone, which it is in his power to roll away, and at his peril if he suffer to remain!

Christ is alone the "abolisher of death," and the "giver of life;" but notwithstanding this, "Roll ye away the stone!"—neglect not the means He has appointed and prescribed. If ye neglect prayer, and despise ordinances, and trifle with temptation, or venture on forbidden ground, ye are only making the intervening obstacle firmer and faster, and wilfully denuding yourselves of the gift of life. Naaman must plunge seven times in Jordan, else he cannot be made clean. To cleanse himself of his leprosy he cannot, but to wash in Jordan he can. The Israelite must gaze on the brazen serpent; he cannot of himself heal one fevered wound, but to gaze on the appointed symbol of cure he can. In vain can the engines of war effect a breach on the walls of Jericho; but the hosts of Joshua can sound the appointed trumpet, and raise the prescribed shout, and the battlements in a moment are in the dust. Martha and Mary in vain can make their voices be heard in the "dull, cold ear of death," but at their Lord's bidding they can hurl back the outer portals where their dead is laid. They cannot unbind one fetter, but they can open with human hand the prison-door to admit the Divine Liberator.

Let it not be supposed that in this we detract in any wise from the omnipotence of the Saviour's grace. God forbid! All is of grace, from first to last—free, sovereign grace. Man has no more merit in salvation than the beggar has merit in reaching forth his hand for alms, or in stooping down to drink of the wayside fountain. But neither must we ignore the great truth which God strives throughout His Word to impress upon us, that He works by means, and that for the neglect of these means we are ourselves responsible. Paul had the assurance given him by an angel from heaven, when tossed in the storm in Adria, that not one life in his vessel was to be lost; that though the ship was to be wrecked, all her crew were to come safe to land. But was there on this account any effort on his part relaxed to secure their safety? No! he toiled and laboured at the pumps and rigging and anchors as unremittingly as before; and when some of the sailors made the cowardly attempt, by lowering a small boat, to effect their own escape, the voice of the apostle was heard proclaiming, amid the storm, that unless they abode in the ship none could be saved!

The true philosophy of the Gospel system is this, to feel as if much depended on ourselves; but at the same time entertaining the loftier conviction that all depends upon God. Jesus, when He invites to the strait gate, does not inculcate remaining outside, in a state of passive and listless inaction, until the portals be seen to move by the Divine hand. His exhortation and command rather is, "Strive"—"knock"—agonise to "enter in!" We are not to ascend to heaven, seated, like Elijah, in a chariot of fire, without toil or effort, but rather to "fight the good fight of faith." The saying of the great Apostle is a vivid portraiture of what the Christian's feelings ought to be regarding personal holiness—"I laboured, ... yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."

As the Lord of Bethany gives the summons, "Roll ye away the stone," His words seem paraphrased in this other Scripture, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." You may feel assured that He will not impose upon you one needless burden; He will not exact more than He knows your strength will bear; He will ask no Peter to come to Him on the water, unless He impart at the same time strength and support on the unstable wave; He will not demand of you the endurance of providences, and trials, and temptations you are unable to cope with; He will not ask you to draw water if the well is too deep, or withdraw the stone if too heavy. But neither, at the same time, will He admit as an impossibility that which, as a free and responsible agent, it is in your power to avert. He will not regard as your misfortune what is your crime. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."

Oh! let life be, more than it ever has been, one constant effort to roll away the stone from the moral sepulchre—carefully to remove every barrier between our souls and Jesus—looking forward to that glorious day when the voice of the Restorer shall be heard uttering the omnipotent "Come forth!" and to His angel assessors the mandate shall be given regarding the thronging myriads of risen dead, "Loose them and let them go!"



XIV.

UNBELIEF.

Man—short-sighted man—often raises impossibilities when God does not. It is hard for rebellious unbelief to lie submissive and still. In moments when the spirit might well be overawed into silence, it gives utterance to its querulous questionings and surmisings rather than remain obedient at the feet of Christ, reposing on the sublime aphorism, "All things are possible to him that believeth." In the mind of Martha, where faith had been so recently triumphant, doubt and unbelief have begun again to insinuate themselves. This "Peter of her sex" had ventured out boldly on the water to meet her Lord. She had owned Him as the giver of life, and triumphed in Him as her Saviour! But now she is beginning to sink. A natural difficulty presents itself to her mind about the removal of the incumbent grave-stone. She avers how needless its displacement would be, as by this time corruption must have begun its fatal work. Four brief days only had elapsed since the eye of Lazarus had beamed with fraternal affection. Now these lips must be "saying to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister." Death, she felt, must now be stamping his impressive mockery on that cherished earthly friendship, and, attired in his most terrible insignia, putting the last fatal extinguisher on the glimmerings of her faith and hope. "What need is there, Lord," she seems to say, "for this redundant labour? My brother is far beyond the reach even of a voice like Thine. Why excite vain expectations in my breast which never can be realised? That grave has closed upon him for the 'for ever' of time. Nothing now can revoke the sentence, or reanimate the silent dust, save the trump of God on the final day."[16]

Thus blindly did Martha reason. She can see no other object her Redeemer can have for the removal of the stone, save to gaze once more on a form and countenance He loved. Both for His sake, and the strangers assembled, she recoils from the thought of disclosing so humiliating a sight.

Alas! how little are fitful frames and feelings to be trusted. Only a few brief moments before, she had made a noble protestation of her faith in the presence of her Lord. His own majestic utterances had soothed her griefs, dried her tears, and elicited the confession that He was truly the Son of God. But the sight of the tomb and its mournful accompaniments obliterate for a moment the recollection of better thoughts and a nobler avowal. She forgets that "things which are impossible with men are possible with God." She is guilty of "limiting the Holy One of Israel."

How often is it so with us! How easy is it for us, like Martha, to be bold in our creed when there is nothing to cross our wishes, or dim and darken our faith. But when the hour of trial comes, how often does sense threaten to displace and supplant the nobler antagonist principle! How often do we lose sight of the Saviour at the very moment when we most need to have Him continually in view! How often are our convictions of the efficacy of prayer most dulled and deadened just when the dark waves are cresting over our heads, and voices of unbelief are uttering the upbraiding in our ears, "Where is now thy God?" But will Jesus leave His people to their own guilty unbelieving doubts? Will Martha, by her unworthy insinuations, put an arrest on her Lord's arm; or will He, in righteous retribution for her faithlessness, leave the stone sealed, and the dead unraised?

Nay! He loves His people too well to let their stupid unbelief and hardness of heart interfere with His own gracious purposes! How tenderly He rebukes the spirit of this doubter. "Why," as if He said, "Why distrust me? Why stultify thyself with these unbelieving surmises. Hast thou already forgotten my own gracious assurances, and thine own unqualified acceptance of them. My hand is never shortened that it cannot save; my ear is never heavy that it cannot hear. I can call the things which are not, and make them as though they were. Said I not unto thee, in that earnest conversation which I had a little ago outside the village, in which Gospel faith was the great theme, if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God?"

This Bethany utterance has still a voice,—a voice of rebuke and of comfort in our hours of trial. When, like aged Jacob, we are ready to say, "All these things are against me;" when we are about to lose the footsteps of a God of love, or have perhaps lost them, there is a voice ready to hush into silence every unbelieving doubt and surmise. "Although thou sayest thou canst not see Him, yet judgment is before Him, therefore trust thou in Him." God often thus hides Himself from His people in order to try their faith, and elicit their confidence. He puts us in perplexing paths—"allures" and "brings into the wilderness," only, however, that we may see more of Himself, and that He may "speak comfortably unto us." He lets our need attain its extremity, that His intervention may appear the more signal. He suffers apparently even His own promises to fail, that He may test the faith of His waiting people;—tutor them to "hope against hope," and to find, in unanswered prayers and baffled expectations, only a fresh reason for clinging to His all-powerful arm, and frequenting His mercy-seat. He dashes first to the ground our human confidences and refuges, shewing how utterly "vain is the help of man;" so that faith, with her own folded, dove-like wings, may repose in quiet confidence in His faithfulness, saying, "In the Lord put I my trust: why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?"

Reader! It would be well for you to hear this gentle chiding of Christ, too, in the moment of your spiritual depression;—when complaining of your corruptions, the weakness of your graces, your low attainments in holiness, the strength of your temptations, and your inability to resist sin. "Said I not unto thee," interposes this voice of mingled reproof and love, "My grace is sufficient for thee?" "The bruised reed I will not break, the smoking flax I will not quench." "Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." We are too apt to look to ourselves, to turn our contemplation inwards, instead of keeping the eye of faith centered undeviatingly on a faithful covenant-keeping God, laying our finger on every promise of His Word, and making the challenge regarding each, "Hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not bring it to pass?"

Yes; there may be much to try and perplex. Sense and sight may stagger, and stumble, and fall; we may be able to see no break in the clouds; "deep may be calling to deep," and wave responding to wave, "yet the Lord will command his loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night his song shall be with me." If we only "believe" in spite of unbelief; hoping on, and praying on, and trusting on; like the great Father of the faithful, in the midst of adverse providences, "strong in faith, giving glory to God," He will yet cause the day-spring from on high to visit us. Even in this world perplexing paths may be made plain, and slippery places smooth, and judgments "bright as the noonday;" but if not here, there is at least a glorious day of disclosures at hand, when the reign of unbelieving doubt shall terminate for ever, when the archives of a chequered past will be ransacked of their every mystery;—all events mirrored and made plain in the light of eternity; and this saying of the weeping Saviour of Bethany obtain its true and everlasting fulfilment, "SAID I NOT UNTO THEE, IF THOU WOULDST BELIEVE, THOU SHOULDST SEE THE GLORY OF GOD?"



XV.

THE DIVINE PLEADER.

The stone is rolled away, but there is a solemn pause just when the miracle is about to be performed.

Jesus prays! The God-Man Mediator—the Lord of Life—the Abolisher of Death—the Being of all Beings—who had the boundless treasures of eternity in His grasp—pauses by the grave of the dead, and lifts up His eyes to heaven in supplication! How often in the same incidents, during our Lord's incarnation, do we find His manhood and His Godhead standing together in stupendous contrast. At His birth, the mystic star and the lowly manger were together; at His death, the ignominious cross and the eclipsed sun were together. Here He weeps and prays at the very moment when He is baring the arm of Omnipotence. The "mighty God" appears in conjunction with "the man Christ Jesus." "His name is Immanuel, God with us."

The body of Lazarus was now probably, by the rolling away of the stone, exposed to view. It was a humiliating sight. Earth—the grave—could afford no solace to the spectators. The Redeemer, by a significant act, shews them where alone, at such an hour, comfort can be found. He points the mourning spirit to its only true source of consolation and peace in God Himself, teaching it to rise above the mortal to the immortal—the corruptible to the incorruptible—from earth to heaven.

Ah! there is nothing but humiliation and sadness in every view of the grave and corruption. Why dwell on the shattered casket, and not rather on the jewel which is sparkling brighter than ever in a better world? Why persist in gazing on the trophies of the last enemy, when we can joyfully realise the emancipated soul exulting in the plenitude of purchased bliss? Why fall with broken wing and wailing cry to the dust, when on eagle-pinion we can soar to the celestial gate, and learn the unkindness of wishing the sainted and crowned one back to the nether valley?

It is Prayer, observe, which thus brings the eye and the heart near to heaven. It is Prayer which opens the celestial portals, and gives to the soul a sight of the invisible.

Yes; ye who may be now weeping in unavailing sorrow over the departed, remember, in conjunction with the tears, the prayers of Jesus. Many a desolate mourner derives comfort from the thought—"Jesus wept." Forget not this other simple entry in our touching narrative, telling where the spirit should ever rest amid the shadows of death—"Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And I knew that Thou hearest me always."[17]

Let us gather for a little around this incident in the story of Bethany. It is one of the many golden sayings of priceless value.

That utterance has at this moment lost none of its preciousness; that voice, silent on earth, is still eloquent in heaven. The Great Intercessor still is there, "walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks;" loving to note all the wants and weaknesses, the necessities and distresses, of every Church, and every member of His Church. What He said of old to Peter, He says to every trembling believer—"I have prayed, and am praying for thee, that thy faith fail not!" "For thee!" We must not merge the interest which Jesus has in each separate member of His family, in His intercession for the Church in general. While He lets down His censer, and receives into it, for presentation on the golden altar, the prayers of the vast aggregate; while, as the true High Priest, He enters the holiest of all with the names of His spiritual Israel on His breastplate—carrying the burden of their hourly needs to the foot of the mercy-seat;—yet still, He pleads, as if the case of each stood separate and alone! He remembers thee, dejected Mourner, as if there were no other heart but thine to be healed, and no other tears but thine to be dried. His own words, speaking of believers, not collectively but individually, are these—"I will confess his name before my Father and his angels."[18] "Who touched me?" was His interrogation once on earth, as His discriminating love was conscious of some special contact amid the press of the multitude,—"Somebody hath touched me!" If we can say, in the language of Paul's appropriating faith, "He loved me, and gave Himself for me," we can add, He pleads for me, and bears me! He bears this very heart of mine, with all its weaknesses, and infirmities, and sins, before His Father's throne. He has engraven each stone of His Zion on the "palms of His hands," and "its walls are continually before Him!"

How untiring, too, in His advocacy! What has the Christian so to complain of, as his own cold, unworthy prayers—mixed so with unbelief—soiled with worldliness—sometimes guiltily omitted or curtailed. Not the fervid ejaculations of those feelingly alive to their spiritual exigencies, but listless, unctionless, the hands hanging down, the knees feeble and trembling!

But notwithstanding all, Jesus pleads! Still the Great Intercessor "waits to be gracious." He is at once Moses on the mountain, and Joshua on the battle-plain—fighting with us in the one, praying for us in the other. No Aarons or Hurs needed to sustain His sinking strength, for it is His sublime prerogative neither to "faint nor grow weary!" There is no loftier occupation for faith than to speed upwards to the throne and behold that wondrous Pleader, receiving at one moment, and at every moment, the countless supplications and prayers which are coming up before Him from every corner of His Church. The Sinner just awoke from his moral slumber, and in the agonies of conviction, exclaiming, "What must I do to be saved?"—The Procrastinator sending up from the brink of despair the cry of importunate agony.—The Backslider wailing forth his bitter lamentation over guilty departures, and foul ingratitude, and injured love.—The Sick man feebly groaning forth, in undertones of suffering, his petition for succour.—The Dying, on the brink of eternity, invoking the presence and support of the alone arm which can be of any avail to them.—The Bereaved, in the fresh gush of their sorrow, calling upon Him who is the healer of the broken-hearted. But all heard! Every tear marked—every sigh registered—every suppliant succoured. Amalek may come threatening nothing but discomfiture; but that pleading Voice on the heavenly Hill is "greater far than all that can be against us!" He pleads for His elect in every phase of their spiritual history—He pleads for their inbringing into His fold—He pleads for their perseverance in grace—He pleads for their deliverance at once from the accusations and the power of Satan—He pleads for their growing sanctification;—and when the battle of life is over, He uplifts His last pleading voice for their complete glorification. The intercession of Jesus is the golden key which unlocks the gates of Paradise to the departing soul. At a saint's dying moments we are too often occupied with the lower earthly scene to think of the heavenly. The tears of surrounding relatives cloud too often the more glorious revelations which faith discloses. But in the muffled stillness of that death-chamber, when each is holding his breath as the King of Terrors passes by—if we could listen to it, we should hear the "Prince who has power with God" thus uttering His final prayer, and on the rushing wings of ministering angels receiving an answer while He is yet speaking—"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory!"

Reader! exult more and more in this all-prevailing Advocate. See that ye approach the mercy-seat with no other trust but in His atoning work and meritorious righteousness. There was but One solitary man of the whole human race who, of old, in the Jewish temple, was permitted to speak face to face with Jehovah. There is but ONE solitary Being in the vast universe of God who, in the heavenly sanctuary, can effectually plead in behalf of His Spiritual Israel. "Seeing, then, that we have a Great High Priest passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, ... let us come boldly to the throne of grace." If Jesus delights in asking, God delights in bestowing. Let us put our every want, and difficulty, and perplexity, in His hand, feeling the precious assurance, that all which is really good for us will be given, and all that is adverse will, in equal mercy, be withheld. There is no limitation set to our requests. The treasury of grace is flung wide open for every suppliant. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name He will give it you." Surely we may cease to wonder that the Great Apostle should have clung with such intense interest to this elevating theme—the Saviour's intercession;—that in his brief, but most comprehensive and beautiful creed,[19] he should have so exalted, as he does, its relative importance, compared with other cognate truths. "It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Climbing, step by step, in the upward ascent of Christian faith and hope, he seems only to "reach the height of his great argument" when he stands on "the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense." There, gazing on the face of the great officiating Priest who fills all heaven with His fragrance, and feeling that against that intercession the gates of hell can never prevail, he can utter the challenge to devils, and angels, and men, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"



XVI.

THE OMNIPOTENT SUMMONS.

The moment has now come for the voice of Omnipotence to give the mandate. The group have gathered around the sepulchral grotto—the Redeemer stands in meek majesty in front—the teardrop still glistening in His eye, and that eye directed heavenward! Martha and Mary are gazing on His countenance in dumb emotion, while the eager bystanders bend over the removed stone to see if the dead be still there. Yes! there the captive lies—in uninvaded silence—attired still in the same solemn drapery. The Lord gives the word. "Lazarus come forth!" peals through the silent vault. The dull, cold ear seems to listen. The pulseless heart begins to beat—the rigid limbs to move—Lazarus lives! He rises girt in the swaddling-bands of the tomb, once more to walk in the light of the living.

Where Scripture is silent, it is vain for us to picture the emotions of that moment, when the weeping sisters found the gloomy hours of disconsolate sorrow all at once rolled away. The cry of mingled wonder and gratitude rings through that lonely graveyard,—"This our brother was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found!"

O most wondrous power—Death vanquished in his own territory! The sleeper has awoke a moral Samson, snapping the withs with which the King of Terrors had bound him. The star of Bethlehem shines, and the Valley of Achor becomes a door of hope. The all-devouring destroyer has to relinquish his prey.

Was the joy of that moment confined to these two bosoms? Nay! The Church of Christ in every age may well love to linger around the grave of Lazarus. In his resurrection there is to His true people a sure pledge and earnest of their own. It was the first sheaf reaped by the mower's sickle anticipatory of the great Harvest-home of the Final day "when all that are in their graves" shall hear the same voice and shall "come forth."[20]

Solemn, surely, is the thought that that same portentous miracle performed on Lazarus is one day to be performed on ourselves. Wherever we repose—whether, as he did, in the quiet churchyard of our native village, or in the midst of the city's crowded cemetery, or far away amid the alien and stranger in some foreign shore, our dust shall be startled by that omnipotent summons. How shall we hear it? Would it sound in our ears like the sweet tones of the silver trumpet of Jubilee? Would it be to gaze like Lazarus on the face of our best friend—to see Jesus bending over us in looks of tenderness—to hear the living tones of that same voice, whose accents were last heard in the dark valley, whispering hopes full of immortality? True, we have not to wait for a Saviour's love and presence till then. The hour of death is to the Christian the birthday of endless life. Guardian angels are hovering around his dying pillow ready to waft his spirit into Abraham's bosom. "The souls of believers do immediately pass into glory." But the full plenitude of their joy and bliss is reserved for the time when the precious but redeemed dust, which for a season is left to moulder in the tomb, shall become instinct with life—"the corruptible put on incorruption, and the mortal immortality." The spirits of the just enter at death on "the inheritance of the saints in light;" but at the Resurrection they shall rise as separate orbs from the darkness and night of the grave, each to "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father." However glorious the emancipation of the soul in the moment of dissolution, it is not until the plains and valleys of our globe shall stand thick with the living of buried generations—each glorified body the image of its Lord's—that the predicted anthem will be heard waking the echoes of the universe—"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" Then, with the organs of their resurrection-bodies ennobled, etherealised, purified from all the grossness of earth, they shall "behold the King in his beauty." "The King's daughter," all glorious without, "all glorious within"—"her clothing of wrought gold"—resplendent without with the robes of righteousness—radiant within with the beauties of holiness—shall be brought "with gladness and rejoicing," and "enter into the King's palace." This will form the full meridian of the saints' glory—the essence and climax of their new-born bliss—the full vision and fruition of a Saviour-God. "When He shall appear, ... we shall see Him as He is!" The first sight which will burst on the view of the Risen ones will be Jesus! His hands will wreath the glorified brows, in presence of an assembled world, with the crown of life. From His lips will proceed the gladdening welcome—"Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!"

But this will not exhaust the elements of bliss in the case of the "perfected just" on the day of their final triumph. Though the presence of their adorable Redeemer would be enough, and more than enough, to fill their cup with happiness, there will be others also to welcome them, and to augment their joy. Lazarus' Lord was not alone at the sepulchre's brink, at Bethany, ready to greet him back. Two loved sisters shared the joy of that gladsome hour. We are left to picture for ourselves the reunion, when, with hand linked in hand, they retraversed the road which had so recently echoed to the voice of mourning, and entered once more their home, radiant with a sunshine they had imagined to have passed away from it for ever!

So will it be with the believer on the morning of the Resurrection. While his Lord will be there, waiting to welcome him, there will be others ready with their presence to enhance the bliss of that gladdening restoration. Those whose smiles were last seen in the death-chamber of earth, now standing—not as Martha and Mary, with the tear on their cheek and the furrow of deep sorrow on their brow, but robed and radiant in resurrection attire, glowing with the anticipations of an everlasting and indissoluble reunion!

Can we anticipate, in the resurrection of Lazarus, our own happy history? Yes! happier history, for it will not then be to come forth once more, like him, into a weeping world, to renew our work and warfare, feeling that restoration to life is only but a brief reprieve, and that soon again the irrevocable sentence will and must overtake us! Not like him, going to a home still covered with the drapery of sorrow,—a few transient years and the mournful funeral tragedy to be repeated,—but to enter into the region of endless life—to pass from the dark chambers of corruption into the peace and glories of our Heavenly Father's joyous Home, and "so to be for ever with the Lord!"

Sometimes it is with dying believers as with Lazarus. Their Lord, at the approach of death, seems to be absent. He who gladdened their homes and their hearts in life, is, for some mysterious reason, away in the hour of dissolution; their spirits are depressed; their faith languishes; they are ready to say, "Where is now my God?" But as He returned to Bethany to awake His sleeping friend, so will it be with all his true people, on that great day when the arm of death shall be for ever broken. If now united to Him by a living faith,—loved by Him as Lazarus was, and conscious, however imperfectly, of loving Him back in return,—we may go down to our graves, making Job's lofty creed and exclamation our own, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."

One remark more. We have listened to the Omnipotent fiat,—"Lazarus, come forth!" We have seen the ear of death starting at the summons, and the buried captive goes free! Shall we follow the family group within the hallowed precincts of the Bethany dwelling? Shall fancy pour her strange and mysterious queries into the ear of him who has just come back from that land "from whose bourne no traveller returns?" He had been, in a far truer sense than Paul in an after year, in "Paradise." He must have heard unspeakable and unutterable words, "which it is not possible for a man to utter." He had looked upon the Sapphire Throne. He had ranged himself with the adoring ranks. He had strung his harp to the Eternal Anthem. When, lo! an angel—a "ministering one"—whispers in his ear to hush his song, and speed him back again for a little season to the valley below.

Startling mandate! Can we suppose a remonstrance to so strange a summons? What! to be uncrowned and unglorified!—Just after a few sips of the heavenly fountain, to be hurried away back again to the valley of Baca!—to gather up once more the soiled earthly garments and the pilgrim staff, and from the pilgrim rest and the victor's palm to encounter the din and dust and scars of battle! What!—just after having wept his final tear, and fought the last and the most terrible foe, to have his eye again dimmed with sorrow, and to have the thought before him of breasting a second time the swellings of Jordan!

"The Lord hath need of thee," is all the reply, It is enough! He asks no more! That glorious Redeemer had left a far brighter throne and heritage for him. Lazarus, come forth! sounds in his old world-home, whence his spirit had soared, and in his beloved Master's words, on a mightier embassy, he can say,—"Lo, I come! I delight to do thy will, O my God."

Or do other questions involuntarily arise? What was the nature of his happiness while "absent from the body?" What the scenery of that bright abode? Had he mingled in the goodly fellowship of prophets? Had he conversed with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob? Was his spirit stationary—hovering with a brotherhood of spirits within some holy limit—or, was he permitted to travel far and near in errands of love and mercy? Had Bethany been revisited during that mysterious interval? Had he been the unseen witness of the tears and groans of his anguished sisters?

But hush, too, these vain inquiries. We dare not give rein to imagination where Inspiration is silent. There is a designed mystery about the circumstantials of a future state. Its scenery and locality we know nothing of. It is revealed to us only in its character. We are permitted to approach its gates, and to read the surmounting inscription,—"Without holiness no man shall see the Lord." Further we cannot go. Be it ours, like Lazarus, to attain a meetness for heaven, by becoming more and more like Lazarus' Redeemer! "We shall be LIKE HIM," is the brief but comprehensive Bible description of that glorious world. Saviour-like here, we shall have heaven begun on earth, and lying down like Lazarus in the sweet sleep of death, when our Lord comes, on the great day-dawn of immortality, we shall be satisfied when we awake in His likeness!

"He that was dead rose up and spoke—He spoke! Was it of that majestic world unknown? Those words which first the bier's dread silence broke— Came they with revelation in each tone? Were the far cities of the nations gone, The solemn halls of consciousness or sleep, For man uncurtain'd by that spirit lone, Back from the portal summon'd o'er the deep? Be hush'd, my soul! the veil of darkness lay Still drawn; therefore thy Lord called back the voice departed, To spread His truth, to comfort the weak-hearted; Not to reveal the mysteries of its way. Oh! I take that lesson home in silent faith; Put on submissive strength to meet, not question DEATH."



XVII.

THE BOX OF OINTMENT.

Once more we visit in thought a peaceful and happy home-scene in the same Bethany household. The severed links in that broken chain are again united.

How often in a time of severe bereavement, when some "light of the dwelling" has suddenly been extinguished, does the imagination fondly dwell on the possibility of the wild dream of separation passing away; of the vacant seat being refilled by its owner the "loved and lost one" again restored. Alas! in all such cases, it is but a feverish vision, destined to know no fulfilment. Here, however, it was indeed a happy reality. "Lazarus is dead!" was the bitter dirge a few brief weeks ago; but now, "Lazarus lives." His silent voice is heard again—his dull eye is lighted again—the temporary pang of separation is only remembered to enhance the joy of so gladsome a reunion.

It was on a Sabbath evening, the last Sabbath but one of the waning Jewish dispensation, when Spring's loveliness was carpeting the Mount of Olives and clothing with fresh verdure the groves around Bethany, that our blessed Redeemer was seen approaching the haunt of former friendship. He had for two months taken shelter from the malice of the Sanhedrim in the little town of Ephraim and the mountainous region of Perea, on the other side of the Jordan. But the Passover solemnity being at hand, and his own hour having come, he had "set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem." It is more than probable that for several days He had been travelling in the company of other pilgrims coming from Galilee on their way to the feast. He seems, however, to have left the festival caravan at Jericho, lingering behind with his own disciples in order to secure a private approach to the city of solemnities. They were completing their journey on the Sabbath referred to just as the sun was sinking behind the brow of Olivet, and, turning aside from the highway, they spent the night in their old Bethany retreat. Befitting tranquil scene for His closing Sabbath—a happy preparation for a season of trial and conflict! It is well worthy of observation, how, as His saddest hours were drawing near—the shadow of His cross projected on His path—Bethany becomes more and more endeared to Him. Night after night, during this memorable week, we shall find Him resorting to its cherished seclusion. As the storm is fast gathering, the vessel seeks for shelter in its best loved haven.[21]

Imagine the joy with which the announcement would be received by the inmates—"Our Lord and Redeemer is once more approaching." Imagine how the great Conqueror of death would be welcomed into the home consecrated alike by His love and power. Now every tear dried! The weeping that endured for the long night of bereavement all forgotten. Ah! if Jesus were loved before in that happy home, how, we may well imagine, would He be adored and reverenced now. What a new claim had He established on their deepest affection and regard. Feelingly alive to all they owed Him, the restored brother and rejoicing sisters with hearts overflowing with gratitude could say, in the words of their Psalmist King—"Thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness, to the end that my glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks unto thee for ever!"