{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_26760/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_26760","id":"gutenberg_26760","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26760","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Religion/Spirituality","Jesus Christ -- Biography -- Sermons","Lazarus, of Bethany, Saint"],"text":"Produced by Heiko Evermann, Nigel Blower and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This\nbook was produced from scanned images of public domain\nmaterial from the Google Print project.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n             MEMORIES OF BETHANY.\n\n\n                    By the\n\n          REV. JOHN R. MACDUFF, D.D.\n\n\n                  Author of\n\n\"MORNING AND NIGHT WATCHES,\" \"WORDS OF JESUS,\"\n   \"MIND OF JESUS,\" \"FOOTSTEPS OF ST. PAUL,\"\n  \"FAMILY PRAYERS,\" \"MEMORIES OF GENNESARET,\"\n          \"STORY OF BETHLEHEM,\" ETC.\n\n\n                   NEW YORK:\n           ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS,\n               No. 530 Broadway.\n                     1861.\n\n\n\n\n                      To\n               MOURNERS IN ZION,\n                   with whom\n                    BETHANY\n  has ever been a name consecrated to sorrow,\n                     these\n                   MEMORIES\n                ARE INSCRIBED.\n\n\n\n\nPASSAGES REFERRING TO BETHANY IN THE SACRED NARRATIVE.\n\n\nI.\n\nEarliest Notice of Bethany.\n\nLUKE X. 38-42.--\"And He entered into a certain village: and a certain\nwoman named Martha received Him into her house. And she had a sister\ncalled Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard His word. But\nMartha was cumbered about much serving, and came to Him, and said, Lord,\ndost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her\ntherefore that she help me. And Jesus answered and said unto her,\nMartha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one\nthing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not\nbe taken away from her.\"\n\n\nII.\n\nBethany in connexion with the Sickness, Death, and Resurrection of\nLazarus.\n\nJOHN XI. 1.--\"Now a certain _man_ was sick, _named_ Lazarus, of BETHANY,\nthe town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was _that_ Mary which\nanointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose\nbrother Lazarus was sick.) Therefore his sisters sent unto Him, saying,\nLord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick. When Jesus heard _that_, He\nsaid, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that\nthe Son of God might be glorified thereby. Now Jesus loved Martha, and\nher sister, and Lazarus. When He had heard therefore that he was sick,\nHe abode two days still in the same place where He was.\"\n\n       *       *       *\n\n\"And after that He saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I\ngo, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said His disciples, Lord, if\nhe sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spake of His death: but they\nthought that He had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus\nunto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I\nwas not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless, let us go\nunto him.\"\n\n       *       *       *\n\n\"Then, when Jesus came, He found that he had _lain_ in the grave four\ndays already. (Now BETHANY was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen\nfurlongs off.) And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort\nthem concerning their brother. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that\nJesus was coming, went and met Him: but Mary sat _still_ in the house.\nThen said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother\nhad not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of\nGod, God will give _it_ Thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall\nrise again. Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in\nthe resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the\nresurrection, and the life: He that believeth in Me, though he were\ndead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth, and believeth in Me,\nshall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto Him, Yea, Lord: I\nbelieve that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into\nthe world. And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary\nher sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee.\nAs soon as she heard _that_, she arose quickly, and came unto Him. Now\nJesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha\nmet Him. The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted\nher, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed\nher, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then when Mary was\ncome where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying\nunto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When\nJesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came\nwith her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where\nhave ye laid him? They say unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept.\nThen said the Jews, Behold how He loved him! And some of them said,\nCould not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that\neven this man should not have died! Jesus therefore again groaning in\nHimself, cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.\nJesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was\ndead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been\n_dead_ four days. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if\nthou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God? Then they\ntook away the stone _from the place_ where the dead was laid. And Jesus\nlifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that Thou hast heard\nMe. And I knew that Thou hearest Me always: but because of the people\nwhich stand by I said _it_, that they may believe that Thou hast sent\nMe. And when He thus had spoken, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus,\ncome forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with\ngrave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith\nunto them, Loose him, and let him go.\"\n\n\nIII.\n\nNotices of Bethany subsequent to the Raising of Lazarus.\n\nJOHN XII. 1-8.--\"Then Jesus, six days before the Passover, came to\nBETHANY, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the\ndead. There they made Him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was\none of them that sat at the table with Him. Then took Mary a pound of\nointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and\nwiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of\nthe ointment. Then saith one of His disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's\n_son_, which should betray Him, Why was not this ointment sold for three\nhundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared\nfor the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what\nwas put therein. Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of My\nburying hath she kept this. For the poor always ye have with you; but Me\nye have not always.\"\n\nMATTHEW XXVI. 12-13.--\"For in that she hath poured this ointment on my\nbody, she did _it_ for my burial. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever\nthis gospel shall be preached in the whole world, _there_ shall also\nthis, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.\"\n\nJOHN XII. 9.--\"Much people of the Jews therefore knew that He was there:\nand they came not for Jesus' sake only, but that they might see Lazarus\nalso, whom he had raised from the dead.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nJOHN XII. 12-15.--\"On the next day much people that were come to the\nfeast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches\nof palm trees, and went forth to meet Him, and cried, Hosanna: Blessed\nis the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. And Jesus,\nwhen He had found a young ass, sat thereon; as it is written, Fear not,\ndaughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass's colt.\"\n\nMATTHEW XXI. 10-12.--\"And when He was come into Jerusalem, all the city\nwas moved, saying, Who is this? And the multitude said, This is Jesus\nthe Prophet of Nazareth of Galilee. And Jesus went into the temple of\nGod, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and\noverthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that\nsold doves.\"\n\nMARK XI. 11-15.--\"And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple:\nand when He had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide\nwas come, he went out unto BETHANY, with the twelve. And on the morrow,\nwhen they were come from Bethany, He was hungry: And seeing a fig-tree\nafar off having leaves, He came, if haply he might find any thing\nthereon: and when He came to it, He found nothing but leaves; for the\ntime of figs was not _yet_. And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man\neat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And His disciples heard _it_. And\nthey come to Jerusalem: and Jesus went into the temple, and began to\ncast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the\ntables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves.\"\n\nVerse 19-20.--\"And when even was come, He went out of the city. And in\nthe morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig-tree dried up from the\nroots.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nLUKE XXIV. 50-52--\"And He led them out as far as to BETHANY; and He\nlifted up His hands, and blessed them. And it came to pass, while He\nblessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into Heaven. And\nthey worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.\"\n\nACTS I. 9-12.--\"And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld,\nHe was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And, while\nthey looked stedfastly toward Heaven as He went up, behold, two men\nstood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why\nstand ye gazing up into Heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from\nyou into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go\ninto Heaven. Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the Mount called\nOlivet, which is from Jerusalem a Sabbath-day's journey.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nZECHARIAH XIV. 4.--\"And His feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount\nof Olives, which _is_ before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of\nOlives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the\nwest, _and there shall be_ a very great valley; and half of the mountain\nshall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.\"\n\n       *       *       *\n\n\"And it shall be in that day, _that_ living waters shall go out from\nJerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward\nthe hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be. And the Lord shall\nbe King over all the earth: in that day shall there be one Lord, and his\nname one.\"\n\n       *       *       *\n\n\"And it shall come to pass, _that_ every one that is left of all the\nnations which came against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year\nto worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of\nTabernacles.\"\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n    I. OPENING THOUGHTS                        1\n\n   II. THE HOME SCENE                         11\n\n  III. LESSONS                                24\n\n   IV. THE MESSENGER                          34\n\n    V. THE MESSAGE                            42\n\n   VI. THE SLEEPER                            53\n\n  VII. LIGHTS AND SHADOWS                     67\n\n VIII. THE MOURNER'S COMFORT                  77\n\n   IX. THE MOURNER'S CREED                    84\n\n    X. THE MASTER                             92\n\n   XI. SECOND CAUSES                         100\n\n  XII. THE WEEPING SAVIOUR                   108\n\n XIII. THE GRAVE-STONE                       125\n\n  XIV. UNBELIEF                              134\n\n   XV. THE DIVINE PLEADER                    141\n\n  XVI. THE OMNIPOTENT SUMMONS                150\n\n XVII. THE BOX OF OINTMENT                   161\n\nXVIII. PALM BRANCHES                         178\n\n  XIX. THE FIG-TREE                          191\n\n   XX. CLOSING HOURS                         211\n\n  XXI. THE LAST VISIT                        221\n\n XXII. ANGELIC COMFORTERS                    240\n\nXXIII. THE DISCIPLES' RETURN                 257\n\n\n\n\nMEMORIES OF BETHANY\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nOPENING THOUGHTS.\n\n\nPlaces associated with great minds are always interesting. What a halo\nof moral grandeur must ever be thrown around that spot which was\nhallowed above all others by the Lord of glory as the scene of His most\ncherished earthly friendship! However holy be the memories which\nencircle other localities trodden by Him in the days of His\nflesh,--Bethlehem, with its manger cradle, its mystic star, and\nadoring cherubim--Nazareth, the nurturing home of His youthful\naffections--Tiberias, whose shores so often echoed to His footfall, or\nwhose waters in stillness or in storm bore Him on their bosom--the\ncrested heights where He uttered His beatitudes--the midnight mountains\nwhere He prayed--the garden where He suffered--the hill where He\ndied,--there is no one single resort in His divine pilgrimage on which\nsanctified thought loves so fondly to dwell as on the home and village\nof BETHANY.\n\nIts hours of sacred converse have long ago fled. Its honoured family\nhave slumbered for ages in their tomb. Bethany's Lord has been for\ncenturies enthroned amid the glories of a brighter home. But though its\nMemories are all that remain, the place is still fragrant with His\npresence. The echoes of His voice--words of unearthly sweetness--still\nlinger around it; and have for eighteen hundred years served to cheer\nand encourage many a fainting pilgrim in his upward ascent to the true\nBethany above!\n\nThere, the Redeemer of the world proclaimed a brief but impressive\nGospel. Heaven and earth seemed then to touch one another. We have the\ntender tones of a _Man_ blended with the ineffable majesty of _God_.\nHopes \"full of immortality\" shine with their celestial rainbow-hues\namid a shower of holy tears. The cancelling from our Bibles of the 11th\nchapter of St John would be like the blotting out of the brightest\nplanet from the spiritual firmament. Each of its magnificent utterances\nhas proved like a ministering-angel--a seraph-messenger bearing its\nlive-coal of comfort to the broken, bleeding heart from the holiest\naltar which SYMPATHY (divine and human) ever upreared in a trial-world!\nMany has been the weary footstep and tearful eye that has hastened in\nthought to BETHANY--\"gone to the grave of Lazarus, to weep there.\"\n\n\"The town of Mary and her sister Martha,\" then, furnishes us alike with\na garnered treasury of Christian solaces, and one of the very loveliest\nof the Bible's domestic portraitures. If the story of Joseph and his\nbrethren is in the Old Testament invested with surpassing interest, here\nis a Gospel home-scene in the New, of still deeper and tenderer\npathos--a picture in which the true Joseph appears as the central\nfigure, without any estrangements to mar its beauty. Often at other\ntimes a drapery of woe hangs over the pathway of the Man of Sorrows.\nBut _Bethany_ is bathed in sunshine;--a sweet _oasis_ in his toil-worn\npilgrimage. At this quiet abode of congenial spirits he seems to have\nhad his main \"sips at the fountain of human joy,\" and to have obtained a\ntemporary respite from unwearied labour and unmerited enmity. The \"Lily\namong thorns\" raised His drooping head in this Eden home! Thither we can\nfollow Him from the courts of the Temple--the busy crowd--the lengthened\njourney--the miracles of mercy--the hours of vain and ineffectual\npleading with obdurate hearts. We can picture Him as the inmate of a\npeaceful family, spirit blending with spirit in sanctified communion. We\ncan mark the tenderness of His holy humanity. We can see how He loved,\nand sympathised, and wept, and rejoiced!\n\nAs the tremendous events which signalised the close of His pilgrimage\ndrew on, still it is _Bethany_ with which they are mainly associated. It\nwas at _Bethany_ the fearful visions of His cross and passion cast their\nshadow on his path! From its quiet palm-trees[1] He issued forth on His\nlast day's journey across Mount Olivet. It was with _Bethany_ in view\nHe ascended to heaven. Its soil was the last He trod--its homes were the\nlast on which his eye rested when the cloud received Him up into glory.\nThe beams of the Sun of Righteousness seemed as if they loved to linger\non this consecrated height.\n\nWe cannot doubt that many incidents regarding His oft sojournings there\nare left unrecorded. We have more than once, indeed, merely the simple\nannouncement in the inspired narrative that He retired from Jerusalem\nall night to the village where His friend Lazarus resided. We dare not\nwithdraw more of the veil than the Word of God permits. Let us be\ngrateful for what we have of the gracious unfoldings here vouchsafed of\nHis inner life--the comprehensive intermingling of doctrine,\nconsolation, comfort, and instruction in righteousness. His Bethany\nsayings are for all time--they have \"gone through all the earth\"--His\nBethany words \"to the end of the world!\" Like its own alabaster box of\nprecious ointment, \"wheresoever the Gospel is preached,\" there will\nthese be held in grateful memorial.\n\nThe traveller in Palestine is to this day shewn, in a sort of secluded\nravine on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives (about fifteen\nfurlongs or two miles from Jerusalem), a cluster of poor cottages,\nnumbering little more than twenty families, with groups of palm-trees\nsurrounding them, interspersed here and there with the olive, the\nalmond, the pomegranate, and the fig.[2]\n\nThis ruined village bears the Arab name of El-Azirezeh--the Arabic form\nof the name Lazarus--and at once identifies it with a spot so sacred and\ninteresting in Gospel story. It is described by the most recent and\ndiscerning of Eastern writers as \"a wild mountain hamlet, screened by an\nintervening ridge from the view of the top of Olivet--perched on its\nopen plateau of rock--the last collection of human habitations before\nthe desert hills that reach to Jericho. ... High in the distance are the\nPeraean mountains; the foreground is the deep descent of the mountain\nvalley.\"[3]\n\n\"The fields around,\" says another traveller, \"lie uncultivated, and\ncovered with rank grass and wild flowers; but it is easy to imagine the\ndeep and still beauty of this spot when it was the home of Lazarus and\nhis sisters, Martha and Mary. Defended on the north and west by the\nMount of Olives, it enjoys a delightful exposure to the southern sun.\nThe grounds around are obviously of great fertility, though quite\nneglected; and the prospect to the south-east commands a magnificent\nview of the Dead Sea and the plains of Jordan.\"[4]\n\n                   \"On the horizon's verge,\n    The last faint tracing on the blue expanse,\n    Rise Moab's summits; and above the rest\n    One pinnacle, where, placed by Hand Divine,\n    Israel's great leader stood, allow'd to view,\n    And but to view, that long-expected land\n    He may not now enjoy. Below, dim gleams\n    The sea, untenanted by ought that lives,\n    And Jordan's waters thread the plain unseen.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    Here, hid among her trees, a village clings--\n    Roof above roof uprising. White the walls,\n    And whiter still by contrast; and those roofs,\n    Broad sunny platforms, strew'd with ripening grain.\n    Some wandering olive or unsocial fig\n    Amid the broken rooks which bound the path\n    Snatches scant nurture from the creviced stone.\"[5]\n\nBefore closing these prefatory remarks, the question cannot fail to have\noccurred to the most unobservant reader, why the history of the Family\nof Bethany and the Resurrection of Lazarus, in themselves so replete\nwith interest and instruction--the latter, moreover, forming, as it did,\nso notable a crisis in the Saviour's life--should have been recorded\nonly by the Evangelist John. Strange that the other inspired penmen\nshould have left altogether unchronicled this touching episode in sacred\nwrit. One or other of two reasons--or both combined--we may accept as\nthe most satisfactory explanation regarding what, after all, must remain\na difficulty. John alone of the Gospel writers narrates the transactions\nwhich took place in _Judea_ in connexion with the Saviour's public\nministry,--the others restricted themselves mainly to the incidents and\nevents of His _Galilean_ life and journeys; at all events, till they\ncome to the closing scene of all.[6] There is another reason equally\nprobable:--A wise Christian prudence, and delicate consideration for the\nfeelings of the living, may have prevented the other Evangelists giving\npublicity to facts connected with their Lord's greatest miracle; a\npremature disclosure of which might have exposed Lazarus and his sisters\nto the violence of the unscrupulous persecutors of the day. They would,\nmoreover, (as human feelings are the same in every age,) naturally\nshrink from violating the peculiar sacredness of domestic grief by\npublishing circumstantially its details while the mourners and the\nmourned still lingered at their Bethany home. Well did they know that\nthat Holy Spirit at whose dictation they wrote, would not suffer \"the\nChurch of the future\" to be deprived of so precious a record of divine\nlove and power. Hence the sacred task of being the Biographer of Lazarus\nwas consigned to their aged survivor.\n\nWhen the Apostle of Patmos wrote his Gospel, as is supposed in distant\nEphesus, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were, in all likelihood, reposing in\ntheir graves. Happily so, too, for ere this the Roman armies were\nencamped almost within sight of their old dwelling, and the inhabitants\nof Jerusalem undergoing their unparalleled sufferings.\n\nAdd to this, John, of all the Evangelists, was best qualified to do\njustice to this matchless picture. Baptized himself with the spirit of\nlove, his inspired pencil could best portray the lights and shadows in\nthis lovely and loving household. Pre-eminently like his Lord, he could\nbest delineate the scene of all others where the tenderness of that\ntender Saviour shone most conspicuous. He was the disciple who had leant\non His bosom--who had been admitted by Him to nearest and most confiding\nfellowship. He would have the Church, to the latest period of time, to\nenjoy the same. He interrupts, therefore, the course of his narrative\nthat he may lift the veil which enshrouds the private life of Jesus, and\nexhibit Him in all ages in the endearing attitude and relation of a\n_Human Friend_. Immanuel is transfigured on this Mount of Love before\nHis suffering and glory! The Bethany scene, with its tints of soft and\nmellowed sunlight, forms a pleasing background to the sadder and more\nawful events which crowd the Gospel's closing chapters.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nTHE HOME SCENE.\n\n\nThe curtain rises on a quiet Judean village, the sanctuary of three holy\nhearts. Each of the inmates have some strongly-marked traits of\nindividual character. These have been so often delicately and truthfully\ndrawn that it is the less necessary to dwell minutely upon them here.\nThere is abundant material in the narrative to discover to us, in the\nsisters, two characters--both interesting in themselves, both beloved by\nJesus, both needful in the Church of God, but at the same time widely\ndifferent, preparing by a diverse education for heaven--requiring, as we\nshall find, from Him who best knew their diversity, a separate and\npeculiar treatment.\n\nMartha, the elder (probably the eldest of the family), has been\naccurately represented as the type of activity; bustling, energetic,\nimpulsive, well qualified to be the head of the household, and to\ngrapple with the stern realities and routine of actual life; quick in\napprehension, strong and vigorous in intellect, anxious to give a reason\nfor all she did, and requiring a reason for the conduct of others; a\nuseful if not a noble character, combining diligence in business with\nfervency in spirit.\n\nMary, again, was the type of reflection; calm, meek, devotional,\ncontemplative, sensitive in feeling, ill suited to battle with the cares\nand sorrows, the strifes and griefs of an engrossing and encumbering\nworld; one of those gentle flowers that pine and bend under the rough\nblasts of life, easily battered down by hail and storm, but as ready to\nraise its drooping leaves under heavenly influences. Her position was at\nher Lord's feet, drinking in those living waters which came welling up\nfresh from the great Fountain of life; asking no questions, declining\nall arguments, gentle and submissive, a beautiful impersonation of the\nchildlike faith which \"beareth all things, hopeth all things, believeth\nall things.\" While her sister can so command her feelings as to be able\nto rush forth to meet her Lord outside the village, calm and\nself-possessed, to unbosom to Him all her hopes and fears, and even to\ninterrogate Him about death and the resurrection, Mary can only meet Him\nburied in her all-absorbing grief. The crushed leaves of that flower of\nparadise are bathed and saturated with dewy tears. She has not a word of\nremonstrance. Jesus speaks to Martha--chides her--reasons with her; with\nMary, He knew that the heart was too full, the wound too deep, to bear\nthe probing of word or argument; He speaks, therefore, in the touching\npathos of her own silent grief. Her melting emotion has its response in\nHis own. In one word, Martha was one of those meteor spirits rushing to\nand fro amid the ceaseless activities of life, softened and saddened,\nbut not prostrated and crushed by the sudden inroads of sorrow. Mary,\nagain, we think of as one of those angel forms which now and then seem\nto walk the earth from the spirit-land; a quiet evening star, shedding\nits mellowed radiance among deepening twilight shadows, as if her home\nwas in a brighter sphere, and her choice, as we know it was, \"a better\npart, that never could be taken from her.\"[7] Beautifully and delicately\nhas a Christian poet thus drawn her loving character:--\n\n    \"Oh, blest beyond all daughters of the East!\n       What were the Orient thrones to that low seat,\n     Where thy hush'd spirit drew celestial birth!\n       Mary! meek listener at the Saviour's feet,\n       No feverish cares to that divine retreat\n     Thy woman's heart of silent worship brought,\n       But a fresh childhood, heavenly truth to meet\n     With love and wonder and submissive thought.\n       Oh! for the holy quiet of thy breast,\n     Midst the world's eager tones and footsteps flying,\n     Thou whose calm soul was like a well-spring, lying\n       So deep and still in its transparent rest,\n     That e'en when noontide burns upon the hills,\n     Some one bright solemn star all its lone mirror fills.\"\n\nOf Lazarus, around whom the main interest of the narrative gathers, we\nhave fewer incidental touches to guide us in giving individuality to his\ncharacter. This, however, we may infer, from the poignant sorrow of the\ntwin hearts that were so unexpectedly broken, that he was a loved and\nlamented only brother, a sacred prop around which their tenderest\naffections were entwined. Included too, as he was, in the love which\nthe Divine Saviour bore to the household (for \"Jesus loved Lazarus\"), is\nit presumptuous to imagine that his spirit had been cast into much the\nsame human mould as that of his beloved Lord, and that the friendship of\nJesus for him had been formed on the same principles on which\nfriendships are formed still--a similarity of disposition, some mental\nand moral resemblances and idiosyncrasies? They were like-minded, so far\nas a fallible nature and the nature of a stainless humanity _could_ be\nassimilated. We can think of him as gentle, retiring, amiable,\nforgiving, heavenly-minded; an imperfect and shadowy, it may be, but\nstill a faithful reflection and transcript of incarnate loveliness. May\nwe not venture to use regarding him his Lord's eulogy on another,\n\"Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!\"\n\nNor must we forget, in this rapid sketch, what a precious unfolding we\nhave in this home portraiture of the humanity of the Saviour! \"_The Man_\nChrist Jesus\" stands in softened majesty and tenderness before our view.\nHe who had a heart capacious enough to take in all mankind, had yet His\nlikings (sinless partialities) for individuals and minds which were more\nthan others congenial and kindred with His own. As there are some heart\nsanctuaries where we can more readily rush to bury the tale of our\nsorrows or unburden our perplexities, so had He. \"Jesus wept!\"--this\nspeaks of Him as the human Sympathiser. \"Jesus loved Lazarus\"--this\nspeaks of Him as the human Friend! He had an ardent affection for all\nHis disciples, but even among _them_ there was an inner circle of holier\nattachments--a Peter, and James, and John; and out of this sacred _trio_\nagain there was one pre-eminently \"Beloved.\" So, amid the hallowed\nhaunts of Palestine, the homes of Judea, the cities of Galilee, there\nwas but _one_ Bethany. It is delightful thus to think of the heart of\nJesus in all but sin as purely _human_, identical and identified with\nour own. He was no hermit-spirit dwelling in mysterious solitariness\napart from His fellows, but open to the charities of life;--in all His\nrefined and hallowed sensibilities \"made like unto His brethren.\"\nFriendship is itself a holy thing. The bright intelligences in the upper\nsanctuary know it and experience it. They \"cry one to another.\" Theirs\nis no solitary strain--no isolated existence. Unlike the planets in the\nmaterial firmament, shining distant and apart, they are rather\nclustering constellations, whose gravitation-law is unity and love, this\nbinding them to one another, and all to God. Nay--with reverence we say\nit--may not the archetype of all friendship be found shadowed forth in\nwhat is higher still, those mystic and ineffable communings subsisting\nbetween Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a past eternity? We can thus\nregard the friendship of Jesus on earth--like all ennobled, purified\naffections--as an emanation from the Divine; a sacred and holy rill,\nflowing direct from the Fountain of infinite love. How our adorable Lord\nin the days of His flesh fondly clung even to hearts that grew faithless\nwhen fidelity was most needed! What was it but a noble and touching\ntribute to the longings and susceptibilities of His holy soul for human\nfriendship, when, on entering the precincts of Gethsemane, He thus\nsought to mitigate the untold sorrows of that awful hour--\"Tarry _ye_\nhere and _watch_ with _Me_!\"\n\nBut to return. Such was the home around which the memories of its\ninmates and our own love to linger.\n\nMary, Martha, and Lazarus--all three partakers of the same grace,\nfellow-pilgrims Zionward, and that journey sanctified and hallowed by a\nsacred fellowship with the Lord of pilgrims. The Saviour's own precious\npromise seems under that roof of lowly unobtrusive love to receive a\nliving fulfilment: \"Where two or three are gathered together in my name,\nthere am I in the midst of them.\" Though many a gorgeous palace was at\nthat era adorning the earth, where was the spot, what the dwelling, half\nso consecrated as this? Solomon had a thousand years before, two miles\ndistant, in presence of assembled Israel, uttered the exclamation, \"But\nwill God in very deed dwell with men upon earth?\" He was now verily\ndwelling! Nor was it under any gorgeous canopy or august temple. He had\nselected Three Human Souls as the shrines He most loved. He had sought\ntheir holy, heavenly converse as the sweetest incense and costliest\nsacrifice. How or where they first saw Jesus we cannot tell. They had\nprobably been among the number of those pious Jews who had prayerfully\nwaited for the \"consolation of Israel,\" and who had lived to see their\nfondest wishes and hopes realised. The Evangelist gives no information\nregarding their previous history. The narrative all at once, with an\nabruptness of surpassing beauty, leaves us in no doubt that the Divine\nRedeemer had been for long a well-known guest in that sunlit home, and\nthat, when the calls and duties of His public ministry were suspended,\nmany an hour was spent in the enjoyment of its peaceful seclusion.\n\nWe can fancy, and no more, these oft happy meetings, when the Pilgrim\nSaviour, weary and worn, was seen descending the rocky footpath of\nOlivet,--Lazarus or his sisters, from the flat roof of their dwelling,\nor under the spreading fig-tree, eager to catch the first glimpse of His\napproach.\n\nWhen seated in the house, we may picture their converse: Themes of\nsublime and heavenly import, unchronicled by the inspired penmen, which\nsunk deep into those listening spirits, and nerved two of them for an\nafter-hour of unexpected sorrow. If there be bliss in the interchange of\ncommunion between Christian and Christian, what must it have been to\nhave had the presence and fellowship of the Lord Himself! Not seeing\nHim, as _we_ see Him, \"behind the lattice,\" but seated underneath His\nshadow, drinking in the living tones of His living voice. These\n\"children of Zion\" must, indeed, have been \"joyful in their King.\"\n\nOne of these hallowed seasons is that referred to in the 10th of St\nLuke, where Martha the ministering spirit, and Mary the lowly disciple,\nare first introduced to our notice. That visit is conjectured to have\noccurred when Jesus was returning to the country from the Feast of\nTabernacles. The Bethany circle dreamt not then of their impending\ntrial. But, foreseen as it was by Him who knows the end from the\nbeginning, may we not well believe one reason (the main reason) for His\ngoing thither was to soothe them in the prospect of a saddened home? So\nthat, when the stroke _did_ descend, they might be cheered and consoled\nwith the remembrances of His visit, and of the gracious words which\nproceeded out of His mouth.\n\nAnd is not this still the way Jesus deals with His people? He visits\nthem often by some precious love-tokens--some special manifestations of\nHis grace and presence before the hour of trial. So that, when that hour\ndoes come, they may not be altogether prostrated or overwhelmed with it.\nLike Elijah of old, they have their miraculous food provided before they\nencounter the sterile desert. When they come to speak of their crushed\nhearts, they have solaces to tell of too. Their language is, \"I will\nsing of _mercy_ and _judgment_!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe may be led to inquire why a character so lovely as that of Lazarus\nwas not enlisted along with the other disciples in the active service of\nthe Apostleship. Why should Peter and Andrew, John and James, be\nsummoned from their boats and nets on Gennesaret to follow Jesus, and\nthis other, imbued with the same spirit and honoured with the same\nregard, be left alone and undisturbed in his village home?\n\n\"To every man there is a work.\" Some are more peculiarly called to\nactive duty, and better fitted for it; others for passive obedience and\nsuffering. Some are selected as bold standard-bearers of the cross,\nothers to give their testimony in the quiet seclusion of domestic life.\nSome are specially gifted, as Paul, to appear in the halls of Nero or on\nthe heights of Mars' Hill, and, confronting face to face the world's\nboasted wisdom, maintain intact the honour of their Lord. Others are\nrequired to glorify Him on beds of sickness, or in homes of sorrow, or\nin the holy consistent tenor of their everyday walk. Some are called as\nLevites to temple service; others to give the uncostly cup of cold\nwater, or the widow's mite; others to manifest the meek, gentle,\nunselfish, resigned, forgiving heart, when there is no cup or mite to\noffer!\n\nBeliever! rejoice that your path is marked out for you. Your lot in\nlife, with all its \"accidents,\" is your Lord's appointing. Dream not, in\nyour own short-sighted wisdom, that, had you occupied some other or more\nprominent position--had your talents been greater, or your worldly\ninfluence more extensive--you might have glorified your God in a way\nwhich is at present denied to you. He can be served in the lowliest as\nwell as in the most exalted stations. As the tiniest leaf or smallest\nstar in the world of nature reflects His glory as well as the giant\nmountain or blazing sun, so does He graciously own and recognise the\nhumblest effort of lowly love no less than the most lavish gifts which\nsplendid munificence and costly devotion can cast into His treasury. Let\nit be your great aim and ambition to honour Him just in the position He\nhas seen meet to assign you. \"Let every man,\" says the Apostle, \"wherein\nhe is called, therein abide with God.\" However limited your sphere, you\nmay become a centre of holy influences to the little world around you.\nYour heart may be an incense-altar of love and affection, kindness and\ngentleness to man--your life a perpetual hymn of praise to your Father\nin Heaven; glorifying Him, like Martha, by active service; like Mary, by\nsitting at His feet; or, like Lazarus, by holy living and happy dying,\nand leaving behind you \"the Memory of the Just\" which is \"blessed.\"\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nLESSONS.\n\n\nAs yet the home of Bethany is all happiness. The burial-ground has been\nuntraversed since, probably years before the dust of one, or perhaps\nboth parents had been committed to the sepulchre.[8] Death had long left\nthe inmates an unbroken circle. Can it be that the unwelcome intruder is\nso nigh at hand?--that their now joyous dwelling is so soon to echo to\nthe wail of lamentation? We imagine it but lately visited by Jesus. In a\nlittle while the arrow hath sped; the sacredness of a divine friendship\nis no guarantee against the incursion of the sleepless foe of human\nhappiness. Bethany is a mourning household. The sisters are bowed in the\nagony of their worst bereavement--the prop of their existence is laid\nlow--\"_Lazarus is dead!_\"\n\nAt the very threshold of this touching story, are we not called on to\npause, and read _the uncertainty of earth's best joys and purest\nhappiness_; that the brightest sunshine is often the precursor of a dark\ncloud. When the gourd is all flourishing, a worm may unseen be preying\nat its root! When the vessel is gliding joyously on the calm sea, the\ntreacherous rock may be at hand, and, in one brief hour, it has become a\nshattered wreck!\n\nIt is the touching record of the inspired historian in narrating\nAbraham's heaviest trial--\"After _these things_, God did tempt Abraham.\"\nAfter _what_ things? After a season of rich blessings, gilding a future\nwith bright hopes!\n\nWould that, amidst our happy homes, and sunshine hours, and seasons of\nholy and joyous intercourse between friend and friend, we would more\nhabitually bear in mind \"This is not to last!\" In one brief and\nunsuspected moment Lazarus may be taken. The messenger may now be on the\nwing to lay low some treasured object of earthly solicitude and love.\nGod would teach us--while we are glad of our gourds--not to be\n\"exceeding glad;\" not to nestle here as if we were to \"live alway,\" but\nrather, as we are perched on our summer boughs, to be ready at His\nbidding to soar away, and leave behind us what most we prize.\n\nIt tells us, too, _the utter mysteriousness of many of the divine\ndispensations_.\n\n\"LAZARUS IS DEAD!\" What! He, the head, and support, and stay of two\nhelpless females? The joy and solace of a common orphanhood,--a brother\nevidently made and born for their adversities? What! Lazarus, whom Jesus\ntenderly loved? How much, even to his Lord, will be buried in that early\ngrave! We may well expect, if there be one homestead in all Palestine\nguarded by the overshadowing wings of angels to debar the entrance of\ndeath, whose inmates may pillow their heads night after night in the\nconfident assurance of immunity from trial, it must surely be that loved\nresort--that \"Arbour in His Hill Difficulty,\" where the God-man\ndelighted oft to pause and refresh His wearied body and aching mind.\nWill Omnipotence not have set its mark, as of old, on the door-posts and\nlintels of that consecrated dwelling, so that the destroyer, in going\nhis rounds elsewhere, may pass by it unscathed? How, too, can the\ninfant Church spare him? The aged Simeon or Anna we dare not wish to\ndetain. Burdened with years and infirmities, after having got a glimpse\nof their Lord and Saviour, let them depart in peace, and receive their\ncrowns. These decayed trees in the forest--those to whom old age on\nearth is a burden--let them bow to the axe, and be transplanted to a\nnobler clime. But one in the vigour of life--one so beautifully\ncombining natural amiability with Christian love--one who was\npre-eminently the _friend_ of Jesus, and that _word_ profoundly\nsuggestive of all that was lovely in a disciple's character. Death may\nvisit other homes in that sequestered village, and spread desolation in\nother hearts, but surely the Church's Lord will not suffer one of its\npillars so prematurely to fall!\n\nAnd yet it is even so! The mysterious summons has come!--the most\nhonoured home on earth has been rudely rifled!--the most loving of\nhearts have been cruelly torn; and inscrutable is the dealing, for\n\"_Lazarus is dead_!\"\n\n    \"He, the young and strong, who cherish'd\n       Noble longings for the strife,\n     By the roadside fell, and perish'd\n       On the threshold march of life.\"\n\nAnd worse, too, than all, \"the Lord is absent.\" Why is Omniscience\ntarrying elsewhere, when His presence and power are above all needed at\nthe house of His friend?\n\nThe disconsolate sisters, in wondering amazement, repeat over and over\nagain the exclamation, \"If Jesus had been here, this our brother had not\ndied!\" \"Hath He forgotten to be gracious?\" \"Surely our way is hid from\nthe Lord, our judgment is passed over from our God.\"\n\nAh! the experience of His people is often still the same. What are many\nof God's dispensations?--a baffling enigma--all strangeness--all mystery\nto the eye of sense. _Useless_ lives prolonged, _useful_ ones taken! The\nhonoured minister of God struck down, the unfaithful watchman spared!\nThe philanthropic and benevolent have an arrest put on their manifold\ndeeds of kindness and generosity; the grasping, the avaricious, the\nmean-souled--those who neither fear God nor do good to man, are suffered\nto live on from day to day! What is it but the picture here presented\neighteen hundred years ago--_Judas_ spared to be a _traitor to his\nLord_, while--_Lazarus is dead_!\n\nBut let us be still! The Saviour, indeed, does not now lead us forth,\namid the scene of our trial, as He did the bereft sisters, to unravel\nthe mysteries of His providence, and to shew glory to God, redounding\nfrom the darkest of His dispensations. To _us_ the grand sequel is\nreserved for eternity. The grand development of the divine plan will not\nbe fully accomplished till _then_; faith must meanwhile rest satisfied\nwith what is baffling to sight and sense. This whole narrative is\ndesigned to teach the lesson that there is an undeveloped future in all\nGod's dealings. There is an unseen \"why and wherefore\" which cannot be\nanswered here. Our befitting attitude and language _now_ is that of\nsimple confidingness--\"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do\nright?\"--Listening to one of these Bethany sayings (we shall by and by\nconsider), whose meaning will be interpreted in a brighter world by Him\nwho uttered it in the days of His flesh--\"Said I not unto thee, that if\nthou wouldest _believe_ thou shouldest _see_ the glory of God?\"\n\n    \"O thou who mournest on thy way,\n     With longings for the close of day,\n     He walks with thee, that Angel kind,\n     And gently whispers--'Be resign'd;\n     Bear up--bear on--the end shall tell,\n     The dear Lord ordereth all things well.'\"\n\nOur duty, meanwhile, is that of children, simply to trust the\nfaithfulness of a God whose footsteps of love we often fail to trace.\nAll will be seen at last to have been not only _for_ the best, but\nreally _the best_. Dark clouds will be fringed with mercy. What we call\nnow \"baffling dispensations,\" will be seen to be wondrous parts of a\ngreat connected whole,--the wheel within wheel of that complex\nmachinery, by which \"all things\" (yes, ALL things) are now working\ntogether for good.\n\n\"Lazarus is dead!\" The choicest tree in the earthly Eden has succumbed\nto the blast. The choicest cup has been dashed to the ground. Some great\nlights in the moral firmament have been extinguished. But God can do\nwithout human agency. His Church can be preserved, though no Moses be\nspared to conduct Israel over Jordan, and no Lazarus to tell the story\nof his Saviour's grace and love, when other disciples have forsaken Him\nand fled.\n\nWe may be calling, in our blind unbelief, as we point to some ruined\nfabric of earthly bliss--some tomb which has become the grave of our\nfondest affections and dearest hopes--\"Shall the dust praise thee, shall\n_it_ declare thy truth?\" _Believe! believe!_ God will not give us back\nour dead as He did to the Bethany sisters; but He will not deprive us of\naught we have, or suffer one garnered treasure to be removed, except for\nHis own glory and our good. _Now_ it is our province to _believe_ it--in\n_Heaven_ we shall _see_ it. Before the sapphire throne we shall _see_\nthat not one redundant thorn has been suffered to pierce our feet, or\none needless sorrow to visit our dwelling, or tear to dim our eye. Then\nour acknowledgment will be, \"We have _known_ and _believed_ the love\nwhich God hath to us.\"\n\n    \"Oh, weep not though the beautiful decay,\n       Thy heart must have its autumn--its pale skies\n     Leading mayhap to winter's cold dismay.\n     Yet doubt not. Beauty doth not pass away;\n       His form departs not, though his body dies.\n       Secure beneath the earth the snowdrop lies,\n     Waiting the spring's young resurrection-day.\"[9]\n\nBe it ours to have Jesus _with_ us, and Jesus _for_ us, in all our\nafflictions. If we wish to insure these mighty solaces, we must not\nsuffer the hour of sorrow and bereavement to overtake us with a Saviour\ntill _then_ a stranger and unknown. St Luke tells us the secret of\nMary's faith and composure at her loved one's grave:--_She had, long\nbefore her day of trial, learned to sit at her Redeemer's feet. It was\nwhen in health Jesus was first resorted to and loved_.\n\nIn prosperity may our homes and hearts be gladdened with His footstep;\nand when prosperity is withdrawn, and is succeeded by the dark and\ncloudy day, may we know, like Martha and Mary, where to rush in our\nseasons of bitter sorrow; listening from His glorified lips on the\nthrone to those same exalted themes of consolation which, for eighteen\nhundred years, have to myriad, myriad mourners been like oil thrown on\nthe troubled sea. Jesus is with us! The Master is come! His presence\nwill extract sorrow from the bitterest cup, and make, as He did at\nBethany, a very home of bereavement and a burial scene to be \"hallowed\nground!\"\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nTHE MESSENGER.\n\n\nIs the absent Saviour not to be sought? Martha and Mary knew the\ndirection He had taken. The last time He had visited their home was at\nthe Feast of Dedication, during the season of winter, when the\npalm-trees were bared of their leaves, and the voice of the turtle was\nsilent. Jesus, on that occasion, had to escape the vengeance of the Jews\nin Jerusalem by a temporary retirement to the place where John first\nbaptized, near Enon, on the wooded banks of the Jordan. It must have\nbeen to Him a spot and season of calm and grateful repose; a pleasing\ntransition from the rude hatred and heartless formalism which met Him in\nthe degenerate \"City of Solemnities.\" The savour of the Baptist's name\nand spirit seemed to linger around this sequestered region. John had\nevidently prepared, by his faithful ministry, the way for a mightier\nPreacher, for we read, as the result of the Saviour's present sojourn,\nthat \"many believed on him there.\"\n\nIf we visit with hallowed emotion the places where first we learned to\nlove the Lord, to two at least of those who accompanied the Redeemer,\nthe region He now traversed must have been full of fragrant memories;\n_there_ it was that Jesus had been first pointed out to them as the\n\"Lamb of God;\" _there_ they first \"beheld His glory, the glory as of the\nonly-begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth.\" (John i. 28.)\n\nOn His way thither, on the present occasion, He most probably passed\nthrough Bethany, and apprised His friends of His temporary absence.\nLazarus was then in his wonted vigour--no shadow of death had yet passed\nover his brow; he doubtless parted with the Lord he loved happy at the\nthought of ere long meeting again.\n\nBut soon all is changed. The hand of sickness unexpectedly lays him low.\nAt first there is no cause for anxiety. But soon the herald-symptoms of\ndanger and death gather fast and thick around his pillow; \"his beauty\nconsumes away like a moth.\" The terrible possibility for the first time\nflashes across the minds of the sisters, of a desolate home, and of\nthemselves being the desolate survivors of a loved brother. The joyous\ndream of restoration becomes fainter and fainter. Human remedies are\nhopeless. There was _One_, and _only_ ONE, in the wide world who could\nsave from impending death. His word, they knew, could alone summon\nlustre to that eye, and bloom to that wan and fading cheek. Fifty long\nmiles intervene between the great Physician and their cottage home. But\nthey cannot hesitate. Some kind and compassionate neighbour is soon\nfound ready to hasten along the Jericho road with the brief but urgent\nmessage, \"_Lord! behold he whom thou lovest is sick._\" If it only reach\nin time, they know that no more is needed. They even indulge the\nexpectation that their messenger may be anticipated by the Lord Himself\nappearing. Others might doubt His omniscience, but they knew its\nreality. They had the blessed conviction, that while they were seated in\nburning tears by that couch of sickness, there was a sympathising Being\nfar away marking every heart-throb of His suffering friend. Even when\nthe stern human conviction of \"no hope\" was pressing upon them, \"hoping\nagainst hope,\" they must have felt confident that He would not suffer\nHis faithfulness now to fail. He had often proved Himself a Brother and\nFriend in the hour of _joy_. _Could_ He fail--_can_ He fail to prove\nHimself now a \"Brother born for _adversity_?\"\n\nAlthough, however, thus convinced that the tale of their sorrows was\nknown to Jesus, _a messenger is sent_,--_the means are employed_! They\nact as though He knew it _not_; as if that omniscient Saviour had been\nall unconscious of these hours of prolonged and anxious agony!\n\nWhat a lesson is there here for _us_! God is acquainted with our every\ntrouble; He knows (far better than we know ourselves) every pang we\nheave, every tear we weep, every perplexing path we tread; but the knee\nmust be bent, the message must be taken, the prayer must ascend! It is\nHis own appointed method,--His own consecrated medium for obtaining\nblessings. Jesus _may_ have gone, and probably _would_ have gone to\nrestore His friend, even though no such messenger had reached Him: We\ndare not limit the grace and dealings of God: He is often (blessed be\nHis name for it!) \"found of them that sought Him not.\" But He loves such\nmessages as this. He loves the confiding, childlike trust of His own\npeople, who delight in the hour of their extremity to cast their burdens\nupon Him, and send the winged herald of prayer to the throne of grace on\nwhich He sits.\n\nWould that we valued, more than we do, this blessed link of\ncommunication between our souls and Heaven! More especially in our\nseasons of trouble, (when \"vain is the help of man,\") happy for us to be\nable implicitly to rest in the ability and willingness of a gracious\nRedeemer.\n\nPrayer brings the soul near to Jesus, and fetches Jesus near to the\nsoul. He may linger, as He did now at the Jordan, ere the answer be\nvouchsafed, but it is for some wise reason; and even if the answer given\nbe not in accordance with our pre-conceived wishes or anxious desires,\nyet how comforting to have put our case and all its perplexities in His\nhand, saying, \"I am oppressed; undertake Thou for me! To Thee I\nunburden and unbosom my sorrows. I shall be satisfied whether my cup be\nfilled or emptied. Do to me as seemeth good in Thy sight. He whom I love\nand whom THOU lovest is sick; the Lazarus of my earthly hopes and\naffections is hovering on the brink of death. That levelling blow, if\nconsummated, will sweep down in a moment all my hopes of earthly\nhappiness and joy. But it is my privilege to confide my trouble to Thee;\nto know that I have surrendered myself and all that concerns me into the\nhand of Him who 'considers my soul in adversity.' Yes; and should my\nschemes be crossed, and my fondest hopes baffled, I will feel, even in\napparently _unanswered_ prayers, that the Judge of all the earth has\ndone right!\"\n\n\"It is said,\" says Rutherford, speaking of the Saviour's delay in\nresponding to the request of the Syrophenician woman; \"It is said He\n_answered_ not a word, but it is not said He _heard_ not a word. These\ntwo differ much. Christ often heareth when He doth not answer. His not\nanswering is an answer, and speaks thus: 'Pray on, go on and cry, for\nthe Lord holdeth His door fast bolted not to keep you out, but that you\nmay knock and knock.'\"\n\n\"God delays to answer prayer,\" says Archbishop Usher, \"because he would\nhave more of it. If the musicians come to play at our doors or our\nwindows, if we delight not in their music, we throw them out money\npresently that they may be gone. But if the music please us, we forbear\nto give them money, because we would keep them longer to enjoy their\nmusic. So the Lord loves and delights in the sweet words of His\nchildren, and therefore puts them off and answers them not presently.\"\n\nObserve still further, in the case of these sorrowing sisters of\nBethany, while in all haste and urgency they send their messenger, they\ndo not ask Jesus to come--they dictate no procedure--they venture on no\npositive request--all is left to Himself. What a lesson also is there\nhere to confide in His wisdom, to feel that His way and His will must be\nthe best--that our befitting attitude is to lie passive at His feet--to\nwait His righteous disposal of us and ours--to make this the burden of\nour petition, \"Lord, what wouldst _Thou_ have me to do?\" \"If it be\npossible let this cup pass from me, _nevertheless_, not as _I_ will, but\nas _Thou wilt_.\"\n\nReader! invite to your gates this celestial messenger. Make prayer a\nholy habit--a cherished privilege. Seek to be ever maintaining\nintercommunion with Jesus; consecrating life's common duties with His\nfavour and love. Day by day ere you take your flight into the world,\nnight by night when you return from its soiling contacts, bathe your\ndrooping plumes in this refreshing fountain. Let prayer sweeten\nprosperity and hallow adversity. Seek to know the unutterable\nblessedness of habitual filial nearness to your Father in heaven--in\nchildlike confidence unbosoming to Him those heart-sorrows with which no\nearthly friend can sympathise, and with which a stranger cannot\nintermeddle. No trouble is too trifling to confide to His ear--no want\ntoo trivial to bear to His mercy-seat.\n\n    \"Prayer is appointed to convey\n       The blessings He designs to give;\n     Long as they live should Christians pray,\n       For only while they pray, they live.\"\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nTHE MESSAGE.\n\n\nThe messenger has reached--what is his message? It is a brief, but a\nbeautiful one. \"_Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is sick._\"\n\nNo laboured eulogium--no lengthened panegyric could have described more\nsignificantly the character of the dying villager of Bethany. Four\nmystic words invest his name with a sacred loveliness. By one stroke of\nhis pen the Apostle unfolds a heart-history; so that we desiderate no\nmore--more would almost spoil the touching simplicity--\"_He whom Thou\nlovest!_\"\n\nWe might think at first the words are inverted. Can the messenger have\nmistaken them? Is it not more likely the message of the sisters was\nthis:--\"Go and tell Him, 'Lord, he whom _we_ love,' or else, 'he who\nloveth _Thee_ is sick?'\"\n\nNay, it is a loftier argument by which they would stir the infinite\ndepths of the Fountain of love! They had \"known and believed the love\"\nwhich the Great Redeemer bore to their brother, and they further felt\nassured that \"loving him at the beginning, He would love him even to the\nend.\" Their love to Lazarus (tender, unspeakably tender as it was one of\nthe loveliest types of human affection)--was at best an _earthly\nlove_--finite--imperfect--fitful--changing--perishable. But the love\nthey invoked was undying and everlasting, superior to all\nvacillation--enduring as eternity.\n\nIt is ours \"to take encouragement in prayer from God only;\"--to plead\nnothing of our own--our poor devotedness, or our unworthy services; they\nare rather arguments for our condemnation;--but _His_ promises are all\n\"Yea, and amen.\" They never fail. His name is \"a strong tower,\" running\ninto which the righteous are safe. That tower is garrisoned and\nbulwarked by the attributes of His own everlasting nature. Among these\nattributes not the least glorious is His _Love_--_that_ unfathomable\nlove which dwelt in His bosom from all eternity, and which is immutably\npledged never to be taken from His people!\n\nMan's love to his God is like the changing sand--_His_ is like the solid\nrock. Man's love is like the passing meteor with its fitful gleam. _His_\nlike the fixed stars, shining far above, clear and serene, from age to\nage, in their own changeless firmament.\n\nDo we know anything of the words of this message? Could it be written on\nour hearts in life? Were we to die, could it be inscribed on our tombs,\n\"This is one whom _Jesus loved_?\"\n\nHappy assurance! The pure spirits who bend before the throne know no\nhappier. The archangels--the chieftains among principalities and powers,\ncan claim no higher privilege, no loftier badge of glory!\n\nLove is the atmosphere they breathe. It is the grand moral law of\ngravitation in the heavenly economy. God, the central sun of light, and\njoy, and glory, keeping by this great motive principle every spiritual\nplanet in its orbit, \"for _God is love_.\"\n\nThat love is not confined to heaven. It may be foretasted here. The sick\nman of Bethany knew of it, and exulted in it. Though in the moment of\ndissolution he had to mourn the personal absence of his Lord, yet\n\"believing\" in that love, he \"rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of\nglory.\" His sisters, as they stood in sorrowing emotion by his dying\ncouch, and thought of that hallowed fraternal bond which was about so\nsoon to be dissolved, could triumph in the thought of an affection\nnobler and better which knit him and them to the Brother of\nbrothers--and which, unlike any earthly tie, was indissoluble.\n\nAnd what was experienced in that lowly Bethany home, may be experienced\nby us.\n\nThat love in its wondrous manifestation is confined to no limits, no\nage, no peculiar circumstances. Many a Lazarus, pining in want, who can\nclaim no heritage but poverty, no home but cottage walls, or who,\nstretched on a bed of protracted sickness, is heard saying in the\nmorning, \"Would God it were evening! and in the evening, Would God it\nwere morning!\" if he have that love reigning in his heart, he has a\npossession outweighing the wealth of worlds!\n\nWhat a message, too, of consolation is here to the _sick_! How often\nare those chained down year after year to some aching pillow, worn,\nweary, shattered in body, depressed in spirit,--how apt are they to\nindulge in the sorrowful thought, \"Surely God cannot care for _me_!\"\nWhat! Jesus think of this wasted frame--these throbbing temples--these\npowerless limbs--this decaying mind! I feel like a wreck on the desert\nshore--beyond the reach of His glance--beneath the notice of His pitying\neye! Nay, thou poor desponding one, He _does_ cherish, He _does_\nremember thee!--\"Lord, _he whom Thou lovest_ is sick.\" Let this\nmotto-verse be inscribed on thy Bethany chamber. The Lord _loves_ His\nsick ones, and He often chastens them with sickness, just _because_ He\nloves them. If these pages be now traced by some dim eyes that have been\nfor long most familiar with the sickly glow of the night-lamp--the weary\nvigils of pain and languor and disease--an exile from a busy world, or a\nstill more unwilling alien from the holy services of the sanctuary--oh!\nthink of Him who _loves_ thee, who loved thee _into_ this sickness, and\nwill love thee _through_ it, till thou standest in that unsuffering,\nunsorrowing world, where sickness is unknown! Think of Lazarus in _his_\nchamber, and the plea of the sisters in behalf of their prostrate\nbrother, \"Lord, come to the sick one, _whom Thou lovest_.\"\n\nBelieve it, the very continuance of this sickness is a pledge of His\nlove. You may be often tempted to say with Gideon, \"If the Lord be with\nme, why has _all_ this befallen me?\" Surely if my Lord loved me, He\nwould long ere this have hastened to my relief, rebuked this sore\ndisease, and raised me up from this bed of languishing? Did you ever\nnote, in the 6th verse of this Bethany chapter, the strangely beautiful\nconnexion of the word THEREFORE? The Evangelist had, in the preceding\nverse, recorded the affection Jesus bore for that honoured family. \"Now\nJesus _loved_ Martha and her sister and Lazarus.\" \"When He had heard\nTHEREFORE that he was sick,\"--what did He do? \"Fled on wings of love to\nthe succour of His loved friend; hurried in eager haste by the shortest\nroute from Bethabara?\" We expect to hear so, as the natural deduction\nfrom John's premises. How we might think could love give a more truthful\nexponent of its reality than hastening instantaneously to the relief of\none so dear to Him? But not so! \"When He had heard THEREFORE that he was\nsick, _He abode two days still in the same place where He was_!\" Yes,\nthere is _tarrying_ love as well as _succouring_ love. He _sent_ that\nsickness because He loves thee; He _continues_ it because He loves thee.\nHe heaps fresh fuel on the furnace-fires till the gold is refined. He\nappoints, not one, but \"many days where neither sun nor stars appear,\nand no small tempest lies on us,\" that the ship may be lightened, and\nfaith exercised; our bark hastened by these rough blasts nearer shore,\nand the Lord glorified, who rules the raging of the sea. \"We expect,\"\nsays Evans, \"the blessing or relief in _our_ way; He chooses to bestow\nit in _His_.\"\n\nReader! let this ever be your highest ambition, to love and to be loved\nof Jesus. If we are covetous to have the regard and esteem of the great\nand good on earth, what is it to share the fellowship and kindness of\nHim, in comparison with whose love the purest earthly affection is but a\npassing shadow!\n\nAh! to be without that love, is to be a little world ungladdened by its\ncentral sun, wandering on in its devious pathway of darkness and gloom.\nEarthly things may do well enough when the world is all bright and\nshining--when prosperity sheds its bewitching gleam around you, and no\nsymptoms of the cloudy and dark day are at hand; but the hour is coming\n(it may come soon, it _must_ come at some time) when your Bethany-home\nwill be clouded with deepening death-shadows--when, like Lazarus, you\nwill be laid on a dying couch, and what will avail you then? Oh,\nnothing, _nothing_! if bereft of that love whose smile is heaven. If you\nare left in the agony of desolation to utter importunate pleadings to an\n_Unknown Saviour_, a _Stranger God_--if the dark valley be entered\nuncheered by the thought of a loving Redeemer dispelling its gloom, and\nwaiting on the Canaan side to shew you the path of life!\n\nLet the home of your hearts be often open, as was the home of Lazarus,\nto the visits of Jesus in the day of brightness; and _then_, when the\nhour of sorrow and trial unexpectedly arises, you will know where to\nfind your Lord--where to send your prayer-message for Him to come to\nyour relief.\n\nYes! He _will_ come! It will be in His own way, but His joyous footfall\n_will_ be heard! He is not like Baal, \"slumbering and sleeping, or\ntaking a journey\" when the voice of importunate prayer ascends from the\ndepths of yearning hearts! If, instead of at once hastening back to\nBethany, He \"abides still for two days where He was\"--if He linger among\nthe mountain-glens of distant Gilead, instead of, as we would expect,\nhastening to the cry and succour of cherished friendship, and to ward\noff the dart of the inexorable foe--be assured there must be a reason\nfor this strange procrastination--there must be an unrevealed cause\nwhich the future will in due time disclose and unravel. All the\nrecollections of the past forbid one unrighteous surmise on His tried\nfaithfulness. \"_Now, Jesus loved Lazarus_,\" is a soft pillow on which to\nrepose;--raising the sorrowing spirit above the unkind insinuation, \"My\nLord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me.\"\n\nIf He linger, it is to try and test the faith of His people. If He let\nloose the storm, and suffer it to sweep with a vengeance apparently\nuncontrolled, it is that these living trees may strike their roots\nfirmer and deeper in Himself--the Rock of eternal ages. Trust Him where\nyou cannot trace Him. Not one promise of His can come to nought. The\nchannel may have continued long dry--the streams of Lebanon may have\nfailed--the cloud has been laden, but no shower descends--the barren\nwaste is unwatered--the windows of heaven seem hopelessly closed. Nay,\nnay! Though \"the vision tarry,\" yet if you \"wait for it\" the gracious\nassurance will be fulfilled in your experience--\"The Lord is good to\nthem that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him.\" The fountain of\nlove pent up in His heart will in due time gush forth--the apparently\nunacknowledged prayer will be crowned with a gracious answer. In His own\ngood time sweet tones of celestial music will be wafted to your ear--\"It\nis the voice of the Beloved!--lo, He cometh leaping upon the mountains,\nskipping upon the hills!\" If you are indeed the child of God, as Lazarus\nwas, remember this for your comfort in your dying hour, that whether the\nprayers of sorrowing friends for your recovery be answered or no, the\nLord of love has at least _heard_ them--the messenger has not been\nmocked--the prayer-message has not been spurned or forgotten! I repeat\nit, He _will_ answer, but it will be _in His own way_! If the\nBethany-home be ungladdened by Lazarus restored, it will exult through\ntears in the thought of Lazarus glorified. And the Marthas and Marys, as\nthey go often unto the grave to weep there, will read, as they weep, in\nthe holy memories of the departed, that which will turn tears into\njoy--\"_Jesus loved him._\"\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nTHE SLEEPER.\n\n\n\"_Our friend Lazarus sleepeth._\"--The hopes and fears which alternately\nrose and fell in the bosoms of the sisters, like the surges of the\nocean, are now at rest. Oft and again, we may well believe, had they\ngone, like the mother of Sisera, to the lattice to watch the return of\nthe messenger, or, what was better, to hail their expected Lord. Gazing\non the pale face at their side, and remembering that ere now the tidings\nof his illness must have reached Bethabara, they may have even expected\nto witness the power of a distant _word_;--to behold the hues of\nreturning health displacing the ghastly symptoms of dissolution. But in\nvain! The curtain has fallen! Their season of aching anxiety is at an\nend. Their worst fears are realised.--\"Lazarus sleepeth.\"\n\nHow calm, how tranquil that departure! Never did sun sink so gently in\nits crimson couch--never did child, nestling in its mother's bosom,\nclose its eyes more sweetly!\n\n    \"His summon'd breath went forth as peacefully\n     As folds the spent rose when the day is done.\"\n\nBefitting close to a calm and noiseless existence! It would seem as if\nthe guardian angels who had been hovering round his death-pillow had\nwell-nigh reached the gates of glory ere the sorrowing survivors\ndiscovered that the clay tabernacle was all that was left of a \"brother\nbeloved!\"\n\nFrom the abrupt manner in which, in the course of the narrative, our\nLord makes the announcement to His disciples,[10] we are almost led to\nsurmise that He did so at the very moment of the spirit's dismissal--the\nRedeemer speaks while the eyelids are just closing, and the emancipated\nsoul is winging its arrowy flight up to the spirit-land!\n\n_Death_ a SLEEP!--How beautiful the image! Beautifully true, and _only_\ntrue regarding the Christian. It is here where the true and the\nfalse--Christianity and Paganism--meet together in impressive and\nsignificant contrast. The one comes to the dark river with her pale,\nsickly lamp. It refuses to burn--the damps of Lethe dim and quench it.\nPhilosophy tries to discourse on death as a \"stern necessity\"--of the\nduty of passing heroically into this mysterious, oblivion-world--taking\nwith bold heart \"the leap in the dark,\" and confronting, as we best can,\nblended images of annihilation and terror.\n\nThe Gospel takes us to the tomb, and shews us Death vanquished, and the\nGrave spoiled. Death truly is in itself an unwelcome messenger at our\ndoor. It is the dark event in this our earth,--the deepest of the many\ndeep shadows of an otherwise fair creation--a cold, cheerless avalanche\nlying at the heart of humanity, freezing up the gushing fountains of\njoyous life. But the Gospel shines, and the cold iceberg melts. The Sun\nof Righteousness effects what philosophy, with all its boasted power,\nnever could. Jesus is the abolisher of Death. He has taken all that is\nterrible from it. It is said of some venomous insects that when they\nonce inflict a sting, they are deprived of any future power to hurt.\nDeath left his envenomed sting in the body of the great victim of\nCalvary. It was thenceforward disarmed of its fearfulness! So complete,\nindeed, is the Redeemer's victory over this last enemy, that He Himself\nspeaks of it as no longer a reality, but a shadow--a phantom-foe from\nwhich we have nothing to dread. \"Whosoever believeth in Me shall _never\ndie_.\" \"If a man keep My sayings, he shall _never see death_.\" These are\nan echo of the sweet Psalmist's beautiful words, a transcript of his\nexpressive figure when he pictures the Dark Valley to the believer as\nthe Valley of a \"_shadow_.\" The substance is removed! When the gaunt\nspirit meets him on the midnight waters, he may, like the disciples at\nfirst, be led to \"cry out for fear.\" But a gentle voice of love and\ntenderness rebukes his dread, and calms his misgivings--\"It is I! be not\nafraid!\" Yes, here is the wondrous secret of a calm departure--the\n\"sleep\" of the believer in death. It is the name and presence of JESUS.\nThere may be many accompaniments of weakness and prostration, pain and\nsuffering, in that final conflict; the mind may be a wreck--memory may\nhave abdicated her seat--the loving salutation of friends may be\nreturned only with vacant looks, and the hand be unable to acknowledge\nthe grasp of affection--but there is strength in that presence, and\nmusic in that name to dispel every disquieting, anxious thought. Clung\nto as a sheet-anchor in life, He will never leave the soul in the hour\nof dissolution to the mercy of the storm. Amid sinking nature, He is\nfaithful that promised--\"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of\nthe world.\"--\"Thou art with me,\" says Lady Powerscourt--\"this is the\nrainbow of light thrown across the valley, for there is no need of sun\nor moon where covenant-love illumes.\"\n\nA Christian's death-bed! It is indeed \"good to be there.\" The man who\nhas not to seek a living Saviour at a dying hour, but who, long having\nknown His preciousness, loved His Word, valued His ordinances, sought\nHis presence by believing prayer, has now nothing to do but to die (to\n_sleep_), and wake up in glory everlasting! \"Oh! that all my brethren,\"\nwere among Rutherford's last words, \"may know what a Master I have\nserved, and what peace I have this day. This night shall close the\ndoor, and put my anchor within the veil.\" \"This must be the chariot,\"\nsaid Helen Plumtre, making use of Elijah's translation as descriptive of\nthe believer's death; \"This must be the chariot; oh, how easy it is!\"\n\"Almost well,\" said Richard Baxter, when asked on his death-bed how he\ndid.\n\nYes! there is speechless eloquence in such a scene. The figure of a\nquiet slumber is no hyperbole, but a sober verity. As the gentle smile\nof a foretasted heaven is seen playing on the marble lips--the rays\ngilding the mountain tops after the golden sun has gone down--what more\nbefitting reflection than this, \"_So_ giveth He His beloved SLEEP!\"\n\n    \"Sweetly remembering that the parting sigh\n     Appoints His saints to slumber, not to die,\n     The starting tear we check--we kiss the rod,\n     And not to earth resign them, but to God.\"\n\nOr shall we leave the death-chamber and visit the grave? Still it is a\nplace of _sleep_; a bed of rest--a couch of tranquil repose--a quiet\ndormitory \"until the day break,\" and the night shadows of earth \"flee\naway.\" The dust slumbering there is precious because redeemed; the\nangels of God have it in custody; they encamp round about it, waiting\nthe mandate to \"gather the elect from the four winds of heaven--from the\none end of heaven to the other.\" Oh, wondrous day, when the long\ndishonoured casket shall be raised a \"glorified, body\" to receive once\nmore the immortal jewel, polished and made meet for the Master's use!\nSee how Paul clings, in speaking of this glorious resurrection period,\nto the expressive figure of his Lord before him--\"Them also which SLEEP\nin Jesus will God bring with Him!\" _Sleep in Jesus!_ His saints fall\nasleep on their death-couch in His arms of infinite love. There their\nspirits repose, until the body, \"sown in corruption\" shall be \"raised in\nincorruption,\" and both reunited in the day of His appearing, become \"a\ncrown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand\nof their God.\"\n\nWeeping mourner! Jesus dries thy tears with the encouraging assurance,\n\"Thy dead shall live; together with My body they shall arise.\" Let thy\nLazarus \"sleep on now and take his rest;\" the time will come when My\nvoice shall be heard proclaiming, \"Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in\ndust.\" \"The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers\nappear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the\nvoice of the turtle is heard in the land. Arise, my love, my fair one,\nand come away.\" \"Weep not! he is not dead, but sleepeth. Soon shall the\nday-dawn of glory streak the horizon, and then I shall go that I may\nawake him out of sleep!\"\n\nBeautifully has it been said, \"Dense as the gloom is which hangs over\nthe mouth of the sepulchre, it is the spot, above all others, where the\nGospel, if it enters, shines and triumphs. In the busy sphere of life\nand health, it encounters an active antagonist--the world confronts it,\naims to obscure its glories, to deny its claims, to drown its voice, to\ndispute its progress, to drive it from the ground it occupies. But from\nthe mouth of the grave the world retires; it shrinks from the contest\nthere; it leaves a clear and open space in which the Gospel can assert\nits claims and unveil its glories without opposition or fear. There the\ninfidel and worldling look anxiously around--but the world has left them\nhelpless, and fled. There the Christian looks around, and lo! the angel\nof mercy is standing close by his side. The Gospel kindles a torch which\nnot only irradiates the valley of the shadow of death, but throws a\nradiance into the world beyond, and reveals it peopled with the sainted\nspirits of those who have died in Jesus.\"\n\nReader! may this calm departure be yours and mine. \"Blessed are the dead\nwhich die in the Lord. ... They REST.\" All life's turmoil and tossing is\nover; they are anchored in the quiet haven. _Rest_--but not the rest of\nannihilation--\n\n    \"Grave! the guardian of our dust;\n       Grave! the treasury of the skies;\n     Every atom of thy trust\n       Rests in hope again to rise!\"\n\nLet us seek to have the eye of faith fixed and centred on Jesus _now_.\nIt is _that_ which alone can form a peaceful pillow in a dying hour, and\nenable us to rise superior to all its attendant terrors. Look at that\nscene in the Jehoshaphat valley! The proto-martyr Stephen has a pillow\nof thorns for his dying couch, showers of stones are hurled by\ninfuriated murderers on his guiltless head, yet, nevertheless, he \"fell\nasleep.\" What was the secret of that calmest of sunsets amid a\nblood-stained and storm-wreathed sky? The eye of faith (if not of sight)\npierced through those clouds of darkness. Far above the courts of the\nmaterial temple at whose base he lay, he beheld, in the midst of the\ngeneral assembly and Church of the First-born of Heaven, \"JESUS standing\nat the right hand of God.\" The vision of his Lord was like a celestial\nlullaby stealing from the inner sanctuary. With _Jesus_, his last sight\non earth and his next in glory, he could \"lay him down in peace and\nsleep,\" saying, in the words of the sweet singer of Israel, \"What time I\nawake I am still with Thee.\"\n\n    \"It matters little at what hour o' the day\n     The righteous falls asleep. Death cannot come\n     To him untimely who is fit to die.\n     The less of this cold world the more of heaven;\n     The briefer life, the earlier immortality.\"--MILMAN.\n\n\"Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.\" This tells us that Christ forgets not the\ndead. The dead often bury their dead, and remember them no more. The\nname of their silent homes has passed into a proverb, \"The land of\nforgetfulness.\" But they are not forgotten by Jesus. That which sunders\nand dislocates all other ties--wrenching brother from brother, sister\nfrom sister, friend from friend--cannot sunder us from the living,\nloving heart on the throne of heaven. His is a friendship and love\nstronger than death, and surviving death. While the language of earth is\n\n    \"Friend after friend departs--\n     Who hath not lost a friend?\"\n\nthe emancipated spirit, as it wings its magnificent flight among the\nministering seraphim, can utter the challenge, \"Who shall separate me\nfrom the love of Christ?\" The righteous are had with Him \"in everlasting\nremembrance.\" Their names \"written among the living in Jerusalem;\" yea,\n\"engraven on the palms of His hands.\"\n\nOne other thought.--Jesus had at first kindly and considerately\ndisguised from His disciples the stern truth of Lazarus' departure. \"Our\nfriend sleepeth.\" \"They thought that He had spoken of taking of rest in\nsleep.\" They understood it as the indication of the crisis-hour in\nsickness when the disease has spent itself, and is succeeded by a balmy\nslumber--the presage of returning health; but now He says unto them\nplainly, \"Lazarus is dead.\" How gently He thus breaks the sad\nintelligence! And it is His method of dealing still. He _prepares_ His\npeople for their hours of trial. He does not lay upon them more than\nthey are able to bear. He considers their case--He teaches by slow and\ngradual discipline, leading on step by step; staying His rough wind in\nthe day of His east wind. As the Good Physician, He metes out drop by\ndrop in the bitter cup--as the Good Shepherd, His is not rough driving,\nbut gentle guiding from pasture to pasture. \"He leadeth them out;\" \"He\ngoeth before them.\" He is Himself their sheltering rock in the \"dark and\ncloudy day.\" The sheep who are inured to the hardships of the mountain,\nHe leaves at times to wrestle with the storm; but \"the _lambs_\" (the\nyoung, the faint, the weak, the weary) \"He gathers in His arms and\ncarries in His bosom.\" He speaks in gentle whispers. He uses the\npleasing symbol of quiet slumber before He speaks plainly out the\nmournful reality, \"Lazarus is dead.\" Truly \"He knoweth our frame--He\nremembereth that we are dust.\" \"Like as a father pitieth his children,\nso the Lord pitieth them that fear Him!\"\n\nBut let us resume our narrative, and follow the journey of the dead\nman's \"Friend.\" It is a mighty task He has undertaken; to storm the\nstrong enemy in his own citadel, and roll back the barred gates! In\nmingled majesty and tenderness He hastens to the bereft and desolate\nhome on this mission of power and love. We left the sisters wondering at\nHis mysterious delay. Again and again had they imagined that at last\nthey heard His tardy step, or listened to His hand on the latch, or to\nthe loving music of His longed-for voice. But they are mistaken; it was\nonly the beating of the vine-tendrils on the lattice, or the footfall of\nthe passer by. The Lord is still absent! Their earnest and importunate\nheart-breathings are expressed by the Psalmist--\"O Lord our God, early\ndo we seek Thee: our soul thirsteth for Thee, our flesh longeth for Thee\nin a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see Thy power and Thy\nglory, as we _have_ seen Thee.\" Be still, afflicted ones! He is coming.\nHe will, however, let the cup of anguish be first filled to the brim\nthat He may manifest and magnify all the more the might of His\nomnipotence, and the marvels of His compassion. The thirsty land is\nabout to become streams of water. The sky is at its darkest, when, lo!\nthe rainbow of love is seen spanning the firmament, and a shower of\nblessings is about to fall on the \"_Home of Bethany_!\"\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nLIGHTS AND SHADOWS.\n\n\nThe sounds of lamentation had now been heard for four days in the\ndesolate household.\n\nIn accordance with general wont, the friends and relatives of the\ndeceased had assembled to pay their tribute of respect to the memory of\na revered friend, and to solace the hearts of the disconsolate\nsurvivors. They needed all the sympathy they received. It was now the\ndull dead calm after the torture of the storm, the leaden sea strewn\nwith wrecks, enabling them to realise more fully the extent of their\nloss. Amid the lulls of the tempest, while Lazarus yet lived, hope\nshrunk from entertaining gloomy apprehensions. But now that the storm\nhas spent its fury, now that the worst has come, the future rises up\nbefore them crowded with ten thousand images of desolation and sorrow.\nThe void in their household is daily more and more felt. All the past\nbright memories of Bethany seem to be buried in a yawning grave.\n\nWe may picture the scene. The stronger and more resolute spirit of\nMartha striving to stem the tide of overmuch sorrow. The more sensitive\nheart of Mary, bowed under a grief too deep for utterance, able only to\nindicate by her silent tears the unknown depths of her sadness.\n\nThus are they employed, when Martha, unseen to her sister, has been\nbeckoned away. \"_The Master has come._\" But desirous of ascertaining the\ntruth of the joyful tidings, ere intruding on the grief of Mary, the\nelder of the survivors rushes forth with trembling emotion to give full\nvent to her sorrow at the feet of the Great Friend of all the\nfriendless![11]\n\nHe has not yet entered the village. She cannot, however, wait His\narrival. Leaving home and sepulchre behind, she hastens outside the\ngroves of palm at its gate.\n\nIt requires no small fortitude in the season of sore bereavement to\nface an altered world; and, doubtless, passing all alone now through the\nlittle town, meeting familiar faces wearing sunny smiles which could not\nbe returned, must have been a painful effort to this child of sorrow.\nBut what will the heart not do to meet such a Comforter? What will\nMartha be unprepared to encounter if the intelligence brought her be\nindeed confirmed? One glance is enough. \"_It is the Lord!_\" In a moment\nshe is a suppliant at His feet. Doubt and faith and prayer mingle in the\nexclamation, \"Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not\ndied!\"[12]\n\nThat she had faith and assured confidence in the love and tenderness of\nJesus we cannot question. But a momentary feeling of unbelief (shall we\nsay, of reproach and upbraiding?) mingled with better emotions. \"Why,\nLord,\" seemed to be the expression of her inner thoughts, \"wert Thou\nabsent? It was unlike Thy kind heart. Thou hast often gladdened our home\nin our season of joy--why this forgetfulness in the night of our bitter\nagony? Death has torn from us a loved brother--the blow would have been\nspared--these hearts would have been unbroken--these burning tears\nunshed, if _Thou hadst_ been here!\"\n\nSuch was the bold--the _unkind_ reasoning of the mourner. It was the\nreasoning of a finite creature. Ah! if she could but have looked into\nthe workings of that infinite Heart she was ungenerously upbraiding, how\ndifferently would she have broached her tearful suit!\n\n_Her_ exclamation is--\"Why this _unkind_ absence?\"\n\n_His_ comment on that _same_ absence to His disciples is _this_--\"I was\n_glad_ for your sakes that I was _not_ there!\"\n\nHow often are _God_ and _man_ thus in strange antagonism, with regard to\nearthly dispensations! Man, as he arraigns the rectitude of the Divine\nprocedure, exclaiming--\"How unaccountable this dealing! How baffling\nthis mystery! Where is now my God?\" This sickness--why prolonged? This\nthorn in the flesh--why still buffeting? This family blank--why\npermitted? Why the most treasured and useful life taken--the blow aimed\nwhere it cut most severely and levelled lowest?\n\nHush the secret atheism! This trial, whatever it be, has this grand\nmotto written upon it in characters of living light;--we can read it on\nanguished pillows--aching hearts--ay, on the very portals of the\ntomb--\"_This_ is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be\nglorified thereby!\"\n\nAt the very moment we are mourning what are called \"_dark_\nprovidences\"--\"untoward calamities\"--\"strokes of\nmisfortune\"--\"unmitigated evils\"--Jesus has a different verdict;--\"I am\n_glad_ for your sakes.\"\n\nThe absence at Jordan--the still more unaccountable lingering for two\ndays in the same place after the message had been sent, instead of\nhastening direct to Bethany, all was well and wisely ordered. And\nalthough Martha's upbraidings were now received in forbearing silence,\nher Saviour afterwards, in a calmer moment, read the rebuke--\"Said I not\nunto thee, if thou wouldst _believe_, thou shouldst see the glory of\nGod?\"\n\nIt is indeed a comforting assurance in all trials, that God has some\nholy and wise end to subserve. He never stirs a ripple on the waters,\nbut for His own glory, or the good of others. The delay on the present\noccasion, though protracting for a time the sorrows of the bereaved, was\nintended for the benefit of the Church in every age, and for the more\nimmediate benefit of the disciples.\n\n_They_ were destined in a few brief weeks also to be desolate\nsurvivors--to mourn a Brother dearer still! He who had been to them\nFriend--Father--Brother, all in one, was to be, like Lazarus, laid\nsilent in a Jerusalem sepulchre. The Lord of Life was to be the victim\nof Death! His body was to be transfixed to a malefactor's cross, and\nconsigned to a lonely grave! He knew the shock that awaited their faith.\nHe knew, as this terrible hour drew on, how needful some overpowering\nvisible demonstration would be of His mastery over the tomb.\n\n_Now_ a befitting opportunity occurred in the case of their friend\nLazarus to read the needed lesson. \"I was glad for your sakes, ... to\nthe intent ye might believe.\"\n\nWould that we could feel as believers more than we do--that the dealings\nof our God are for the strengthening of our faith, and the enlivening\nand invigorating of our spiritual graces. Let us seek to accept more\nsimply in dark dealings the Saviour's explanation, \"It is for _your_\nsake!\" He gives us a blank for our every trial, indorsing it with His\nown gracious word, \"This, _this_ is for the glory of God, that the Son\nof God may be glorified thereby.\"\n\nThe words of Martha, then, surely teach as their great lesson, never to\nbe hasty in our surmises and conclusions regarding God's ways.\n\n\"Lord! IF Thou _hadst_ been here?\" Could she question for a moment that\nthat loving eye of Omniscience had all the while been scanning that\nsick-chamber--marking every throb in that fevered brow--and every tear\nthat fell unbidden from the eyes that watched his pillow?\n\n\"Lord! _if_ Thou hadst been here?\" Could she question His ability, had\nHe so willed it, to prevent the bereavement altogether--to put an arrest\non the hand of death ere the bow was strung?\n\nO faithless disciple, wherefore didst thou doubt? But thou art ere long\nto learn what each of us will learn out in eternity, that \"_all_ things\nare for our sakes, that the abundant grace might, through the\nthanksgiving of many, redound _to the glory of God_.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut the momentary cloud has passed. Faith breaks through. The murmur of\nupbraiding has died away. He who listens makes allowance for an\nanguished heart. The glance of tender sympathy and gentleness which met\nMartha's eye, at once hushes all remains of unbelief. Words of exulting\nconfidence immediately succeed. \"But I know that even now whatsoever\nThou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.\"\n\nWhat is this, but that which every believer exults in to this hour, as\nthe sheet-anchor of hope and peace and comfort, when tossed on a\ntempestuous sea--a gracious confidence in the ability and willingness of\nChrist to save. The Friend of Bethany is still the Friend in Heaven. To\nHim \"all power has been committed;\" \"as a prince He has power with God,\nand must prevail.\"\n\nYes, gracious antidote to the spirit in the moment of its trial; when\nbowed down with anticipated bereavement; the curtains of death about to\nfall over life's brightest joys. How blessed to lay hold on the\n_perfect_ conviction that \"the Ever-living Intercessor in glory has all\npower to revoke the sentence if He sees meet\"--that even _now_ (yes\n_now_, in a moment) the delegated angel may be sent speeding from his\nthrone, to spare the tree marked to fall, and prolong the lease of\nexistence!\n\nLet us rejoice in the power of this God-man Mediator, that He is as able\nas He is willing, and as willing as He is able. \"Him the Father heareth\nalways.\" \"_Father, I will_,\" is His own divine _formula_ for every\nneeded boon for His people.\n\nHow it ought to make our sick-chambers and death-chambers consecrated to\nprayer! leading us to make our every trial and sorrow a fresh reason for\ngoing to God. Laying our burden, whatever it may be, on the mercy-seat,\nit will be _considered_ by Him, who is too wise to grant what is better\nto be withdrawn, and too kind to withhold what, without injury to us,\nmay be granted.\n\nLet us imitate Martha's faith in our approaches to Him. Ah, in our dull\nand cold devotions, how little lively apprehension have we of the\ngracious _willingness_ of Christ to listen to our petitions! Standing as\nthe great Angel of the Covenant with the golden censer, His hand never\nshortened--His ear never heavy--His uplifted arm of intercession never\nfaint. No variety bewildering Him--no importunity wearying Him--\"waiting\nto be gracious\"--loving the music of the suppliant spirit.\n\nWould that we had ever before us as the superscription of faith written\non our closet-devotions, and domestic altars, and public sanctuaries,\n_whenever_ and _wherever_ the knee is bent, and the Hearer of prayer is\ninvoked--\"I _know_ that even _now_ whatsoever _Thou_ wilt ask of God,\nGod will give it Thee.\"\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\nTHE MOURNER'S COMFORT.\n\n\nMartha's tearful utterances are now met with an exalted solace.\n\n\"_Thy brother shall rise again._\" It is the first time her Lord has\nspoken. She now once more hears those well-remembered tones which were\nlast listened to, when life was all bright, and her home all happy.\n\nIt is the self-same consolation which steals still, like celestial\nmusic, to the smitten heart, when every chord of earthly gladness ceases\nto vibrate. And it is befitting too that _Jesus_ should utter it. He\nalone is qualified to do so. The words spoken to the bereaved one of\nBethany are words purchased by His own atoning work. \"Thy brother--thy\nsister--thy friend, shall rise again!\"\n\nThis brief oracle of comfort was addressed, in the first instance,\nspecially to Martha. It had a primary reference, doubtless, to the vast\nmiracle which was on the eve of performance. But there were more hearts\nto comfort and souls to cheer than one; that Almighty Saviour had at the\nmoment troops of other bereaved ones in view; myriads on myriads of\naching, bleeding spirits who could not, like the Bethany mourner, rush\ninto His visible presence for consolation and peace. He expands,\ntherefore, for their sakes the sublime and exalted solace which He\nministers to _her_. And in words which have carried their echoes of hope\nand joy through all time, He exclaims--\"I am the resurrection and the\nlife; he that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;\nand whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die!\"\n\nIf Bethany had bequeathed no other \"memory\" than _this_, how its name\nwould have been embalmed in hallowed recollection! Truly these two brief\nverses are as apples of gold in pictures of silver. \"_Jesus, the\nResurrection and the Life._\" Himself conquering death, He has conquered\nit for His people--opening the kingdom of heaven to all believers.\n\nThe full grandeur of that Bethany utterance could not be appreciated by\nher to whom it was first spoken. His death and resurrection was still,\neven to His nearest disciples, a profound mystery. Little did that\ntrembling spirit, who was now gazing on her living Lord with tearful\neye, dream that in a few brief days the grave was to hold HIM, too, as\nits captive; and that guardian angels were to proclaim words which would\nnow have been all enigma and strangeness, \"The Lord is risen!\" With us\nit is different. The mighty deed has been completed. \"Christ has died;\nyea, rather has risen again!\" The resurrection and revival of Lazarus\nwas a marvellous act, but it was only the rekindling of a little star\nthat had ceased to twinkle in the firmament. A week more--and Martha\nwould witness the Great Sun of all Being undergoing an eclipse; in a\nmysterious moment veiled and shrouded in darkness and blood; and then\nall at once coming forth like a Bridegroom from his chamber to shine the\nliving and luminous centre of ransomed millions!\n\nChristians! we can turn now aside and see this great sight--death\nclosing the lips of the Lord of life--a borrowed grave containing the\ntenantless body of the Creator of all worlds! Is death to hold that\nprey? Is the grave to retain in gloomy custody that immaculate frame? Is\nthe living temple to lie there an inglorious ruin, like other crumbling\nwrecks of mortality? The question of our eternal life or eternal death\nwas suspended on the reply! If death succeeds in chaining down the\nillustrious Victim, our hopes of everlasting life are gone for ever. In\nvain can these dreary portals be ever again unbarred for the children of\nfallen humanity. He has gone there as their surety-Saviour. If his\nsuretyship be accepted--if He meet and fulfil all the requirements of an\noutraged law, the gates of the dismal prison-house will and must be\nopened. If, on the other hand, there be any flaw or deficiency in His\nperson or work as the Kinsman-Redeemer, then no power can snap the\nchains which bind Him; the tomb will refuse to surrender what it has in\ncustody; the hopes of His people must perish along with Him! Golgotha\nmust become the grave of a world's hopes!\n\nBut the stone _has_ been rolled away. The grave-clothes are all that are\nleft as trophies of the conqueror. Angels are seated in the vacant tomb\nto verify with their gladdening assurance His own Bethany oracle, \"The\nLord has risen.\" \"He is indeed the resurrection and the life; he that\nliveth and believeth on Him shall never die!\"\n\nYes! however many be the comforting thoughts which cluster around the\ngrave of Lazarus, grander still is it to gather, as Jesus Himself here\nbids us, around His own tomb, and to gaze on His own resurrection scene!\nIt was the most eventful morning of all time. It will be the focus point\nof the Church's hope and triumph through all eternity.\n\n\"The Lord is risen!\" It proclaimed the atonement complete, sin pardoned,\nmediation accepted, the law satisfied, God glorified! \"The Lord is\nrisen!\" It proclaimed resurrection and life for His people--life (the\nforfeited _gift_ of life) now repurchased. That mighty victor rose not\nfor Himself, but as the representative and earnest of countless\nmultitudes, who exult in His death as their life--in His resurrection as\nthe pledge and guarantee of their everlasting safety;--\"I am He that\nliveth,\" and \"because I live ye shall live also.\"\n\nAnticipating His own glorious rising, He might well speak to Martha,\nstanding before Him as the representative of weeping, sinful, woe-worn\nhumanity, \"He that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.\" \"_In\nMe_, death is no longer death; it is only a parenthesis in life--a\ntransition to a loftier stage of being. _In Me_, the grave is the\nvestibule of heaven, the robing-room of immortality!\"\n\nReader, yours is the same strong consolation. \"Believe,\" \"Only believe\"\nin that risen Lord. He has purchased all, paid all, procured all! Look\ninto that vacant tomb; see sin cancelled, guilt blotted out, the law\nmagnified, justice honoured, the sinner saved!\n\nAy, and more than that, as you see the moral conqueror marching forth\nclothed with immortal victory, you see Him not alone! He is heading and\nheralding a multitude which no man can number. Himself the victorious\nprecursor, he is shewing to these exulting thousands \"the _path_ of\nlife.\" He tells them to dread neither for themselves or others that\nlonesome tomb. The curse is extracted from it; the envenomed sting is\nplucked away. In passing through its lonesome chambers they may exult in\nthe thought that a mightier than they has sanctified it by His own\npresence, and transmuted what was once a gloomy portico into a triumphal\narch, bearing the inscription, \"O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave,\nI will be thy destruction!\"\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\nTHE MOURNER'S CREED.\n\n\nHow stands our faith?\n\nThese mighty thoughts and words of consolation--are they really\nbelieved, felt, trusted in, rejoiced over?\n\nChristian, \"Believest _thou this_?\"[13] Art thou really looking to this\nexalted life-giving Saviour? Hast thou in some feeble measure realised\nthis resurrection-life as thine own? Hast thou the joyful consciousness\nof participating in this vital union with a living Lord? In vain do we\nlisten to these sublime Bethany utterances unless we feel \"_Jesus speaks\nto me_,\" and unless we be living from day to day under their\ninvigorating power.\n\nHe had unfolded to Martha in a single verse a whole Gospel; He had\nirradiated by a few words the darkness of the tomb; and now, turning to\nthe poor dejected weeper at his side, He addresses the all-important\nquestion, \"Believest thou _this_?\"\n\nHer faith had been but a moment before staggering. Some guilty\nmisgivings had been mingling with her anguished tears. She has now an\nopportunity afforded of rising above her doubts,--the ebbings and\nflowings of her fitful feelings,--and cleaving fast to the Living Rock.\n\nIt elicits an unfaltering response--\"Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art\nthe Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.\"[14]\n\nRemarkable confession! We should not so much have wondered to hear it\nafter the grave, hard by, had been rifled, and the silent lips of\nLazarus had been unsealed; or had she stood like the other Mary at her\nLord's own sepulchre in the garden, and after a few brief, but momentous\ndays and hours, seen a whole flood of light thrown on the question of\nHis Messiahship.\n\nBut as yet there was much to damp such a bold confession, and lead to\nhesitancy in the avowal of such a creed. The poverty, the humiliations,\nthe unworldly obscurity of that solitary _One_ who claimed no earthly\nbirthright, and owned no earthly dwelling, were not all these,\nparticularly to a Jew, at variance with every idea formed in connexion\nwith the coming Shiloh?\n\nWas Martha's then a blind unmeaning faith? Far from it. It was nurtured,\ndoubtless, in that quiet home of holy love, where, while Lazarus yet\nlived, this mysterious Being, in an earthly form and in pilgrim garb,\ncame time after time discoursing to them often, as we are warranted to\nbelieve, on the dignity of His nature, the glories of His person, the\ncompleteness of His work. It was neither the evidence of miracle or\nprophecy which had revealed to that weeping disciple that Jesus of\nNazareth was the Son of God. With the exception of Micah's statement\nregarding Bethlehem-Ephratah as His birthplace, we question if any other\nremarkable prediction concerning Him had yet been fulfilled; and so far\nas miracles were concerned, though she may and must have doubtless known\nof them by hearsay, we have no evidence that she had as yet so much as\nwitnessed _one_. We never read till this time of their quiet village\nbeing the scene of any manifestations of His power. These had generally\ntaken place either in Jerusalem or in the cities and coasts of Galilee.\nThe probability, therefore, is that Martha, had never yet seen that arm\nof Omnipotence bared, or witnessed those prodigies with which elsewhere\nHe authenticated His claims to Divinity.\n\n_Whence then her creed?_ May we not believe she had made her noble\navowal mainly from the study of that beauteous, spotless character--from\nthose looks, and words, and deeds--from that lofty teaching--so unlike\nevery human system--so wondrously adapted to the wants and woes, the\nsins, the sorrows, and aching necessities of the human heart. All this\nhad left on her own spirit, and on that of Lazarus and Mary, the\nirresistible impression and evidence that he was indeed the Lord of\nGlory--\"the Hope of Israel, and the Saviour thereof.\"\n\nAnd is it not the same evidence we exult in still? Is this not the\n_reason_ of many a humble believer's creed and faith--who may be all\nunlettered and unlearned in the evidences of the schools--the external\nand internal bulwarks of our impregnable Christianity? Ask them why\nthey believe? why their faith is so firm--their love so strong?\n\nThey will tell you that that Saviour, in all the glories of His person,\nin all the completeness of His work, in all the beauties of His\ncharacter, is the very Saviour they need!--that His Gospel is the very\nerrand of mercy suited to their souls' necessities;--that His words of\ncompassion, and tenderness, and hope, are in every way adapted to meet\nthe yearnings of their longing spirits. They need to stand by the grave\nof no Lazarus to be certified as to His Messiahship. His looks and\ntones--His character and doctrine,--His cures and remedies for the wants\nand woes of their ruined natures, point Him out as the true Heavenly\nPhysician.\n\nThey can tell of the best of all evidences, and the strongest of\nall--the _experimental_ evidence! They are no theorists. Religion is no\nsubject with them of barren speculation; it is a matter of inner and\nheartfelt experience. They have tried the cure--they have found it\nanswer;--they have fled to the Physician--they have applied His\nbalm--they have been healed and live! And you might as well try to\nconvince the restored blind that the sunlight which has again burst on\nthem is a wild dream of fancy, or the restored deaf that the world's\njoyous melodies which have again awoke on them are the mockeries of\ntheir own brain, as convince the spiritually enlightened and awakened\nthat He who has proved to them light and life, and joy and peace--their\ncomfort in prosperity--their refuge in adversity--is other than the _Son\nof God and Saviour of the world_!\n\nReader, is this your experience? Have you tasted and seen that the Lord\nis gracious? Have you felt the preciousness of His gospel, the\nadaptation of His work to the necessities of your ruined condition?--the\npower of His grace, the prevalence of His intercession, the fulness and\nglory and truthfulness of His promises? Are you exulting in Him as the\nResurrection and Life, who has raised you from the death of sin, and\nwill at last raise you from the power of death, and invest you with that\neternal life which His love has purchased?\n\nPrecious as is this hope and confidence at all times, specially so is\nit, mourners in Zion! in your seasons of sorrow. When human refuges\nfail, and human friendships wither, and human props give way, how\nsustaining to have this \"anchor of the soul sure and steadfast\"--union\nwith a living Lord on earth, and the joyful hope of endless and\nuninterrupted union and communion with Him in glory! Are you even now\nenjoying, through your tears, this blessed persuasion, and exulting in\nthis blessed creed? Do you know the secret of that twofold solace, \"the\npower of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings?\"--the\n\"fellowship of His sufferings\" telling of His sympathy with your sorrows\nbelow;--the \"power of His resurrection\" assuring you of the glorious\ngift of everlasting life in a world where sorrow dare not enter. Rest\nnot satisfied with a mere outward creed and confession that \"Jesus is\nthe Saviour.\" Let yours be the nobler _formula_ of an appropriating\nfaith--\"He is my Saviour; He loved ME, and gave Himself for ME.\" Let it\nnot be with you a salvation _possible_, but a salvation _found_; so\nthat, with a tried apostle, you can rise above the surges of deepening\ntribulation as you glory in the conviction, \"I _know_ in whom I _have_\nbelieved, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have\ncommitted unto Him.\"\n\nSad, indeed, for those who, when \"deep calleth unto deep,\" have no such\n\"strong consolation\" to enable them to ride out the storm; who, when\nsorrow and bereavement overtake them--the lowering shadows of the dark\nand cloudy day--have still to grope after an _unknown Christ_; and, amid\nthe hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for\nthe first time, the _only_ true One.\n\nOh! if our hour of trial has not yet come, let us be prepared for\nit--for come it will. Let us seek to have our vessels moored _now_ to\nthe Rock of Ages, that when the tempest arises--when the floods beat,\nand the winds blow, and the wrecks of earthly joy are seen strewing the\nwaters--we may triumphantly utter the challenge, \"Who shall separate us\nfrom the love of Christ?\"\n\n                          \"Say, ye who tempt\n     The sea of life, by summer gales impell'd,\n     Have ye this anchor? Sure a time will come\n     For storms to try you, and strong blasts to rend\n     Your painted sails, and shred your gold like chaff\n     O'er the wild wave. And what a wreck is man,\n     If sorrow find him unsustain'd by God!\"\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nTHE MASTER.\n\n\nMartha can withhold no longer from her sister the joyful tidings which\nshe has been the first to hear. With fleet foot she hastens back to the\nhouse with the announcement, \"The Master is come, and calleth for thee.\"\nMary hears, but makes no comment. Wrapt in the silence of her own\nmeditative grief, \"when she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto\nHim.\"\n\n    \"To her all earth could render nothing back\n     Like that pale changeless brow. Calmly she stood\n     As marble statue.\n\n                       In that maiden's breast\n     Sorrow and loneliness sank darkly down,\n     Though the blanch'd lips breathed out no boisterous plaint\n     Of common grief.\"\n\nThe formal sympathisers who gathered around her had observed her\ndeparture. They are led to form their conjectures as to the cause of\nthis sudden break in her trance of anguish. She had up till that\nmoment, with the instinctive aversion which mourners only know, and\nwhich we have formerly alluded to in the case of Martha, been shrinking\nfrom facing the gladsome light of heaven, caring not to look abroad on\nthe blight of an altered world. But the few words her sister uttered,\nand which the other auditors manifestly had not comprehended, all at\nonce rouse her from her seat of pensive sadness, and her shadow is seen\nhurrying by the darkened lattice. They can form but one surmise: that,\nin accordance with wont, she has betaken herself to the burial-ground to\nfeed her morbid grief \"She goeth unto the grave to weep there.\" Ah!\nlittle did they know how much nobler was her motive--how truer and\ngrander the solace she sought and found.\n\nThere is little that is really profitable or hallowed in visiting the\ngrave of loved ones. Though fond affection will, from some false feeling\nof the tribute due to the memory of the departed, seek to surmount\nsadder thoughts, and linger at the spot where treasured ashes repose,\nyet--think and act as we may--there is nothing cheering, nothing\nelevating _there_. The associations of the burial-place are all with the\nhumiliating triumphs of the King of Terrors. It is a view of death taken\nfrom the _earthly_ entrance of the valley, not the _heavenly_ view of it\nas that valley opens on the bright plains of immortality. The gay\nflowers and emerald sod which carpet the grave are poor mockeries to the\nbereft spirit, shrouding, as they do, nobler withered blossoms which the\nfoot of the destroyer has trampled into dust, and which no earthly\nbeauty can again clothe, or earthly spring reanimate. They are to be\npitied who have no higher solace, no better remedy for their grief, than\nthus to water with unavailing tears the trophies of death; or to read\nthe harrowing record which love has traced on its slab of cold marble,\ntelling of the vanity of human hopes.\n\nSuch, however, was not Mary's errand in leaving the chamber of\nbereavement. That drooping flower was not opening her leaves, only to be\ncrushed afresh with new tear-floods of sorrow. She sought _One_ who\nwould disengage her soiled and shattered tendrils from the chill\ncomforts of earth, and bathe them in the genial influences of Heaven.\nThe music of her Master's name alone could put gladness into her\nheart--tempt her to muffle other conflicting feelings and hasten to His\nfeet. \"_The Master is come!_\" Nothing could have roused her from her\nprofound grief but this. While her poor earthly comforters are imagining\nher prostrate at the sepulchre's mouth, giving vent to the wild delirium\nof her young grief, she is away, not to the victim of death, but to the\nLord of Life, either to tell to Him the tale of her woe, or else to\nlisten from His lips to words of comfort no other comforter had given.\nIs there not the same music in that name--the same solace and joy in\nthat presence still? Earthly sympathy is not to be despised; nay, when\ndeath has entered a household, taken the dearest and the best and laid\nthem in the tomb, nothing is more soothing to the wounded, crushed, and\nbroken one, than to experience the genial sympathy of true Christian\nfriendship. Those, it may be, little known before (comparative\nstrangers), touched with the story of a neighbour's sorrow, come to\noffer their tribute of condolence, and to \"weep with those that weep.\"\nNever is _true_ friendship so tested as then. Hollow attachments, which\nhave nothing but the world or a time of prosperity to bind them,\ndiscover their worthlessness. \"Summer friends\" stand aloof--they have\nlittle patience for the sadness of sorrow's countenance and the funereal\ntrappings of the death-chamber; while sympathy, based on lofty Christian\nprinciple, loves to minister as a subordinate healer of the\nbroken-hearted, and to indulge in a hundred nameless ingenious offices\nof kindness and love.\n\n_But_ \"thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.\" The purest and noblest\nand most disinterested of earthly friends can only go a certain way.\nTheir minds and sympathies are limited. They cannot enter into the deep\nrecesses of the smitten heart--the yawning crevices that bereavement has\nlaid bare. _But_ JESUS _can_! Ah! there are capacities and sensibilities\nin that Mighty Heart that can probe the deepest wound and gauge the\nprofoundest sorrow. While from the _best_ of earthly comforters the mind\nturns away unsatisfied; while the burial-ground and the grave only\nrecall the deep humiliations of the body's wreck and ruin--with what\nfond emotion does the spirit, like Mary, turn to Him who possesses the\nmajesty of Deity with all the tenderness of humanity. The Mighty Lord,\nand yet the Elder Brother!\n\nThe sympathy of man is often selfish, formal, constrained, commonplace,\ncoming more from the surface than from the depths of the heart. It is\nthe finite sympathy of a finite creature. The Redeemer's sympathy is\nthat of the perfect Man and the infinite God--able to enter into all the\npeculiarities of the case--all the tender features and shadings of\nsorrow which are hidden from the keenest and kindliest _human_ eye.\n\nMary's procedure is a true type and picture of what the broken heart of\nthe Christian feels. Not undervaluing human sympathy, yet, nevertheless,\nall the crowd of sympathising friends--Jewish citizens, Bethany\nvillagers--are nothing to her when she hears _her Lord has come_!\n\nHappy for us if, while the world, like the condoling crowd of Jews, is\nforming its own cold speculations on the amount of our grief and the\nbitterness of our loss, we are found hastening to cast ourselves at our\nSaviour's feet; if our afflictions prove to us like angel messengers\nfrom the inner sanctuary--calling us from friends, home, comforts,\nblessings, all we most prize on earth--telling us that ONE is nigh who\nwill more than compensate for the loss of all--\"_The Master is come, and\ncalleth for thee!_\"\n\nIt is the very end and design our gracious God has in all His dealings,\nto lead _us_, as he led Mary, to the feet of Jesus.\n\nYes! thou poor weeping, disconsolate one, \"The Master calleth for\n_thee_.\" _Thee_ individually, as if thou stoodest the alone sufferer in\na vast world. He wishes to pour His oil and wine into thy wounded\nheart--to give thee some overwhelming proof and pledge of the love he\nbears thee in this thy sore trial. He has come to pour drops of comfort\nin the bitter cup--to ease thee of thy heavy burden, and to point thee\nto hopes full of immortality. Go and learn what a kind, and gentle, and\ngracious Master He is! Go forth, Mary, and meet thy Lord. \"Weeping may\nendure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning!\"\n\nWe may imagine her hastening along the foot-road, with the spirit of the\nPsalmist's words on her tongue--\"As the hart panteth after the\nwater-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth\nfor God--for the living God!\"\n\n\n\n\nXI.\n\nSECOND CAUSES.\n\n\nWith a bounding heart, Mary was in a moment at her Master's feet. She\nweeps! and is able only to articulate, in broken accents, \"Lord, if thou\nhadst been here, my brother had not died.\" It is the repetition of\nMartha's same expression. Often at a season of sore bereavement some one\npoignant thought or reflection takes possession of the mind, and, for\nthe time, overmasters every other. This echo of the other mourner's\nutterance leads us to conclude that it had been a familiar and\noft-quoted phrase during these days of protracted agony. This\nindependent quotation, indeed, on the part of each, gives a truthful\nbeauty to the whole inspired narrative.\n\nThe twin sisters--musing on the terrible past, gazing through their\ntears on the vacant seat at their home-hearth--had been every now and\nthen breaking the gloomy silence of the deserted chamber by exclaiming,\n\"If _He_ had been here, this never would have happened! This is the\nbitterest drop in our cup, that all might have been different! These hot\ntears might never have dimmed our eyes; our loved Lazarus might have\nbeen a living and loving brother still! Oh! that the Lord had delayed\nfor a brief week that untoward journey, or anticipated by four days his\nlonged-for return; or would that we had despatched our messenger earlier\nfor Him. It is now too late. Though He _has_ at last come, His advent\ncan be of little avail. The fell destroyer has been at our cottage door\nbefore Him. He may soothe our grief, but the blow cannot be averted.\n_His_ friend and _our_ brother is locked in sleep too deep to be\ndisturbed.\"\n\nAh! is it not the same unkind surmise which is still often heard in the\nhour of bereavement and in the home of death?--a guilty, unholy brooding\nover _second causes_. \"If such and such had been done, my child had\nstill lived. If that mean, or that remedy, or that judicious caution had\nbeen employed, this terrible overthrow of my earthly hopes would never\nhave occurred; that loved one would have been still walking at my side;\nthat chaplet of sorrows would not now have been girding my brows; the\nBethany sepulchre would have been unopened--'This my brother had not\ndied!'\"\n\nHush! hush! these guilty insinuations--that dethroning of God from the\nProvidential Sovereignty of His own world--that hasty and inconsiderate\nverdict on His divine procedure.\n\n\"IF _Thou_ hadst been here!\" Can we, _dare_ we doubt it? Is the\ndeparture of the immortal soul to the spirit-world so trivial a matter\nthat the life-giving God takes no cognisance of it? No! Mourning one, in\nthe deep night of thy sorrow, thou must rise above \"untoward\ncoincidences\"--thou must cancel the words \"accident\" and \"fate\" from thy\nvocabulary of trial. God, _thy_ God, was _there_! If there _be_\nperplexing accompaniments, be assured they were of _His_ permitting; all\nwas planned--wisely, kindly planned. Question not the unerring rectitude\nof His dealings. Though _apparently_ absent, He was _really_ present.\nThe apparent veiling of His countenance is only what Cowper calls \"the\nseverer aspect of His love.\" Kiss the rod that smites--adore the hand\nthat lays low. Pillow thy head on that simple, yet grandest source of\ncomposure--\"_The Lord reigneth!_\" It is not for us to venture to dictate\nwhat the procedure of infinite love and wisdom should be. To our dim and\ndistorted views of things, it might have been more for the glory of God\nand the Church's good, if the \"beautiful bird of light\" had still \"sat\nwith its folded wings\" ere it sped to nestle in the eaves of Heaven. But\nif its earthly song has been early hushed; if those full of promise have\nbeen allowed rather to fall asleep in Jesus, \"Even so, Father; for it\nseems good in Thy sight!\" It was from no want of power or ability on\nGod's part that they were not recalled from the gates of death. \"We will\nbe dumb--we will open not our mouths, because _Thou_ didst it.\"\n\nAfflicted one! if the brother or friend whom you now mourn be a brother\nin glory--if he be now among the white-robed multitude--his last tear\nwept--for ever beyond reach of a sinning and sorrowing world--can you\nupbraid your God for his early departure? Would you weep him back if\nyou could from his early crown?\n\nFond nature, as it stands in trembling agony watching the ebbing pulses\nof life, would willingly arrest the pale messenger--stay the\nchariot--and have the wilderness relighted with his smile.\n\nBut when all is over, and you are able to contemplate, with calm\nemotion, the untold bliss into which the unfettered spirit has entered,\ndo you not feel as if it were cruel selfishness alone that would denude\nthat sainted pilgrim of his glory, and bring him once more back to\nearth's cares and tribulations?\n\n    \"We sadly watch'd the close of all,\n       Life balanced in a breath;\n     We saw upon his features fall\n       The awful shade of death.\n     All dark and desolate we were;\n       And murmuring nature cried--\n     'Oh! surely, Lord! hadst _Thou_ been here\n       Our brother had not died!'\n\n    \"But when its glance the memory cast\n       On all that grace had done;\n     And thought of life's long warfare pass'd,\n       And endless victory won.\n     Then faith prevailing, wiped the tear,\n       And looking upward, cried--\n     'O Lord! Thou surely _hast_ been here,\n       Our brother has _not_ died!'\"\n\nWe have already had occasion to note the impressive and significant\nsilence of the Saviour to Mary. We may just again revert to it in a\nsentence here. Martha had, a few moments before, given vent to the same\nimpassioned utterance respecting her departed brother. Jesus had replied\nto her; questioned her as to her faith; and opened up to her sublime\nsources of solace and consolation. With Mary it is different. He\nresponds to her also--but it is only in silence and in tears!\n\nWhy this distinction? Does it not unfold to us a lovely feature in the\ndealings of Jesus--how He adapts Himself to the peculiarities of\nindividual character. With those of a bolder temperament He can argue\nand remonstrate--with those of a meek, sensitive, contemplative spirit,\nHe can be silent and weep!\n\nThe stout but manly heart of Peter needed at times a bold and cutting\nrebuke; a similar reproof would have crushed to the dust the tender soul\nof John. The character of the one is painted in his walking on the\nstormy water to meet his Lord; of the other, in his reclining on the\nbosom of the same Divine Master, drinking sacred draughts at the\nFountain-head of love!\n\nSo it was with Martha and Mary, \"the Peter and John of Bethany;\" and so\nit is with His people still.\n\nHow beautifully and considerately Jesus _studies_ their case--adapting\nHis dealings to what He sees and knows they can bear--fitting the yoke\nto the neck, and the neck to the yoke. To some He is \"the Lion of the\ntribe of Judah, uttering His thunders\"--pleading with Martha-spirits \"by\nterrible things in righteousness;\"--to others (the shrinking, sensitive\nMarys) whispering only accents of gentleness--giving expression to no\nneedless word that would aggravate or embitter their sorrows.\n\nAh, believer! how tenderly considerate is your dear Lord! Well may you\nmake it your prayer, \"Let me fall into the hands of God, for great are\nHis mercies!\" He may at times, like Joseph to His brethren, _appear_ to\n\"speak roughly,\" but it is dissembled _kindness_. When a father inflicts\non his wayward child the severest and harshest discipline, none but he\ncan tell the bitter heart-pangs of yearning love that accompany every\nstroke of the rod. So it is with your Father in Heaven; with this\ndifference, that the earthly parent _may_ act unwisely, arbitrarily,\nindiscreetly--he may misjudge the necessities of the case--he may do\nviolence and wrong to the natural disposition of his offspring. Not so\nwith an all-wise Heavenly Parent. He will inflict no redundant or\nunneeded chastisement. Man _may_ err, _has_ erred, and _is_ ever\nerring--but \"as for God, His way is perfect!\"\n\n\n\n\nXII.\n\nTHE WEEPING SAVIOUR.\n\n\nThe silent procession is moving on. We may suppose they have reached the\ngates of the burial-ground. But a new scene and incident here arrest our\nthoughts!\n\nIt is not the humiliating memorials of mortality that lie scattered\naround,--the caves and grottoes and grassy heaps sacred to many a\nBethany villager. It is not even the newly sealed stone which marks the\nspot where Lazarus \"sleeps.\" Let us turn aside for a little, and see\nthis great sight. It is the Creator of all worlds in tears!--the God-man\nMediator dissolved in tenderest grief! Of all the memories of Bethany,\nthis surely is the _most_ hallowed and the most wondrous. These tears\nform the most touching episode in sacred story; and if we are in sorrow,\nit may either dry our own tears, or give them the warrant to flow when\nwe are told--_Jesus wept!_\n\nWhence those tears? This is what we shall now inquire. There is often a\nfalse interpretation put upon this brief and touching verse, as if it\ndenoted the expression of the Saviour's sorrow for the loss of a loved\nfriend. This, it is plain, it could not be. However mingled may have\nbeen the hopes and fears of the weeping mourners around him, _He_ at\nleast knew that in a few brief moments Lazarus was to be restored. He\ncould not surely weep so bitterly, possessing, as He then did, the\nconfident assurance that death was about to give back its captive, and\nlight up every tear-dimmed eye with an ecstasy of joy. Whence, then, we\nagain ask, this strange and mysterious grief? Come and let us surround\nthe grave of Bethany, and as we behold the chief mourner at that grave,\nlet us inquire why it was that \"_Jesus wept!_\"\n\n\n(1.) JESUS WEPT _out of Sympathy for the Bereaved_.\n\nThe hearts around Him were breaking with anguish. All unconscious\nof how soon and how wondrously their sorrow was to be turned into\njoy, the appalling thought was alone present to them in all its\nfearfulness--\"Lazarus is dead!\" When _He_, the God-man Mediator, with\nthe refined sensibilities of His tender heart, beheld the poignancy of\nthat grief, the pent-up torrent of His own human sympathies could be\nrestrained no longer. His tears flowed too.\n\nBut it would be a contracted view of the tears of Jesus to think that\ntwo solitary mourners in a Jewish graveyard engrossed and monopolised\nthat sympathy. It had a far wider sweep.\n\nThere were hearts, yes--myriads of desolate sufferers in ages then\nunborn, who He knew would be brought to stand as He was then doing by\nthe grave of loved relatives--mourners who would have no visible\ncomforter or restorer to rush to, as had Martha and Mary, to dry their\ntears, and give them back their dead; and when He thought of this,\n\"_Jesus wept!_\"\n\nWhat an interest it gives to that scene of weeping, to think that at\nthat eventful moment, the Saviour had before Him the bereaved of _all\ntime_--that His eye was roaming at that moment through deserted\nchambers, and vacant seats, and opened graves, down to the end of the\nworld. The aged Jacobs and Rachels weeping for their children--the\nEzekiels mourning in the dust and ashes of disconsolate widowhood, \"the\ndesire of their eyes taken away by a stroke\"--the unsolaced Marys and\nMarthas brooding over a dark future, with the prop and support of\nexistence swept down, the central sun and light of their being\neclipsed in mysterious darkness! Think, (as you are now perusing\nthese pages,) throughout the wide world, how many breaking hearts\nthere are--how loud the wail of suffering humanity, could we but\nhear it!--those written childless and fatherless, and friendless and\nhomeless!--Bethany-processions pacing with slow and measured step to\ndeposit their earthly all in the cold custody of the tomb! Think of the\nMarys and Marthas who are now \"going to some grave to weep there,\"\nperhaps with no Saviour's smile to gladden them--or the desolate\nchambers that are now resounding to the plaintive dirge, \"O Absalom,\nAbsalom, would God I had died for thee; O Absalom, my son! my son!\"\nThink of all these scenes at that moment vividly suggested and pictured\nto the Redeemer's eye--the long and loud _miserere_, echoing dismally\nfrom the remotest bounds of time, and there \"entering into the ear of\nthe God of Sabaoth,\" and can you wonder that--_Jesus wept!_\n\nBlessed and amazing picture of the Lord of glory! It combines the\ndelineation alike of the tenderness of His humanity, and the majesty of\nHis Godhead. His Humanity! It is revealed in those tear drops, falling\nfrom a human eye on a human grave. His _Godhead_! It is manifested in\nHis ability to take in with a giant grasp all the prospective sufferings\nof His suffering people.\n\nWeeping believer! thine anguished heart was included in those Bethany\ntears! Be assured thy grief was visibly portrayed at that moment to that\nomniscient Saviour. He had all thy sorrows before Him--thy anxious\nmoments during thy friend's tedious sickness--the trembling\nsuspense--the nights of weary watching--the agonising revelation of \"no\nhope\"--the closing scene! Bethany's graveyard became to Him a\npicture-gallery of the world's aching hearts; and _thine_, yes! _thine_\nwas _there_! and as He beheld it, \"_Jesus wept!_\"\n\n    \"Jesus wept! These tears are over,\n     But His heart is still the same;\n     Kinsman, Friend, and Elder Brother,\n     Is His everlasting name.\n\n         Saviour, who can love like Thee,\n         _Gracious_ One of Bethany!\n\n    \"When the pangs of trial seize us,\n     When the waves of sorrow roll,\n     I will lay my head on Jesus,\n     Pillow of the troubled soul.\n\n         Surely none can feel like Thee,\n         _Weeping_ One of Bethany!\n\n    \"Jesus wept! And still in glory,\n     He can mark each mourner's tear;\n     Loving to retrace the story\n     Of the hearts he solaced here.\n\n         Lord! when I am call'd to die,\n         Let me think of Bethany!\n\n    \"Jesus wept! That tear of sorrow\n     Is a legacy of love;\n     Yesterday, to-day, to-morrow,\n     He the same doth ever prove.\n\n         Thou art all in all to me,\n         _Living_ One of Bethany!\"\n\n\n(2.) JESUS WEPT _when He thought of the triumphs of Death_!\n\nHe was treading a burial ground--mouldering heaps were around\nHim--silent sepulchral caves, giving forth no echo of life!\n\nIt is a solemn and impressive thing, even for _us_, to tread the\ngraveyard; more especially if there are there nameless treasures of\nburied affection. The thought that those whose smile gladdened to us\nevery step in the wilderness, who formed our solace in sorrow, and our\njoy in adversity--whose words, and society, and converse were\nintertwined with our very being--it is solemn and saddening, as we tread\nthat land of oblivion, to find these words and looks and tears\nunanswered--a gloomy silence hovering over the spot where the wrecks of\nworth and loveliness are laid! He would have a bold, a stern heart\nindeed who could pace unmoved over such hallowed ground, and forbid a\ntear to flow over the gushing memories of the past!\n\nWhat, then, must it have been at that moment in Bethany with _Jesus_,\nwhen he saw one of those purchased by his own blood (dearest to him)\nchased by the unsparing destroyer to that gloomy prison-house?\n\nIf we have supposed that the tears of Martha and Mary were suggestive\nof manifold other broken and sorrowing hearts in other ages, we may well\nbelieve that graveyard was suggestive of triumphs still in reserve for\nthe tomb, numberless trophies which in every age were to be reaped in by\nthe King of Terrors until the reaper's arm was paralyzed, and death\nswallowed up in victory. The few silent sepulchres around must have\nsignificantly called to the mind of the Divine spectator how sin had\nblasted and scathed His noblest workmanship; converting the fairest\nprovince of His creation into one vast _Necropolis_,--one dismal \"city\nof the dead!\" The body of man, \"so fearfully and wonderfully made,\" and\non which he had originally placed His own impress of \"very good,\"\n_ruined_, and resolved into a mass of humiliating dust! If the Architect\nmourns over the destruction of some favourite edifice which the storm\nhas swept down, or the fire has wrapt in conflagration and reduced to\nashes--if the Sculptor mourns to see his breathing marble with one rude\nstroke hurled to the ground, and its fragments scattered at his\nfeet--what must have been the sensations of the mighty Architect of the\nhuman frame, at whose completion the morning stars and the sons of God\nchanted a loud anthem--what must have been His sensations as He thought\nof them, now a devastated wreck, mouldering in dissolution and decay,\nthe King of Terrors sitting in regal state, holding his high holiday\nover a vassal world!\n\nIn Bethany He beheld only a few of these broken and prostrate columns,\nbut they were powerfully suggestive of millions on millions which were\nyet in coming ages to undergo the same doom of mortality.\n\nIf even our less sensitive hearts may be wrung with emotion at the\ntidings of some mournful catastrophe that occupies, after all, but some\npassing hour in the world's history, but which has carried death and\nlamentation into many households--the sudden pestilence that has swept\ndown its thousands--the gallant vessel that was a moment before\nspreading proudly its white wings to the gale, the joyous hearts on\nboard dreaming of hearth and home, and the \"many ports that would exult\nin the gleam of her mast\"--the next! hurrying down to the depths of an\nocean grave, with no survivor to tell the tale!--or the terrible\nrecords of War--the ranks of bold and brave laid low in the carnage of\nbattle--youth and strength and beauty and rank and friendship blent in\none red burial!--if these and such like mournful tales of death, and the\npower of death, affect at the moment even the most callous amongst us,\ncausing the lip to grow pale, and demanding the tribute of more than a\ntear, oh! what must it have been to the omniscient eye and exquisitely\nsensitive spirit of Jesus, as, taking in all time at a glance, He beheld\nthe Pale Horse with its ghastly rider trampling under foot the vast\nhuman family; converting the globe in which they dwelt into a mournful\nvalley of vision, filled with the wrecks and skeletons of breathing men\nand animated frames!\n\nThe triumphs of death are, in ordinary circumstances, to us scarcely\nperceptible. He moves with noiseless tread. The footprint is made on the\nsands of time; but like the tides of the ocean, the world's\noblivion-power washes it away. The name of yonder churchyard is \"the\n_land of forgetfulness_!\" Not so with the Lord of Life, the great\nAntagonist of this usurper! The future, a ghastly future, rose in\nappalling vividness before Him.--Death (vulture-like) flapping his wings\nover the multitudes he claimed as his own,--vessels freighted with\nimmortality lying wrecked and stranded on the shores of Time!\n\nYes! we can only understand the full import of these tears of Jesus, as\nwe imagine to ourselves His Godlike eye penetrating at that moment every\nchurchyard and every grave: the mausoleums of the great--the grassy sods\nof the poor; the marble cenotaph of the noble and illustrious slumbering\nunder fretted aisle and cathedral canopy--the myriads whose requiem is\nchanted by the bleak winds of the desert or the chimes of the ocean! The\nchild carried away in the twinkling of an eye--the blossom just opening,\nand then frost-blighted; the aged sire, cut down like a shock of corn in\nits season, falling withered and seared like the leaves of autumn; the\nyoung exulting in the prime of manhood; the pious and benevolent, the\ngreat and good, succumbing indiscriminately to the same inexorable\ndecree; the erring and thoughtless, reckless of all warning, hurried\naway in the midst of scorned mercy--Oh! as He beheld this ghastly\nfuneral procession moving before Him, the whole world going to the same\nlong home, and He Himself alone left the survivor, can we wonder that\n_Jesus wept_?\n\n\n(3.) Once more, JESUS WEPT _when He thought of the impenitence and\nobduracy of the human heart_.\n\nThis may not be at first sight patent as a cause of the tears of Jesus,\nbut we may well believe it entered largely as an element into this\nstrange flood of sorrow.\n\nHe was about to perform a great (His greatest) miracle; but while He\nknew that, in consequence of this manifestation of His mighty power,\nmany of those who now stood around Lazarus' tomb would _believe_, He\nknew also that others would only \"despise, and wonder, and perish;\" that\nwhile some, as we shall afterwards find, acknowledged Him as the\nMessiah, others went straightway into Jerusalem to concert with the\nPharisees in plotting His murder. When He observed the impenitence of\nthese obdurate hearts at His side, He could not subdue His tenderest\nemotion. We read that, when He saw the sisters weeping, _and the Jews\nthat were with them weeping_, Jesus wept. These Jews could weep for a\nfellow-mortal, but they could not weep for _themselves_, and therefore\n_for them, Jesus wept_!\n\nOne soul was precious to Him. He who alone can estimate alike the worth\nand the loss of the soul, might have wept, even had there been but one\nthen present found to resist His claims and forfeit His salvation. But\nthese tears extended far beyond that lonely spot in a Jewish village,\nand the few impenitent hearts that were then flocking around. These\nobdurate Jews were types of the world's impenitency. There was at that\nmoment summoned before Him a mournful picture of the hardened hearts in\nevery age--those who would read His gospel, and hear of His miracles,\nand listen to the story of His love all unmoved--who would die as they\nhad lived, uncheered by His grace and unmeet for His presence.\n\nAh! surely no cause could more tenderly elicit a Redeemer's tears than\n_this_--the thought of His Redemption scorned, His blood trampled on,\nHis work set at nought.\n\nIf we have thought of Him shedding tears over the ruin of the _body_,\nwhat must have been the depth and intensity of those tears over the\nsadder, more fearful ruin of the soul? Immortal powers, that ought to\nhave been ennobled and consecrated to His service, alienated, degraded,\ndestroyed!--immortal beings spurning from them the day of grace and the\nhopes of heaven! Bitter as may have been the wail of mourning and\nsorrowing hearts that may then have reached His ear from future ages,\nmore agonising and dismal far must have been the wailing cry which,\nbeyond the limits of time, came floating up from a dark and dreary\neternity; those who might have believed and lived, but who blasphemed or\ntrifled, neglected and procrastinated, and finally perished!\n\nIf we think of it, it is not the loss of health, or the loss of wealth,\nor the loss of friends, which forms the heaviest of trials, the deepest\nground of soul sadness. _We_ put on the sable attire as emblems of\nmourning; but if we saw it as a weeping Jesus sees it, there is more\nreal cause for sackcloth and ashes in the heart at enmity with God, and\ndespising His salvation, trampling under foot His Son, and enacting\nover again the sad tragedy of Calvary.\n\nReader! are you at this moment guilty of living on in a state of\npresumptuous impenitence--salvation unsought--Jesus a stranger--His name\nunhonoured--His Bible unread--His promises unappropriated--His wrath\nundreaded--defeating all His marvellous appliances of love, and\nremonstrance, and forbearance--meeting a prodigal expenditure of\npatience and long-suffering with cold and chilling indifference and\nneglect--casting away from you the hoarded riches of eternity which He\nhas been holding out for your acceptance? In that sacred Bethany ground,\nas ye mark these falling tear-drops which dim His eye, there may have\nbeen a tear for _you_! Eighteen hundred years have since elapsed, but He\nto whom \"a thousand years are as one day,\" marked even _then_ your\npresent ungrateful apostacy or guilty alienation--there was a tear then\nwhich stole down that cheek on account of unrequited love?\n\nIs that tear to flow in vain? Are you to mock His tender sympathy still\nwith cold formalism, or persisted-in impenitency? Are you to think of\nBethany and its tear-drops and still go on in sin?\n\nAh, never was sermon preached to an erring or impenitent sinner half so\neloquent as _this_. Paul was not given to weeping, and it makes his\nfervid love of souls all the more striking when we find him confessing\nthat he had wept like a child over those who were \"enemies to the cross\nof Christ.\" We have often felt Paul's burning tears over hardened\nsinners to be touching and impressive. But what are they, after all, in\ncomparison with those of Paul's Lord?\n\nHe, the Great Sun of the World--the Sun of Righteousness, was to set in\na few brief days behind the walls of ungrateful Jerusalem in darkness\nand blood--His last rays seem now lingering over the crest of\nOlivet--His tears seem to tell that He has clung till He can cling no\nmore to the fond hope that an impenitent nation and guilty city will yet\nturn at His reproof, believe and live.\n\nAnd still does He linger among _us_. Though the night cometh, the beams\nof mercy are still tardily lingering, as if loth to leave the\nbacksliding to their wanderings, or the impenitent to their own\nmidnight of despair.\n\nO Reader! leave not _this_ subject--leave not the graveyard of Bethany\ntill you think of Jesus as then weeping for _thee_. Yes! for _thee_--thy\npitiable condition--thy perverse ingratitude--thy slighting of His\nwarnings--thy grieving of His spirit--thy unkindness to _Him_--thine\nobstinate disregard of thine own everlasting interests. Let it be the\nmost wondrous and heart-searching of all the memories of Bethany, that\nfor thy soul--that traitor, truant, worthless soul--which like a stray\nplanet He might have suffered to drift away from Himself into the\nblackness of eternal darkness--helpless, hopeless, ruined, lost!--Yes!\nthat for _thee_, JESUS WEPT!\n\n    \"And doth the Saviour weep\n       Over His people's sin,\n     Because we will not let Him keep\n       The souls He died to win?\n     Ye hearts that love the Lord,\n       If at this sight ye burn,\n     See that in thought, in deed, in word,\n       Ye hate what made Him mourn.\"\n\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\nTHE GRAVE STONE.\n\n\nThey have now reached the grave. It was a rocky sepulchre. A flat stone\n(possibly with some Hebrew inscription) lay upon the mouth of it.\n\nIn wondering amazement the sorrowing group follow the footsteps of the\nSaviour. \"Behold how He loved him,\" whisper the Jews to one another as\nthey witness His fast falling tears. Can His repairing thus to the tomb\nbe anything more than to pay a mournful tribute to an honoured\nfriendship, and behold the silent home of the loved dead? Nay; He is\nabout, as the Lord of Life, to wrench away the swaddling-bands of\ncorruption, to vindicate His name and prerogative as the \"Abolisher of\ndeath\"--to have the first-fruits of that vast triumph which, ages before\nthe birth of time, He had anticipated with longing earnestness--\"I will\nransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death.\nO death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction.\"\n\nDoes He proceed forthwith to speak the word, and to accomplish the giant\ndeed? He breaks silence. But we listen, in the first instance, not to\nthe omnipotent summons, but to an address to the bystanders--\"_Jesus\nsaid, Take ye away the stone!_\"[15]\n\nWhat need of this parenthesis in His mighty work? Why this summoning in\nany feeble human agency when His own independent fiat could have\neffected the whole? Would it not have been a more startling\nmanifestation of Omnipotence, by a mandate similar to that which chained\nthe tempests of Tiberias, or the demoniac of Gadara, to have hurled the\nincumbent stone into fragments? Might not He who has \"the keys of the\ngrave and of death\" have Himself unlocked the portals preparatory to the\nvaster prodigy that was to follow?\n\nNay, there was a mighty lesson to be read in thus delegating human hands\nto remove the intervening barrier. The Church of the living God may, in\nevery age, gather from it instruction!\n\nWhat, then, does the Saviour here figuratively, but significantly, teach\nHis people? Is it not the important truth that, though dependent on Him\nfor all they are, and all they have, they are not thereby released and\nexempted from the use of _means_? He alone can bring back Lazarus from\nhis death-sleep. Martha and Mary may weep an ocean of tears, but they\ncannot weep him back. They may linger for days and nights in that lonely\ngraveyard, making it resound with their bitter dirges, but their\nimpassioned entreaties will be mocked with impressive silence. Too well\ndo they know _that_ spirit is fled beyond their recall--the spark of\nlife extinguished beyond any earthly rekindling!\n\nBut though the word of Omnipotence can alone bring back the dead, human\nhands and human efforts can roll away the interjacent stone, and prepare\nfor the performance of the miracle; and after the miracle _is_\nperformed, human hands may again be called in to tear off the cerements\nof the tomb, to ungird the bandages from the restored captive, to\n\"loose him and let him go!\"\n\nThis simple incident in the Bethany narrative admits of manifold\npractical applications. Let us look to it with reference to the mightier\nmoral miracle of the Resurrection of the soul \"dead in trespasses and\nsins.\" Jesus, and Jesus alone, can awake that soul from the deep slumber\nof its spiritual death, and invest it with the glories of a new\nresurrection-life. In vain can it awake of itself; no human skill can\nput animation into the moral skeleton. No power of human eloquence, no\n\"excellency of man's wisdom,\" can open these rayless eyes, and pour\nlife, and light, and hope into the dull caverns of the spiritual\nsepulchre. \"Prophesy to the dry bones!\"--We may prophesy for ever--we\nmay wake the valley of vision by ceaseless invocations, but the dead\nwill hear not. No bone of the spiritual skeleton will stir, for it is\n\"not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.\"\n\nBut though it be a Divine work from first to last which effects the\nspiritual regeneration of man, are we from this presumptuously to\ndisregard the use of means? Are prayer, and preaching, and human\neffort, and strenuous earnestness in the work of our high calling, are\nthese all to be superseded, and pronounced unavailing and unnecessary?\n\nNay, though man cannot wake to life his dormant spiritual\nenergies--though these lie slumbering in the deep sleep of the sheeted\ndead, and nothing but Lazarus' Lord can break the moral trance--yet _he\ncan use the appointed means_. He dare not be guilty of the monstrous\ninconsistency and crime of willingly allowing impediments to stand in\nthe way of his spiritual revival which his own efforts may remove! He\ncannot expect his Lord to sound over his soul the gladdening accents of\npeace, and reconciliation, and joy, if some known sin be still lying,\nlike the superincumbent grave-stone, which it is in his power to roll\naway, and at his peril if he suffer to remain!\n\nChrist is alone the \"abolisher of death,\" and the \"giver of life;\" but\nnotwithstanding this, \"Roll ye away the stone!\"--neglect not the means\nHe has appointed and prescribed. If ye neglect prayer, and despise\nordinances, and trifle with temptation, or venture on forbidden ground,\nye are only making the intervening obstacle firmer and faster, and\nwilfully denuding yourselves of the gift of life. Naaman must plunge\nseven times in Jordan, else he cannot be made clean. To cleanse\n_himself_ of his leprosy he cannot, but to wash in Jordan _he can_. The\nIsraelite must gaze on the brazen serpent; he cannot of himself heal one\nfevered wound, but to gaze on the appointed symbol of cure he can. In\nvain can the engines of war effect a breach on the walls of Jericho; but\nthe hosts of Joshua can sound the appointed trumpet, and raise the\nprescribed shout, and the battlements in a moment are in the dust.\nMartha and Mary in vain can make their voices be heard in the \"dull,\ncold ear of death,\" but at their Lord's bidding they can hurl back the\nouter portals where their dead is laid. They cannot unbind one fetter,\nbut they can open with human hand the prison-door to admit the Divine\nLiberator.\n\nLet it not be supposed that in this we detract in any wise from the\nomnipotence of the Saviour's grace. God forbid! All is of grace, from\nfirst to last--free, sovereign grace. Man has no more merit in salvation\nthan the beggar has merit in reaching forth his hand for alms, or in\nstooping down to drink of the wayside fountain. But neither must we\nignore the great truth which God strives throughout His Word to impress\nupon us, that He works by _means_, and that for the neglect of these\nmeans we are ourselves responsible. Paul had the assurance given him by\nan angel from heaven, when tossed in the storm in Adria, that not one\nlife in his vessel was to be lost; that though the ship was to be\nwrecked, all her crew were to come safe to land. But was there on this\naccount any effort on his part relaxed to secure their safety? No! he\ntoiled and laboured at the pumps and rigging and anchors as\nunremittingly as before; and when some of the sailors made the cowardly\nattempt, by lowering a small boat, to effect their own escape, the voice\nof the apostle was heard proclaiming, amid the storm, that unless they\nabode in the ship none could be saved!\n\nThe true philosophy of the Gospel system is this, to feel as if much\ndepended on ourselves; but at the same time entertaining the loftier\nconviction that _all_ depends upon God. Jesus, when He invites to the\nstrait gate, does not inculcate remaining outside, in a state of\npassive and listless inaction, until the portals be seen to\nmove by the Divine hand. His exhortation and command rather is,\n\"Strive\"--\"knock\"--_agonise_ to \"enter in!\" We are not to ascend to\nheaven, seated, like Elijah, in a chariot of fire, without toil or\neffort, but rather to \"_fight_ the good fight of faith.\" The saying of\nthe great Apostle is a vivid portraiture of what the Christian's\nfeelings ought to be regarding personal holiness--\"I laboured, ... yet\nnot I, but the grace of God which was with me.\"\n\nAs the Lord of Bethany gives the summons, \"Roll ye away the stone,\" His\nwords seem paraphrased in this other Scripture, \"Work out your own\nsalvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you\nboth to will and to do of his good pleasure.\" You may feel assured that\nHe will not impose upon you one needless burden; He will not exact more\nthan He knows your strength will bear; He will ask no Peter to come to\nHim on the water, unless He impart at the same time strength and support\non the unstable wave; He will not demand of you the endurance of\nprovidences, and trials, and temptations you are unable to cope with;\nHe will not ask you to draw water if the well is too deep, or withdraw\nthe stone if too heavy. But neither, at the same time, will He admit as\nan impossibility that which, as a free and responsible agent, it is in\nyour power to avert. He will not regard as your misfortune what is your\ncrime. \"If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.\"\n\nOh! let life be, more than it ever has been, one constant effort to roll\naway the stone from the moral sepulchre--carefully to remove every\nbarrier between our souls and Jesus--looking forward to that glorious\nday when the voice of the Restorer shall be heard uttering the\nomnipotent \"_Come forth!_\" and to His angel assessors the mandate shall\nbe given regarding the thronging myriads of risen dead, \"_Loose them and\nlet them go!_\"\n\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\nUNBELIEF.\n\n\nMan--short-sighted man--often raises impossibilities when God does not.\nIt is hard for rebellious unbelief to lie submissive and still. In\nmoments when the spirit might well be overawed into silence, it gives\nutterance to its querulous questionings and surmisings rather than\nremain obedient at the feet of Christ, reposing on the sublime aphorism,\n\"All things are possible to him that believeth.\" In the mind of Martha,\nwhere faith had been so recently triumphant, doubt and unbelief have\nbegun again to insinuate themselves. This \"Peter of her sex\" had\nventured out boldly on the water to meet her Lord. She had owned Him as\nthe giver of life, and triumphed in Him as her Saviour! But now she is\nbeginning to sink. A natural difficulty presents itself to her mind\nabout the removal of the incumbent grave-stone. She avers how needless\nits displacement would be, as by this time corruption must have begun\nits fatal work. Four brief days only had elapsed since the eye of\nLazarus had beamed with fraternal affection. Now these lips must be\n\"saying to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my\nmother and my sister.\" Death, she felt, must now be stamping his\nimpressive mockery on that cherished earthly friendship, and, attired in\nhis most terrible insignia, putting the last fatal extinguisher on the\nglimmerings of her faith and hope. \"What need is there, Lord,\" she seems\nto say, \"for this redundant labour? My brother is far beyond the reach\neven of a voice like Thine. Why excite vain expectations in my breast\nwhich never can be realised? That grave has closed upon him for the 'for\never' of time. Nothing now can revoke the sentence, or reanimate the\nsilent dust, save the trump of God on the final day.\"[16]\n\nThus blindly did Martha reason. She can see no other object her Redeemer\ncan have for the removal of the stone, save to gaze once more on a form\nand countenance He loved. Both for His sake, and the strangers\nassembled, she recoils from the thought of disclosing so humiliating a\nsight.\n\nAlas! how little are fitful frames and feelings to be trusted. Only a\nfew brief moments before, she had made a noble protestation of her faith\nin the presence of her Lord. His own majestic utterances had soothed her\ngriefs, dried her tears, and elicited the confession that He was truly\nthe Son of God. But the sight of the tomb and its mournful\naccompaniments obliterate for a moment the recollection of better\nthoughts and a nobler avowal. She forgets that \"things which are\nimpossible with men are possible with God.\" She is guilty of \"limiting\nthe Holy One of Israel.\"\n\nHow often is it so with us! How easy is it for us, like Martha, to be\nbold in our creed when there is nothing to cross our wishes, or dim and\ndarken our faith. But when the hour of trial comes, how often does\n_sense_ threaten to displace and supplant the nobler antagonist\nprinciple! How often do we lose sight of the Saviour at the very moment\nwhen we most need to have Him continually in view! How often are our\nconvictions of the efficacy of prayer most dulled and deadened just\nwhen the dark waves are cresting over our heads, and voices of unbelief\nare uttering the upbraiding in our ears, \"Where is now thy God?\" But\nwill Jesus leave His people to their own guilty unbelieving doubts? Will\nMartha, by her unworthy insinuations, put an arrest on her Lord's arm;\nor will He, in righteous retribution for her faithlessness, leave the\nstone sealed, and the dead unraised?\n\nNay! He loves His people too well to let their stupid unbelief and\nhardness of heart interfere with His own gracious purposes! How tenderly\nHe rebukes the spirit of this doubter. \"Why,\" as if He said, \"Why\ndistrust me? Why stultify thyself with these unbelieving surmises. Hast\nthou already forgotten my own gracious assurances, and thine own\nunqualified acceptance of them. My hand is never shortened that it\ncannot save; my ear is never heavy that it cannot hear. I can call the\nthings which are not, and make them as though they were. Said I not unto\nthee, in that earnest conversation which I had a little ago outside the\nvillage, in which Gospel faith was the great theme, if thou wouldst\nbelieve, thou shouldst see the glory of God?\"\n\nThis Bethany utterance has still a voice,--a voice of rebuke and of\ncomfort in our hours of trial. When, like aged Jacob, we are ready to\nsay, \"All these things are against me;\" when we are about to lose the\nfootsteps of a God of love, or _have_ perhaps lost them, there is a\nvoice ready to hush into silence every unbelieving doubt and surmise.\n\"Although thou sayest thou canst not see Him, yet judgment is before\nHim, therefore trust thou in Him.\" God often thus hides Himself from His\npeople in order to try their faith, and elicit their confidence. He puts\nus in perplexing paths--\"allures\" and \"brings into the wilderness,\"\nonly, however, that we may see more of Himself, and that He may \"speak\ncomfortably unto us.\" He lets our need attain its extremity, that His\nintervention may appear the more signal. He suffers apparently even His\nown promises to fail, that He may test the faith of His waiting\npeople;--tutor them to \"hope against hope,\" and to find, in _unanswered_\nprayers and baffled expectations, only a fresh reason for clinging to\nHis all-powerful arm, and frequenting His mercy-seat. He dashes first\nto the ground our human confidences and refuges, shewing how utterly\n\"vain is the help of man;\" so that faith, with her own folded, dove-like\nwings, may repose in quiet confidence in His faithfulness, saying, \"In\nthe Lord put I my trust: why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your\nmountain?\"\n\nReader! It would be well for you to hear this gentle chiding of Christ,\ntoo, in the moment of your _spiritual_ depression;--when complaining of\nyour corruptions, the weakness of your graces, your low attainments in\nholiness, the strength of your temptations, and your inability to resist\nsin. \"_Said I not unto thee_,\" interposes this voice of mingled reproof\nand love, \"My grace is sufficient for thee?\" \"The bruised reed I will\nnot break, the smoking flax I will not quench.\" \"Look unto _Me_, and be\nye saved, all the ends of the earth.\" We are too apt to look to\n_ourselves_, to turn our contemplation _inwards_, instead of keeping the\neye of faith centered undeviatingly on a faithful covenant-keeping God,\nlaying our finger on every promise of His Word, and making the challenge\nregarding each, \"Hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he\nspoken, and shall he not bring it to pass?\"\n\nYes; there may be much to try and perplex. Sense and sight may stagger,\nand stumble, and fall; we may be able to see no break in the clouds;\n\"deep may be calling to deep,\" and wave responding to wave, \"yet the\nLord will command his loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night\nhis song shall be with me.\" If we only \"_believe_\" in spite of unbelief;\nhoping on, and praying on, and trusting on; like the great Father of the\nfaithful, in the midst of adverse providences, \"strong in faith, giving\nglory to God,\" He will yet cause the day-spring from on high to visit\nus. Even in _this_ world perplexing paths may be made plain, and\nslippery places smooth, and judgments \"bright as the noonday;\" but if\nnot _here_, there _is_ at least a glorious day of disclosures at hand,\nwhen the reign of unbelieving doubt shall terminate for ever, when the\narchives of a chequered past will be ransacked of their every\nmystery;--all events mirrored and made plain in the light of eternity;\nand this saying of the weeping Saviour of Bethany obtain its true and\neverlasting fulfilment, \"SAID I NOT UNTO THEE, IF THOU WOULDST BELIEVE,\nTHOU SHOULDST SEE THE GLORY OF GOD?\"\n\n\n\n\nXV.\n\nTHE DIVINE PLEADER.\n\n\nThe stone is rolled away, but there is a solemn pause just when the\nmiracle is about to be performed.\n\n_Jesus prays!_ The God-Man Mediator--the Lord of Life--the Abolisher of\nDeath--the Being of all Beings--who had the boundless treasures of\neternity in His grasp--pauses by the grave of the dead, and lifts up His\neyes to heaven in supplication! How often in the same incidents, during\nour Lord's incarnation, do we find His manhood and His Godhead standing\ntogether in stupendous contrast. At His birth, the mystic star and the\nlowly manger were together; at His death, the ignominious cross and the\neclipsed sun were together. Here He weeps and prays at the very moment\nwhen He is baring the arm of Omnipotence. The \"mighty God\" appears in\nconjunction with \"the man Christ Jesus.\" \"His name is Immanuel, God with\nus.\"\n\nThe body of Lazarus was now probably, by the rolling away of the stone,\nexposed to view. It was a humiliating sight. Earth--the grave--could\nafford no solace to the spectators. The Redeemer, by a significant act,\nshews them where alone, at such an hour, comfort can be found. He points\nthe mourning spirit to its only true source of consolation and peace in\nGod Himself, teaching it to rise above the mortal to the immortal--the\ncorruptible to the incorruptible--from earth to heaven.\n\nAh! there is nothing but humiliation and sadness in every view of the\ngrave and corruption. Why dwell on the shattered casket, and not rather\non the jewel which is sparkling brighter than ever in a better world?\nWhy persist in gazing on the trophies of the last enemy, when we can\njoyfully realise the emancipated soul exulting in the plenitude of\npurchased bliss? Why fall with broken wing and wailing cry to the dust,\nwhen on eagle-pinion we can soar to the celestial gate, and learn the\nunkindness of wishing the sainted and crowned one back to the nether\nvalley?\n\nIt is _Prayer_, observe, which thus brings the eye and the heart near to\nheaven. It is _Prayer_ which opens the celestial portals, and gives to\nthe soul a sight of the invisible.\n\nYes; ye who may be now weeping in unavailing sorrow over the departed,\nremember, in conjunction with the _tears_, the _prayers_ of Jesus. Many\na desolate mourner derives comfort from the thought--\"Jesus wept.\"\nForget not this other simple entry in our touching narrative, telling\nwhere the spirit should ever rest amid the shadows of death--\"_Jesus\nlifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard\nme. And I knew that Thou hearest me always._\"[17]\n\nLet us gather for a little around this incident in the story of Bethany.\nIt is one of the many golden sayings of priceless value.\n\nThat utterance has at this moment lost none of its preciousness; that\nvoice, silent on earth, is still eloquent in heaven. The Great\nIntercessor still is there, \"walking in the midst of the seven golden\ncandlesticks;\" loving to note all the wants and weaknesses, the\nnecessities and distresses, of every Church, and every member of His\nChurch. What He said of old to Peter, He says to every trembling\nbeliever--\"I _have_ prayed, and _am_ praying for _thee_, that thy faith\nfail not!\" \"For _thee_!\" We must not merge the interest which Jesus has\nin each separate member of His family, in His intercession for the\nChurch in general. While He lets down His censer, and receives into it,\nfor presentation on the golden altar, the prayers of the vast aggregate;\nwhile, as the true High Priest, He enters the holiest of all with the\nnames of His spiritual Israel on His breastplate--carrying the burden of\ntheir hourly needs to the foot of the mercy-seat;--yet still, He pleads,\nas if the case of _each_ stood separate and alone! He remembers _thee_,\ndejected Mourner, as if there were no other heart but thine to be\nhealed, and no other tears but thine to be dried. His own words,\nspeaking of believers, not collectively but individually, are these--\"I\nwill confess _his_ name before my Father and his angels.\"[18] \"_Who_\ntouched me?\" was His interrogation once on earth, as His discriminating\nlove was conscious of some special contact amid the press of the\nmultitude,--\"_Somebody_ hath touched me!\" If we can say, in the language\nof Paul's appropriating faith, \"He loved _me_, and gave Himself for\n_me_,\" we can add, He pleads for _me_, and bears _me_! He bears this\nvery heart of _mine_, with all its weaknesses, and infirmities, and\nsins, before His Father's throne. He has engraven each stone of His Zion\non the \"palms of His hands,\" and \"its walls are continually before Him!\"\n\nHow untiring, too, in His advocacy! What has the Christian so to\ncomplain of, as his own cold, unworthy prayers--mixed so with\nunbelief--soiled with worldliness--sometimes guiltily omitted or\ncurtailed. Not the fervid ejaculations of those feelingly alive to their\nspiritual exigencies, but listless, unctionless, the hands hanging down,\nthe knees feeble and trembling!\n\nBut notwithstanding all, Jesus _pleads_! Still the Great Intercessor\n\"waits to be gracious.\" He is at once Moses on the mountain, and Joshua\non the battle-plain--fighting _with_ us in the one, praying _for_ us in\nthe other. No Aarons or Hurs needed to sustain His sinking strength, for\nit is His sublime prerogative neither to \"faint nor grow weary!\" There\nis no loftier occupation for faith than to speed upwards to the throne\nand behold that wondrous Pleader, receiving at one moment, and at\n_every_ moment, the countless supplications and prayers which are coming\nup before Him from every corner of His Church. The Sinner just awoke\nfrom his moral slumber, and in the agonies of conviction, exclaiming,\n\"What must I do to be saved?\"--The Procrastinator sending up from the\nbrink of despair the cry of importunate agony.--The Backslider wailing\nforth his bitter lamentation over guilty departures, and foul\ningratitude, and injured love.--The Sick man feebly groaning forth, in\nundertones of suffering, his petition for succour.--The Dying, on the\nbrink of eternity, invoking the presence and support of the alone arm\nwhich can be of any avail to them.--The Bereaved, in the fresh gush of\ntheir sorrow, calling upon Him who is the healer of the broken-hearted.\nBut _all heard_! Every tear marked--every sigh registered--every\nsuppliant succoured. Amalek may come threatening nothing but\ndiscomfiture; but that pleading Voice on the heavenly Hill is \"greater\nfar than all that can be against us!\" He pleads for His elect in every\nphase of their spiritual history--He pleads for their inbringing into\nHis fold--He pleads for their perseverance in grace--He pleads for their\ndeliverance at once from the accusations and the power of Satan--He\npleads for their growing sanctification;--and when the battle of life is\nover, He uplifts His last pleading voice for their complete\nglorification. The intercession of Jesus is the golden key which unlocks\nthe gates of Paradise to the departing soul. At a saint's dying moments\nwe are too often occupied with the lower _earthly_ scene to think of the\n_heavenly_. The tears of surrounding relatives cloud too often the more\nglorious revelations which faith discloses. But in the muffled stillness\nof that death-chamber, when each is holding his breath as the King of\nTerrors passes by--if we could listen to it, we should hear the \"Prince\nwho has power with God\" thus uttering His final prayer, and on the\nrushing wings of ministering angels receiving an answer while He is yet\nspeaking--\"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be\nwith me where I am, that they may behold my glory!\"\n\nReader! exult more and more in this all-prevailing Advocate. See that ye\napproach the mercy-seat with no other trust but in His atoning work and\nmeritorious righteousness. There was but _One_ solitary man of the whole\nhuman race who, of old, in the Jewish temple, was permitted to speak\nface to face with Jehovah. There is but ONE solitary Being in the vast\nuniverse of God who, in the heavenly sanctuary, can effectually plead in\nbehalf of His Spiritual Israel. \"Seeing, then, that we have a Great High\nPriest passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, ... let us come\nboldly to the throne of grace.\" If Jesus delights in asking, God\ndelights in bestowing. Let us put our every want, and difficulty, and\nperplexity, in His hand, feeling the precious assurance, that all which\nis really good for us will be given, and all that is adverse will, in\nequal mercy, be withheld. There is no limitation set to our requests.\nThe treasury of grace is flung wide open for every suppliant. \"Verily,\nverily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father _in my name_\nHe will give it you.\" Surely we may cease to wonder that the Great\nApostle should have clung with such intense interest to this elevating\ntheme--the Saviour's _intercession_;--that in his brief, but most\ncomprehensive and beautiful creed,[19] he should have so exalted, as he\ndoes, its relative importance, compared with other cognate truths. \"It\nis Christ that died, _yea rather_, that is risen again, who is even at\nthe right hand of God, _who also maketh intercession for us_.\" Climbing,\nstep by step, in the upward ascent of Christian faith and hope, he seems\nonly to \"reach the height of his great argument\" when he stands on \"_the\nmountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense_.\" _There_, gazing on the\nface of the great officiating Priest who fills all heaven with His\nfragrance, and feeling that against _that_ intercession the gates of\nhell can never prevail, he can utter the challenge to devils, and\nangels, and men, \"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?\"\n\n\n\n\nXVI.\n\nTHE OMNIPOTENT SUMMONS.\n\n\nThe moment has now come for the voice of Omnipotence to give the\nmandate. The group have gathered around the sepulchral grotto--the\nRedeemer stands in meek majesty in front--the teardrop still glistening\nin His eye, and that eye directed heavenward! Martha and Mary are gazing\non His countenance in dumb emotion, while the eager bystanders bend over\nthe removed stone to see if the dead be still there. Yes! _there_ the\ncaptive lies--in uninvaded silence--attired still in the same solemn\ndrapery. The Lord gives the word. \"_Lazarus come forth!_\" peals through\nthe silent vault. The dull, cold ear seems to listen. The pulseless\nheart begins to beat--the rigid limbs to move--_Lazarus lives_! He rises\ngirt in the swaddling-bands of the tomb, once more to walk in the light\nof the living.\n\nWhere Scripture is silent, it is vain for us to picture the emotions of\nthat moment, when the weeping sisters found the gloomy hours of\ndisconsolate sorrow all at once rolled away. The cry of mingled wonder\nand gratitude rings through that lonely graveyard,--\"This our brother\nwas dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found!\"\n\nO most wondrous power--Death vanquished in his own territory! The\nsleeper has awoke a moral Samson, snapping the withs with which the King\nof Terrors had bound him. The star of Bethlehem shines, and the Valley\nof Achor becomes a door of hope. The all-devouring destroyer has to\nrelinquish his prey.\n\nWas the joy of that moment confined to these two bosoms? Nay! The Church\nof Christ in every age may well love to linger around the grave of\nLazarus. In _his_ resurrection there is to His true people a sure pledge\nand earnest of their own. It was the first sheaf reaped by the mower's\nsickle anticipatory of the great Harvest-home of the Final day \"when all\nthat are in their graves\" shall hear the same voice and shall \"come\nforth.\"[20]\n\nSolemn, surely, is the thought that that same portentous miracle\nperformed on Lazarus is one day to be performed on _ourselves_. Wherever\nwe repose--whether, as _he_ did, in the quiet churchyard of our native\nvillage, or in the midst of the city's crowded cemetery, or far away\namid the alien and stranger in some foreign shore, our dust shall be\nstartled by that omnipotent summons. How shall we hear it? Would it\nsound in our ears like the sweet tones of the silver trumpet of Jubilee?\nWould it be to gaze like Lazarus on the face of our best friend--to see\n_Jesus_ bending over us in looks of tenderness--to hear the living tones\nof that same voice, whose accents were last heard in the dark valley,\nwhispering hopes full of immortality? True, we have not to wait for a\nSaviour's love and presence till then. The hour of _death_ is to the\nChristian the birthday of endless life. Guardian angels are hovering\naround his dying pillow ready to waft his spirit into Abraham's bosom.\n\"The souls of believers do _immediately_ pass into glory.\" But the full\nplenitude of their joy and bliss is reserved for the time when the\nprecious but redeemed dust, which for a season is left to moulder in the\ntomb, shall become instinct with life--\"the corruptible put on\nincorruption, and the mortal immortality.\" The spirits of the just enter\nat _death_ on \"the inheritance of the saints in light;\" but at the\n_Resurrection_ they shall rise as separate orbs from the darkness and\nnight of the grave, each to \"shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of\ntheir Father.\" However glorious the emancipation of the soul in the\nmoment of dissolution, it is not until the plains and valleys of our\nglobe shall stand thick with the living of buried generations--each\nglorified body the image of its Lord's--that the predicted anthem will\nbe heard waking the echoes of the universe--\"O death, where is thy\nsting? O grave, where is thy victory?\" Then, with the organs of their\nresurrection-bodies ennobled, etherealised, purified from all the\ngrossness of earth, they shall \"behold the King in his beauty.\" \"The\nKing's daughter,\" all glorious without, \"all glorious within\"--\"her\nclothing of wrought gold\"--resplendent _without_ with the robes of\nrighteousness--radiant _within_ with the beauties of holiness--shall be\nbrought \"with gladness and rejoicing,\" and \"enter into the King's\npalace.\" This will form the full meridian of the saints' glory--the\nessence and climax of their new-born bliss--the full vision and fruition\nof a Saviour-God. \"When He shall appear, ... we shall see Him as He is!\"\nThe first sight which will burst on the view of the Risen ones will be\n_Jesus_! _His_ hands will wreath the glorified brows, in presence of an\nassembled world, with the crown of life. From _His_ lips will proceed\nthe gladdening welcome--\"Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!\"\n\nBut this will not exhaust the elements of bliss in the case of the\n\"perfected just\" on the day of their final triumph. Though the presence\nof their adorable Redeemer would be enough, and more than enough, to\nfill their cup with happiness, there will be others also to welcome\nthem, and to augment their joy. Lazarus' Lord was not _alone_ at the\nsepulchre's brink, at Bethany, ready to greet him back. Two loved\nsisters shared the joy of that gladsome hour. We are left to picture for\nourselves the reunion, when, with hand linked in hand, they retraversed\nthe road which had so recently echoed to the voice of mourning, and\nentered once more their home, radiant with a sunshine they had imagined\nto have passed away from it for ever!\n\nSo will it be with the believer on the morning of the Resurrection.\nWhile his Lord will be _there_, waiting to welcome him, there will be\nothers ready with their presence to enhance the bliss of that gladdening\nrestoration. Those whose smiles were last seen in the death-chamber of\nearth, now standing--not as Martha and Mary, with the tear on their\ncheek and the furrow of deep sorrow on their brow, but robed and radiant\nin resurrection attire, glowing with the anticipations of an everlasting\nand indissoluble reunion!\n\nCan we anticipate, in the resurrection of Lazarus, our own happy\nhistory? Yes! _happier_ history, for it will not _then_ be to come forth\nonce more, like _him_, into a weeping world, to renew our work and\nwarfare, feeling that restoration to life is only but a brief reprieve,\nand that soon again the irrevocable sentence will and must overtake us!\nNot like _him_, going to a home still covered with the drapery of\nsorrow,--a few transient years and the mournful funeral tragedy to be\nrepeated,--but to enter into the region of endless life--to pass from\nthe dark chambers of corruption into the peace and glories of our\nHeavenly Father's joyous _Home_, and \"so to be for ever with the Lord!\"\n\nSometimes it is with dying believers as with Lazarus. Their Lord, at the\napproach of death, _seems_ to be absent. He who gladdened their homes\nand their hearts in life, is, for some mysterious reason, away in the\nhour of dissolution; their spirits are depressed; their faith\nlanguishes; they are ready to say, \"Where is now my God?\" But as He\nreturned to Bethany to awake His sleeping friend, so will it be with all\nhis true people, on that great day when the arm of death shall be for\never broken. If _now_ united to Him by a living faith,--loved by Him as\nLazarus was, and conscious, however imperfectly, of loving Him back in\nreturn,--we may go down to our graves, making Job's lofty creed and\nexclamation our own, \"I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall\nstand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms\ndestroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.\"\n\nOne remark more. We have listened to the Omnipotent fiat,--\"Lazarus,\ncome forth!\" We have seen the ear of death starting at the summons, and\nthe buried captive goes free! Shall we follow the family group within\nthe hallowed precincts of the Bethany dwelling? Shall fancy pour her\nstrange and mysterious queries into the ear of him who has just come\nback from that land \"from whose bourne no traveller returns?\" He had\nbeen, in a far truer sense than Paul in an after year, in \"_Paradise_.\"\nHe must have heard unspeakable and unutterable words, \"which it is not\npossible for a man to utter.\" He had looked upon the Sapphire Throne. He\nhad ranged himself with the adoring ranks. He had strung his harp to the\nEternal Anthem. When, lo! an angel--a \"ministering one\"--whispers in his\near to hush his song, and speed him back again for a little season to\nthe valley below.\n\nStartling mandate! Can we suppose a remonstrance to so strange a\nsummons? What! to be uncrowned and unglorified!--Just after a few sips\nof the heavenly fountain, to be hurried away back again to the valley of\nBaca!--to gather up once more the soiled earthly garments and the\npilgrim staff, and from the pilgrim rest and the victor's palm to\nencounter the din and dust and scars of battle! What!--just after having\nwept his final tear, and fought the last and the most terrible foe, to\nhave his eye again dimmed with sorrow, and to have the thought before\nhim of breasting a second time the swellings of Jordan!\n\n\"The Lord hath need of thee,\" is all the reply, It is enough! He asks no\nmore! That glorious Redeemer had left a far brighter throne and heritage\nfor _him_. Lazarus, come forth! sounds in his old world-home, whence his\nspirit had soared, and in his beloved Master's words, on a mightier\nembassy, he can say,--\"Lo, I come! I delight to do thy will, O my God.\"\n\nOr do other questions involuntarily arise? What was the nature of his\nhappiness while \"absent from the body?\" What the scenery of that bright\nabode? Had he mingled in the goodly fellowship of prophets? Had he\nconversed with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob? Was his spirit\nstationary--hovering with a brotherhood of spirits within some holy\nlimit--or, was he permitted to travel far and near in errands of love\nand mercy? Had Bethany been revisited during that mysterious interval?\nHad he been the unseen witness of the tears and groans of his anguished\nsisters?\n\nBut hush, too, these vain inquiries. We dare not give rein to\nimagination where Inspiration is silent. There is a designed mystery\nabout the circumstantials of a future state. Its scenery and locality we\nknow nothing of. It is revealed to us only in its _character_. We are\npermitted to approach its gates, and to read the surmounting\ninscription,--\"Without _holiness_ no man shall see the Lord.\" Further we\ncannot go. Be it ours, like Lazarus, to attain a meetness for heaven, by\nbecoming more and more like Lazarus' Redeemer! \"_We shall be_ LIKE HIM,\"\nis the brief but comprehensive Bible description of that glorious world.\nSaviour-like _here_, we shall have heaven begun on earth, and lying down\nlike Lazarus in the sweet sleep of death, when our Lord comes, on the\ngreat day-dawn of immortality, we shall be satisfied when we awake in\n_His likeness_!\n\n    \"He that was dead rose up and spoke--He spoke!\n       Was it of that majestic world unknown?\n     Those words which first the bier's dread silence broke--\n       Came they with revelation in each tone?\n     Were the far cities of the nations gone,\n       The solemn halls of consciousness or sleep,\n     For man uncurtain'd by that spirit lone,\n       Back from the portal summon'd o'er the deep?\n     Be hush'd, my soul! the veil of darkness lay\n       Still drawn; therefore thy Lord called back the voice departed,\n       To spread His truth, to comfort the weak-hearted;\n     Not to reveal the mysteries of its way.\n       Oh! I take that lesson home in silent faith;\n       Put on submissive strength to _meet_, not _question_ DEATH.\"\n\n\n\n\nXVII.\n\nTHE BOX OF OINTMENT.\n\n\nOnce more we visit in thought a peaceful and happy home-scene in the\nsame Bethany household. The severed links in that broken chain are again\nunited.\n\nHow often in a time of severe bereavement, when some \"light of the\ndwelling\" has suddenly been extinguished, does the imagination fondly\ndwell on the possibility of the wild dream of separation passing away;\nof the vacant seat being refilled by its owner the \"loved and lost one\"\nagain restored. Alas! in all such cases, it is but a feverish vision,\ndestined to know no fulfilment. Here, however, it was indeed a happy\nreality. \"Lazarus is dead!\" was the bitter dirge a few brief weeks ago;\nbut now, \"Lazarus lives.\" His silent voice is heard again--his dull eye\nis lighted again--the temporary pang of separation is only remembered\nto enhance the joy of so gladsome a reunion.\n\nIt was on a Sabbath evening, the last Sabbath but one of the waning\nJewish dispensation, when Spring's loveliness was carpeting the Mount of\nOlives and clothing with fresh verdure the groves around Bethany, that\nour blessed Redeemer was seen approaching the haunt of former\nfriendship. He had for two months taken shelter from the malice of the\nSanhedrim in the little town of Ephraim and the mountainous region of\nPerea, on the other side of the Jordan. But the Passover solemnity being\nat hand, and his own hour having come, he had \"set His face steadfastly\nto go to Jerusalem.\" It is more than probable that for several days He\nhad been travelling in the company of other pilgrims coming from Galilee\non their way to the feast. He seems, however, to have left the festival\ncaravan at Jericho, lingering behind with his own disciples in order to\nsecure a private approach to the city of solemnities. They were\ncompleting their journey on the Sabbath referred to just as the sun was\nsinking behind the brow of Olivet, and, turning aside from the highway,\nthey spent the night in their old Bethany retreat. Befitting tranquil\nscene for His closing Sabbath--a happy preparation for a season of trial\nand conflict! It is well worthy of observation, how, as His saddest\nhours were drawing near--the shadow of His cross projected on His\npath--Bethany becomes more and more endeared to Him. Night after night,\nduring this memorable week, we shall find Him resorting to its cherished\nseclusion. As the storm is fast gathering, the vessel seeks for shelter\nin its best loved haven.[21]\n\nImagine the joy with which the announcement would be received by the\ninmates--\"Our Lord and Redeemer is once more approaching.\" Imagine how\nthe great Conqueror of death would be welcomed into the home consecrated\nalike by His love and power. Now every tear dried! The weeping that\nendured for the long night of bereavement all forgotten. Ah! if Jesus\nwere loved before in that happy home, how, we may well imagine, would\nHe be adored and reverenced now. What a new claim had He established on\ntheir deepest affection and regard. Feelingly alive to all they owed\nHim, the restored brother and rejoicing sisters with hearts overflowing\nwith gratitude could say, in the words of their Psalmist King--\"Thou\nhast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness, to the end that\nmy glory may sing praise to thee, and not be silent. O Lord my God, I\nwill give thanks unto thee for ever!\"\n\nBut does the love and affection of that household find expression in\nnothing but words? Supper is being made ready. While Martha, with her\nwonted activity, is busied preparing the evening meal--doing her best to\nprovide for the refreshment of the travellers--the gentle spirit of Mary\n(even if her name had not been given, we should have known it was she)\nprompts her to a more significant proof of the depth of her gratitude.\nSome fragrant ointment of spikenard--contained, as we gather from the\nother Evangelists, in a box of Alabaster--had been procured by her at\ngreat cost;[22] either obtained for this anticipated meeting with her\nLord, or it may in some way have fallen into her possession, and been\nsacredly kept among her treasured gifts till some befitting occasion\noccurred for its employment. Has not that occasion occurred now? On whom\ncan her grateful heart more joyously bestow this garnered treasure than\non her beloved Lord. With her own hands she pours it on His feet.\nStooping down, she wipes them, in further token of her devotion, with\nher loosened tresses, till the whole apartment was filled with the sweet\nperfume.\n\nAnd what was it that constituted the value of this tribute--the beauty\nand expressiveness of the action? _She gave her Lord the best thing she\nhad!_ She felt that to Him, in addition to what He had done for her own\nsoul, she owed the most valued life in the world.\n\n    \"Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,\n       Nor other thought her mind admits;\n       But, he was dead, and there he sits,\n     And He that brought him back is there.\n\n    \"Then one deep love doth supersede\n       All other, when her ardent gaze\n       Roves from the living brother's face\n     And rests upon the Life indeed.\n\n    \"All subtle thought, all curious fears,\n       Borne down by gladness so complete;\n       She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet\n     With costly spikenard and with tears.\"[23]\n\nWhat a lesson for us! Are we willing to give our Lord the best of what\nwe have--to consecrate time, talents, strength, life, to His service?\nNot as many, to give Him the mere dregs and sweepings of existence--the\nwrecks of a \"worn and withered love\"--but, like Mary, anxious to take\nevery opportunity and occasion of testifying the depth of obligation\nunder which we are laid to Him? Let us not say--\"My sphere is lowly, my\nmeans are limited, my best offerings would be inadequate.\" Such,\ndoubtless, were the very feelings of that humble, diffident, yet loving\none, as she crept noiselessly to where her pilgrim-Lord reclined, and\nlavished on His weary limbs the costliest treasure she possessed.\nHundreds of more imposing deeds--more princely and munificent\nofferings--may have been left unrecorded by the Evangelists; but\n\"wherever this Gospel shall be preached, in the whole world, there shall\nalso this that this woman hath done be told for a memorial of her.\"[24]\n\nWould that love to \"that same Jesus\" were with all of us more paramount\nthan it is! \"Lovest thou Me _more than these_\" is His own searching test\nand requirement. Is it so?--Do we love Him more than self or sin--more\nthan friends or home--more than any earthly object or earthly good; and\nare we willing, if need be, to make a sacrifice for His glory and for\nthe honour of His cause? Happy for us if it be so. There will be a joy\nin the very consciousness of making the effort, feeble and unworthy as\nit may be, for His sake, and in acknowledgment of the great love\nwherewith He hath loved us.\n\n    \"Thrice blest, whose lives are faithful prayers,\n       Whose loves in higher Love endure;\n       Whose souls possess themselves so pure,\n     Or is there blessedness like theirs?\"\n\nLet it be our privilege and delight to give Him our pound of spikenard,\nwhatever that may be; and if we can give no other, let us offer the\nfragrant perfume of holy hearts and holy lives. _That_ religion is\nalways best which reveals itself by its effects--by kindness,\ngentleness, amiability, unselfishness, flowing from a principle of\ngrateful love to Him who, though unseen, has been to us as to the family\nof Bethany--Friend, and Help, and Guide, and Portion. Mary's honour was\ngreat to anoint her Lord, but the lowliest and humblest of His people\nmay do the same. We may have no aromatic offering, neither \"gold, nor\nfrankincense, nor myrrh;\" but My son, My daughter, \"give Me thine\nheart.\" \"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a\ncontrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.\"\n\nNor ought we to forget our blessed Lord's reply, when Judas objected to\nthe waste of the ointment--\"Let her alone; ... the poor ye have always\nwith you, _but Me ye have not always_.\" Let us seek to make the most of\nour Lord's visits while we have Him. The visits of Jesus to Bethany were\nsoon to be over;--so also with us. He will not always linger on our\nthresholds, if our souls refuse to receive Him, or yield Him nothing but\ncoldness and ingratitude in return for His love. \"Me ye have not\nalways.\" Soon may sickness incapacitate for active service! Soon may\nopportunities for doing good be gone, and gone for ever! Soon may death\novertake us, and the alabaster box be left behind, unused and\nunemployed; the dying regret on our lips--\"Oh that I had done more while\nI lived for this most precious Saviour! but opportunities of testifying\nmy gratitude to Him are now gone beyond recall.\" Good deeds performed on\nGospel motives, though unknown and unvalued by the world, will not go\nunrecompensed or unowned by Him who values the cup of cold water given\nin His name. \"God is not unmindful to forget our work of faith and our\nlabour of love.\" The Lamb's Book of Life registers every such deed of\nlowly piety; and on the Great Day of account \"it shall be produced to\nour eternal honour, and rewarded with a reward of grace; though not of\ndebt.\"\n\nLet us bear in mind, also, that every holy service of unostentatious\nlove exercises a hallowed influence on those around us. We may not be\nconscious of such. But, if Christians indeed, the sphere in which we\nmove will, like the Bethany home, be redolent with the ointment perfume.\nA holy life is a silent witness for Jesus--an incense-cloud from the\nheart-altar, breathing odours and sweet spices, of which the world\ncannot fail to take knowledge. Yes! were we to seek for a beautiful\nallegorical representation of pure and undefiled Religion, we would find\nit in this loveliest of inspired pictures. Mary--all silent and\nsubmissive at the feet of her Lord--only permitting her love to be\ndisclosed by the holy perfume which, unknown to herself, revealed to\nothers the reality and intensity of her love. True religion is quiet,\nunobtrusive, seeking the shade--its ever-befitting attitude at the feet\nof Jesus, looking to Him as all in all. Yet, though retiring, it _must_\nand _will_ manifest its living and influential power. The heart broken\nat the cross, like Mary's broken box, begins from that hour to give\nforth the hallowed perfume of faith, and love, and obedience, and every\nkindred grace. Not a fitful and vacillating love and service, but _ever_\nemitting the fragrance of holiness, till the little world of home\ninfluence around us is filled with the odour of the ointment.\n\n    \"I ask Thee for the daily strength,\n       To none that ask denied;\n     And a mind to blend with outward life,\n       While keeping by Thy side;\n     Content to fill a little space\n       If Thou be glorified.\n\n    \"And if some things I do not ask\n       In my cup of blessings be,\n     I would have my spirit fill'd the more\n       With grateful love to Thee--\n     More careful not to serve Thee _much_,\n       But to please Thee perfectly.\"\n\nSuch is a brief sketch of this beautiful domestic scene, and its main\npractical lessons,--a green spot on which the eye will ever love to\nrepose, among the \"Memories of Bethany.\" It is unnecessary to advert to\nthe controverted question, as to whether the description of the\nanointing, which took place in the house of Simon the leper (as recorded\nin Matt. xxvi. 6-14, and Mark xiv. 3), and where the alabaster box is\nspoken of, be identical with this passage, or whether they refer to two\ndistinct occasions. The question is of no great importance in\nitself--the former view (that they are descriptions of one and the same\nevent) seems the more probable. It surely gives a deep intensity to the\ninterest of the narrative to imagine the Leper and the raised dead man,\nseated at the same table together with their common Deliverer,\nglorifying their Saviour-God, with bodies and spirits they felt now to\nbe doubly _His_! Simon, it is evident, must have been cured of his\ndisease, else, by the Jewish law, he dared not have been associating\nwith his friends at a common meal. How was he cured? How else may we\nsuppose was that inveterate malady subdued but by the omnipotent word of\n_Him_, who had only to say,--\"I will, be thou made whole!\" May we not\nregard him as a standing miracle of Jesus' power over the diseased body,\nas Lazarus was the living trophy of His power over death and the grave.\nThe one could testify,--\"This poor man cried, and the Lord saved him,\nand delivered him out of all his troubles.\" The other,--\"Unless the Lord\nhad been my help, my soul must now have dwelt in silence!\"\n\nIn order to explain the circumstance of this family meeting being in the\nhouse of _Simon_, there have not been wanting advocates for the\nsupposition, that the restored leper may have been none other than the\n_parent_ of the household.[25] It is not for us to hazard conjectures,\nwhere Scripture has thrown no light. Even when sanctioned by venerated\nnames, the most plausible hypothesis should be received with that\ncaution requisite in dealing with what is supported exclusively by\ntraditional authority. Were, however, such a view as we have indicated\ncorrect (which is just possible, and there is nothing in the face of the\nnarrative to render it _improbable_), it certainly would impart a new\nand fresh beauty to the picture of this Feast of gratitude. Well might\nthe _parent's_ heart swell within him with more than ordinary emotions!\n_Himself_ plucked a victim from the most loathsome of diseases! He\nwould think, with tearful eye, of the dark dungeon of his\nbanishment--the lazar-house, where he had been gloomily excluded from\nall fellowship with human sympathies and loving hearts. His own children\ncondemned by a severe but righteous necessity to shun his presence--or\nwhen within sound of human footfall or human voice, compelled to make\nknown his presence with the doleful utterance,--\"Unclean! Unclean!\" He\nwould think of that wondrous moment in his history, when, shunned by\n_man_, the GOD-MAN drew near to him, and with one glance of His love,\nand one utterance of His power, He bade the foul disease for ever away!\n\nNor was this all that Simon (if he _were_, indeed, the father of the\nfamily) must have felt. What must have been those emotions, too deep for\nutterance, as he gazed on the son of his affections, seated once more by\nhis side! A short time ago, Lazarus had been laid silent in the\nadjoining sepulchre--Death had laid his cold hand upon him--the pride of\nhis home had been swept down. But the same Almighty friend who had\ncaused his own leprosy to depart, had given him back his lost one. They\nwere rejoicing together in the presence of Him to whom they owed life\nand all its blessings. Oh, well might \"the voice of rejoicing and\nsalvation be heard in the tabernacles of these righteous!\" Well might\nthe head of the household dictate to Mary to \"bring forth their best\"\nand bestow it on their Deliverer--the costliest gift which the dwelling\ncontained--the prized and valued box of alabaster, and pour its contents\non His feet! We can imagine the burden, if not the words, of their joint\nanthem of praise,--\"Bless the Lord, O our souls, and forget not all his\nbenefits, who forgiveth all our iniquities, who healeth all our\ndiseases, who redeemeth our lives from destruction, and crowneth us with\nloving-kindness and with tender mercy.\"\n\nBut be all this as it may, that same great Physician of Souls still\nwaits to be gracious. He healeth ALL our diseases. Young and old, rich\nand poor, every type of spiritual malady has in Him and His salvation\nits corresponding cure. The same Lord is rich to all that call upon Him.\nThe ardent Martha, the contemplative Mary, the aged Simon, Lazarus the\nloving and beloved--He has proved friend, and help, and Saviour to\n_all_; and in their several ways they seek to give expression to the\ndepth of their gratitude. Happy home! may there be many such amongst us!\nFathers, brothers, sisters, \"loving one another with a pure heart\nfervently,\" and loving Jesus more than all--and themselves in Jesus!\nSeeking to have _Him_ as the ever-welcomed guest of their\ndwelling--feeling that all they _have_, and all they _are_, for time or\nfor eternity, they owe to _Him_ who has \"brought them out of the\nhorrible pit, and out of the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock,\nand established their goings, and put a new song in their mouth, even\npraise unto our God!\"\n\nYes! having the Lord, we have what is better and more enduring than the\nbest of earthly ties and earthly homes. This must have been impressed\nwith peculiar force on aged John, as in distant Ephesus he penned the\nmemories of this evening feast. Where were _then_ all its guests?--the\nrecovered leper, the risen Lazarus, the devout sisters, the ardent\ndisciples--all _gone_!--none but himself remained to tell the touching\nstory. _Nay_, _not_ all!--ONE remained amid this wreck of buried\nfriendship--the adorable Being who had given to that Bethany feast all\nits imperishable interest was still within him and about him. The rocky\nshores of Patmos, and the groves around Ephesus, echoed to the\nwell-remembered tones of the same voice of love. His _best Friend_ was\nstill left to take loneliness from his solitude. He writes as if he were\nstill reclining on that sacred bosom--\"Truly our fellowship is with the\nFather and with his Son Jesus Christ!\"\n\nReader! take \"that same Jesus\" now as your Friend--receive Him as the\nguest of your soul; and when other guests and other friendships are\nvanished and gone, and you may be left like John, as the alone survivor\nof a buried generation;--\"alone! you will yet be _not_ alone!\"--lifting\nyour furrowed brow and tearful eye to Heaven, you may exclaim, \"Who\nshall separate me from the love of Christ?\"\n\n\n\n\nXVIII.\n\nPALM BRANCHES.\n\n\nWe have just been contemplating a beautiful episode in the Bethany\nMemories--a gleam amid gathering clouds. _Martha_, _Mary_, and\n_Lazarus_! With what happy hearts did they hail the presence of their\nLord on the evening of that Jewish Sabbath! Little did they anticipate\nthe events impending. Little did they dream that their Almighty\nDeliverer and Friend would that day week be sleeping in His own grave!\n\nThese were indeed eventful hours on which they had now entered. The stir\nthrough Palestine of the thousands congregating in the earthly Jerusalem\nto the great Paschal Feast, was but a feeble type of the profound\ninterest with which myriad angel-worshippers in the Jerusalem above were\ngathering to witness the offering of the True Paschal Sacrifice, \"the\nLamb slain from the foundation of the world.\"\n\nOn the morning after the supper at Bethany (probably that of our\nSabbath), the Saviour rose from His couch of needed rest to approach\nJerusalem. The reserve hitherto maintained as to His kingly power is now\nto be set aside. \"The hour is come in which the Son of man is to be\nglorified.\" BETHANY is one of the few places associated with\nrecollections of the Redeemer's royalty. The \"despised and rejected\" is,\nfor once, the honoured and exalted. It is a glimpse of the crown before\nHe ascends the cross; a foreshadowing of that blessed period when He\nshall be hailed by the loud acclaim of earth's nations--the Gentile\nhosannah mingling with the Hebrew hallelujah in welcoming Him to the\nthrone of universal empire.\n\nMultitudes of the assembled pilgrims in the city, who had heard of His\narrival, crowded out to Bethany to witness the mysterious Being, whose\ndeeds of mercy and miracle had now become the universal theme of\nconverse. His mightiest prodigy of power in the resurrection of Lazarus\nhad invested His name and person with surpassing interest. We need not\nwonder, therefore, that \"the town of Mary and her sister Martha\" should\nattract many worshippers from Jerusalem, to behold with their own eyes\nat once the restored villager and his Divine Deliverer! In fulfilment of\nZechariah's prophecy, the meek and lowly Nazarene, seated on no\ncaparisoned war-horse, but on an unbroken colt, and surrounded with the\nmultitude, sets forth on His journey.[26] \"The village and the desert\nwere then all alive (as they still are once every year at the Greek\nEaster) with the crowd of Paschal pilgrims moving to and fro between\nBethany and Jerusalem. ... Three pathways lead, and probably always led,\nfrom Bethany; ... one a long circuit over the northern shoulder of Mount\nOlivet, down the valley which parts it from Scopus; another, a steep\nfootpath over the summit; the third, the natural continuation of the\nroad by which mounted travellers always approach the city from Jericho,\nover the southern shoulder between the summit which contains the Tombs\nof the Prophets, and that called the 'Mount of Offence.' There can be no\ndoubt that this last is the road of the entry of Christ, not only\nbecause, as just stated, it is, and must always have been, the usual\napproach for horsemen and for large caravans such as then were\nconcerned, but also because this is the only one of the three approaches\nwhich meets the requirements of the narrative which follows. ... This is\nthe only one approach which is really grand. It is the approach by which\nthe army of Pompey advanced, the first European army that ever\nconfronted it. Probably the first impression of every one coming from\nthe north-west and the south may be summed up in the simple expression\nused by one of the modern travellers--'I am strangely affected, but\ngreatly disappointed!' But no human being could be disappointed who\nfirst saw Jerusalem from the east. The beauty consists in this, that you\nthen burst at once on the two great ravines which cut the city off from\nthe surrounding table-land.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"Two vast streams of people met on that day. The one poured out from the\ncity, and as they came through the gardens whose clusters of palms rose\non the south-eastern corner of Olivet, they cut down the long branches,\nas was their wont at the Feast of Tabernacles, and moved upwards towards\nBethany with loud shouts of welcome. From Bethany streamed forth the\ncrowds who had assembled there on the previous night, and who came\ntestifying to the great event at the sepulchre of Lazarus. The road soon\nloses sight of Bethany. It is now a rough, but still broad and\nwell-defined mountain track, winding over rock and loose stones,--a\nsteep declivity below on the left; the sloping shoulder of Olivet above\non the right. Along this road the multitudes threw down the branches\nwhich they cut as they went along, or spread out a rude matting formed\nof the palm branches they had already cut as they came out. The larger\nportion (those perhaps who escorted Him from Bethany) unwrapped their\nloose cloaks from their shoulders, and stretched them along the rough\npath, to form a momentary carpet as he approached. The two streams met\nmidway. Half of the vast mass, turning round, preceded; the other half\nfollowed. Gradually the long procession swept up and over the ridge,\nwhere first begins the 'descent of the Mount of Olives,' towards\nJerusalem. At this point the first view is caught of the south-eastern\ncorner of the city. The Temple and the more northern portions are hid by\nthe slope of Olivet on the right; what is seen is only Mount Zion,\ncovered with houses to its base, surmounted by the castle of Herod on\nthe supposed site of the palace of David, from which that portion of\nJerusalem, emphatically 'The City of David,' derived its name. It was at\nthis precise point, as he drew near, at the descent of the Mount of\nOlives, (may it not have been from the sight thus opening upon them?)\nthat the shout of triumph burst forth from the multitude--'Hosannah to\nthe Son of David! Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!\nBlessed is the kingdom that cometh of our father David.\nHosannah--Peace--Glory in the highest!' There was a pause as the shout\nrang through the long defile; and as the Pharisees who stood by in the\ncrowd complained, He pointed to the 'stones,' which, strewn beneath\ntheir feet, would immediately 'cry out' if 'these were to hold their\npeace.' Again the procession advanced. The road descends a slight\ndeclivity, and the glimpse of the city is again withdrawn behind the\nintervening ridge of Olivet. A few moments, and the path mounts again,\nit climbs a rugged ascent, it reaches a ledge of smooth rock, and in an\ninstant the whole city bursts into view. As now the dome of the Mosque\nEl Aksa rises like a ghost from the earth before the traveller stands on\nthe ledge, so then must have risen the Temple Tower; as now the vast\nenclosure of the Mussulman Sanctuary, so then must have spread the\nTemple Courts; as now the gray town on its broken hills, so then the\nmagnificent city with its background (long since vanished away) of\ngardens and suburbs on the western plateau behind. Immediately below was\nthe valley of the Kedron, here seen in its greatest depth, as it joins\nthe valley of Hinnom; and thus giving full effect to the great\npeculiarity of Jerusalem, seen only on its eastern side--its situation\nas of a city rising out of a deep abyss. It is hardly possible to doubt\nthat this rise and turn of the road (this rocky ledge) was the exact\npoint where the multitude paused again, and 'He, when He beheld the\ncity, wept over it.' ... Here the Lord stayed His onward march, and here\nHis eyes beheld what is still the most impressive view which the\nneighbourhood of Jerusalem furnishes--and the tears rushed forth at the\nsight.\"[27]\n\nWithout dwelling longer on this splendid ovation, we may only further\nremark, that had the Redeemer's mission been on (the infidel theory) a\nsuccessful imposture, what an opportunity now to have availed Himself of\nthat outburst of popular fervour, and to have marched straight to take\npossession of the hereditary throne of David. The populace were\nevidently more than ready to second any such attempt; the Sanhedrim and\nJewish authorities must have trembled for the result. The hosannas,\nborne on the breeze from the slope of Olivet, could not fail to sound\nominous of coming disaster. So incontrovertible indeed had been the\nproof of Lazarus' resurrection, that only the most blinded bigotry could\nrefuse to own in that marvellous act the divinity of Jesus. In addition,\ntoo, to this last crowning demonstration of omnipotence, there were\nhundreds, we may well believe, in that procession, who, in different\nparts of Palestine, had listened to His gracious words, and witnessed\nHis gracious deeds. What _other_, what _better_ Messiah could they wish\nthan this--combining the might of Godhead with the kindness and\ntenderness of a human philanthropist and friend? Is He to accept of the\ncrown? Nay, by a lofty abnegation of self, and all selfish\nconsiderations, He illustrates the announcement made by Him, a few hours\nlater, in Pilate's judgment-hall, as to the leading characteristic of\nthat empire He is to set up in the hearts of men--\"My kingdom is not of\nthis world.\" He was, indeed, one day to be hailed alike King of Zion and\nKing of Nations, but a bitter baptism of blood and suffering had\nmeanwhile to be undergone. No glitter of earthly honour--no carnal\ndreams of earthly glory--would divert Him from His divine and gracious\nundertaking. He would save _others_--Himself He _would_ not save.\n\nLet us pause for a moment, and ponder that significant chorus of praise\nwhich on Olivet arose to the Lord of Glory. How interesting to think of\nthe vast and varied multitude gathered around the Conqueror! Many,\ndoubtless, assembled from curiosity, who had never seen Him before, and\nhad only heard of His fame in their distant homes; others, from feelings\nof personal love and gratitude, were blending their voices in the shout\nof welcome. Think, it may be, of Bartimeus, now gazing with his unsealed\neyes on his Divine Deliverer. Think of Mary Magdalene, her heart gushing\nat the remembrance of her own sin and shame, and her adorable Redeemer's\npardoning and forgiving mercy! Nicodemus, perhaps, no longer seeking to\nrepair by stealth, under the shadow of night, to hold a confidential\nmeeting; but in the full blaze of day, and before assembled Israel,\nboldly recognising in \"the Teacher sent from God\" the promised Messiah,\nthe Prince of Peace, the Redeemer of Mankind. Shall we think of Lazarus\ntoo, fearless of his own personal safety, venturing to follow his guest\nwith tearful eye, the multitude gazing with wonder on this living trophy\nof death? We may think of the very children, as He entered the temple,\nuplifting their infant voices in the general welcome--pledges of the\nmyriad little ones who, in future ages, were to have an interest in \"the\nkingdom of God.\"\n\n    \"Meanwhile He paces through th' adoring crowd,\n     Calm as the march of some majestic cloud\n     That o'er wild scenes of ocean war\n     Holds its still course in Heaven afar.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    \"Yet in the throng of selfish hearts untrue,\n     His sad eye rests upon His faithful few;\n     Children and child-like souls are there,\n     Blind Bartimeus' humble prayer;\n     And Lazarus, waken'd from his four days' sleep,\n     Enduring life again that Passover to keep.\"[28]\n\nMay not Olivet be regarded on this occasion as a type of the Church\ntriumphant in Heaven--Jesus enthroned in the affections of a mighty\nmultitude which no man can number--old and young, great and small, rich\nand poor--casting their palms of victory at His feet, and ascribing to\nHim all the glory of their great salvation?\n\nLet _us_ ask, have _we_ received Jesus as _our_ King?--have _our_ palm\nbranches been cast at His feet? Feeling that He is alike willing and\nmighty to save, have we joined in the rapture of praise--\"Blessed is He\nthat cometh in the name of the Lord to save us?\" Have our hearts become\nliving temples thrown open for His reception? Is this the motto and\nsuperscription on their portals--\"This is the gate of the Lord, into\nwhich THE RIGHTEOUS ONE shall enter!\" Jesus refused and disowned none of\nthese gratulations--He spurned no voice in all that motley Jerusalem\nthrong. There were endless diversities and phases, doubtless, of human\ncharacter and history there. The once proud formalist, the once greedy\nextortioner, the hated tax-gatherer, the rich nobleman, the child of\npenury, the Roman officer, the peasant or fisherman of Galilee, the\nhumbled publican, the woman from the city, the reclaimed victim of\nmisery and guilt! All were there as types and samples of that\ndiversified multitude who, in every age, were to own Him as King, and\nreceive His gracious benediction.\n\nWe have spoken of this incident as a glimpse of glory before His\nsufferings. Alas! it _was_ but a glimpse. What a picture of the\nfickleness and treachery of the heart!--That excited populace who are\nnow shouting their hosannahs, are ere long to be raising the cry,\n\"Crucify Him, crucify Him!\" Four days hence we shall find the palm\nbranches lying withered on the Bethany road, and the blazing torches of\nan assassin-band nigh the very spot where He is now passing with an\napplauding retinue! \"Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his\nnostrils.\"\n\nIt does not belong to our narrative to record the remaining transactions\nof this day in Jerusalem. The shades of evening find the Saviour once\nmore repairing to Bethany. The evangelist _Mark_, in the course of his\nnarrative, simply but touchingly says:--\"And Jesus entered into\nJerusalem, and into the temple, and when He had looked round about upon\nall things\" (the mitred priests, the bleeding victims, the costly\nbuildings), \"and now the eventide was come, he went out unto BETHANY\nwith the twelve.\" (Mark xi. 11.) As He returned to the sweet calm of\nthat quiet home, if He could not fail to think of the hours of darkness\nand agony before Him, could He reap no joy or consolation in the\nthought, that that very day week the redemption of His people was to be\nconsummated--the glory that surrounded the grave and resurrection of\nLazarus was to be eclipsed by the marvels of His own!\n\n\n\n\nXIX.\n\nTHE FIG-TREE.\n\n\nThe hosannahs of yesterday had died away--the memorials of its triumph\nwere strewed on the road across Olivet--as, early on the Monday morning,\nwhile the sun was just appearing above the Mountains of Moab, the Divine\nRedeemer left His Bethany retreat, and was seen retraversing the\nwell-worn path to Jerusalem. Here and there, in the \"olive-bordered\nway,\" were Fig plantations. The adjoining village of Bethphage derived\nits name from the Green Fig.[29] Indeed, \"fig-trees may still be seen\noverhanging the ordinary road from Jerusalem to Bethany, growing out of\nthe rocks of the solid mountain, which, by the prayer of faith, might\n'be removed and cast into the (distant Mediterranean) Sea.'\"[30] An\nincident connected with one of these is too intimately identified with\nthe Redeemer's last journeys to and from the home of His friend to admit\nof exclusion from our \"Bethany Memories.\" These memories have hitherto,\nfor the most part, in connexion at least with our blessed Lord, been\nsoothing, hallowed, encouraging. Here the \"still small voice\" is for\nonce broken with sterner accents. In contrast with the bright background\nof other sunny pictures, we have, standing out in bold relief, a\nwithered, sapless stem, impressively proclaiming, in unwonted utterances\nof wrath and rebuke, that the same hand is \"strong to smite,\" which we\nhave witnessed so lately in the case of Lazarus was \"strong to save.\"\n\nThe eye of Jesus, as he traversed the rocky path with His disciples,\nrested on a _Fig-tree_. (Mark xi. 12, 13.) It seems not to have been\ngrowing alone, but formed part of a group or plantation on one of the\nslopes or ravines of Olivet. Its appearance could not fail to challenge\nattention. It was now only the Passover season (the month of April);\nsummer--the time for ripe figs--was yet distant; and as it is one of\nthe peculiarities of the tree that the fruit appears _before_ the\nleaves, a considerable period, in the ordinary course of nature, ought\nto have elapsed before the foliage was matured. Jesus Himself, it will\nbe remembered, on another occasion, spake of the putting forth of the\nfig-tree leaves as an indication that \"_summer_ was nigh.\" It must have\nbeen, therefore, a strange and unusual sight which met the eye of the\ntravellers as they gazed, in early spring, on one of these trees with\nits full complement of leaves--clad in full summer luxuriance. While the\nothers in the plantation, true to the order of development, were yet\nbare and leafless, or else the buds of spring only flushing them with\nverdure, the broad leaves of this precocious (and we may think at first\n_favoured_) plant--the pioneer of surrounding vegetation--rustled in the\nmorning breeze, and invited the passers-by to turn aside, examine the\nmarvel, and pluck the fruit.\n\nWe may confidently infer that Jesus, as the Omniscient Lord of the\ninanimate creation, knew well that fruit there was none under that\npretentious foliage. We dare not suppose that He went expecting to find\nFigs; far less, that in a moment of disappointed hope, He ventured on a\ncapricious exercise of His power, uttered a hasty malediction, and\ncondemned the insensate boughs to barrenness and decay. The first\ncursory reading of the narrative may suggest some such unworthy\nimpression. But we dismiss it at once, as strangely at variance with the\nSaviour's character, and strangely unlike His wonted actings. We feel\nassured that He literally, as well as figuratively, would not \"break the\nbruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax.\" He came, in all respects,\n\"not to destroy, but to save.\" Some deep inner meaning, not apparent on\nthe surface of the inspired story, must have led Him for the moment to\nregard a tree in the light of a responsible agent, and to address it in\nwords of unusual severity.\n\nWhat, then, is the explanation? Our Lord on this occasion revives the\nold typical or picture-teaching with which the Hebrews were to that hour\nso familiar. He, as the greatest of prophets, adopts the significant and\nimpressive method, not unfrequently employed by the Seers of Israel,\nwho, in uttering startling and solemn truths, did so by means of\n_symbolic actions_. As Jeremiah of old dashed the potter's vessel down\nthe Valley of Hinnom, to indicate the judgments that were about to\nbefall Jerusalem; or, at another time, wore around his own neck a wooden\nyoke, to intimate their approaching bondage under the King of Babylon;\nor, as Isaiah \"walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and\nwonder upon Egypt and Ethiopia,\" so did our Lord now invest a tree in\ndumb nature with a prophet's warning voice, and make its stripped and\nblighted boughs eloquent of a nation's doom!\n\nOn the height of their own Olivet, looking down, as it were, on\nJerusalem, that fig-tree becomes a stern messenger of woe and vengeance\nto the whole house of Judah. Often before had he warned by His _words_\nand _tears_; now He is to make an insignificant object in the outer\nworld take up His prophecy, and testify to the degenerate people at once\nthe cause, the suddenness, and the certainty of their destruction! Let\nus join, then, the Master and His disciples, as they stand on the crest\nabove Bethany, and, gazing on that fruitless leaf-bearer, \"hear this\nparable of the fig-tree.\"[31]\n\nJesus, on approaching it (it seemed to be at a little distance from\ntheir path), and finding abundance of leaves, but no fruit thereon,\ncondemns it to perpetual sterility and barrenness.\n\nA difficulty here occurs on the threshold of the narrative. If, as we\nhave noted, and as St Mark tells us, \"the time of figs was _not\nyet_\"--why this seeming impatience--why this harsh sentence for not\nhaving what, _if found_, would have been unseasonable, untimely,\nabnormal?\n\nIn this apparent difficulty lies the main truth and zest of the parable.\nThe doom of sterility, be it carefully noted, was uttered by Jesus, not\nso much because of the _absence of fruit_, but because the tree, by its\npremature display of leaves, challenged expectations which a closer\ninspection did not realise. \"It was punished,\" says an able writer, \"not\nfor being without fruit, but for proclaiming, by the voice of those\nleaves, that it had such. Not for being barren, but for being\nfalse.\"[32]\n\nGraphic picture of boastful and vaunting Israel! This conspicuous tree,\nnigh one of the frequented paths of Olivet, was no inappropriate type,\nsurely, of that nation which stood illustrious amid the world's\nkingdoms--exalted to heaven with unexampled privileges which it\nabused--proudly claiming a righteousness which, when weighed in the\nbalances, was found utterly wanting. It mattered not that the heathen\nnations were as guilty, vile, and corrupt as the chosen people.\nFig-trees were they, too--naked stems, fruitless and leafless; but then\nthey made no boastful pretensions. The Jews had, in the face of the\nworld, been glorying in a righteousness which, in reality, was only like\nthe foliage of that tree by which the Lord and His disciples now\nstood--mocking the expectations of its owner by mere outward semblance\nand an utter absence of fruit.\n\nThe very day preceding, these mournful deficiencies had brought tears to\nthe Saviour's eyes--stirred the depths of His yearning heart in the very\nhour of His triumph. He had looked down from the height of the mountain\non the gilded splendours of the Temple Courts beneath; but, alas! He saw\nthat sanctimonious hypocrisy and self-righteous formalism had sheltered\nthemselves behind clouds of incense. Mammon, covetousness, oppression,\nfraud, were rising like strange fire from these defiled altars!\n\nHe turns the tears of yesterday into an expressive and enduring parable\nto-day! He approaches a luxuriant Fig-tree, boasting great things among\nits fellows, and thus through _it_ He addresses a doomed city and\ndevoted land,--\"O House of Israel,\" He seems to say, \"I have come up for\nthe last time to your highest and most ancient festival. You stand forth\nin the midst of the nations of the earth clothed in rich verdure. You\nretain intact the splendour of your ancestral ritual. You boast of your\nrigid adherence to its outward ceremonial, the punctilious observance of\nyour fasts and feasts. But I have found that it is but 'a name to live.'\nYou sinfully ignore 'the weightier matters of the law, judgment,\njustice, and mercy!' You call out as you tread that gorgeous fane--'The\nTemple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord! The Temple of the Lord are\nwe!' You forget that your hearts are the Temple I prize! Holiness, the\nmost acceptable incense--love to God, and love to man, the most pleasing\nsacrifice. All that dead and torpid formalism--that mockery of outward\nfoliage--is to me nothing. 'Your new moons and Sabbaths--the calling of\nassemblies--I cannot away with; it is iniquity even the solemn meeting.'\nThese are only as the whitewash of your sepulchres to hide the\nloathsomeness within--'the rottenness and dead men's bones!' If you had\nmade no impious pretensions, I would not, peradventure, have dealt so\nsternly with you. If like the other trees you had confessed your\nnakedness, and stood with your leafless stems, waiting for summer suns,\nand dews, and rains, to fructify you, and to bring your fruit to\nperfection--all well; but you have sought to mock and deceive me by your\nfalsity, and thus precipitated the doom of the cumberer. 'Henceforth,\nlet no man eat fruit of thee for ever!'\"\n\nThe unconscious Tree listened! One night only passed, and the morrow\nfound it with drooping leaf and blighted stem! On yonder mountain crest\nit stood, as a sign between heaven and earth of impending judgment.\nEighteen hundred years have taken up its parable--fearfully\nauthenticated the averments of the August Speaker! Israel, a bared,\nleafless, sapless trunk, testifies to this hour, before the nations,\nthat \"heaven and earth may pass away, but God's words will not pass\naway!\"[33]\n\nBut does the parable stop here? Was there no voice but for the ear of\nJudah and Jerusalem? Have _we_ no part in these solemn monitions?\n\nAh! be assured, as Jesus dealt with nations so will He deal with\nindividuals. This parable-miracle solemnly speaks to all who have only a\nname to live--the foliage of outward profession--but who are destitute\nof the \"fruits of righteousness.\" It is not neglecters or despisers--the\ncareless--the infidel--the scorner--our Lord here addresses. He deals\nwith such elsewhere. It is rather vaunting hypocrites--wearing the garb\nof religion--the trappings and dress of outward devotion to conceal\ntheir inward pollution; like the ivy, screening from view by garlands of\nfantastic beauty--wreaths of loveliest green--the mouldering trunk or\nloathsome ruin! We may well believe none are more obnoxious to a holy\nSaviour than _such_. He (Incarnate TRUTH) would rather have the naked\nstem than the counterfeit blossom. He would rather have no gold than be\nmocked with tinsel and base alloy! \"I _would_,\" says He, speaking to one\nof His Churches at a later time, \"I would thou wert cold or hot.\" He\nwould rather a man openly avowed his enmity than that he should come in\ndisguise, with a traitor-heart, among the ranks of His people. Oh that\nall such ungodly boasters and pretenders would bear in mind, that not\nonly do they inflict harm on themselves, but they do infinite damage to\nthe Church of God. They lower the standard of godliness. Like that\nworthless Fig-tree, they help to hide out from others the glorious\nsunlight. They intercept from others the refreshing dews of heaven. They\nabsorb in their leaves the rains as they fall. Many a tuft of tiny moss,\nmany a lowly plant at their feet, is pining and withering, which, _but_\nfor _them_, would be bathing its tints in sunshine, and filling the air\nwith balmy fragrance!\n\nSolemn, then, ought to be the question with every one of us--every\nFig-tree in the Lord's plantation--How does it stand with _me_? am I\n_now_ bringing forth fruit to God? for remember what we are NOW, will\nfix what we _shall_ be when our Lord shall come on the Great Day of\nScrutiny! We are forming _now_ for Eternity; settling down and\nconsolidating in the great mould which ultimately will determine our\neverlasting state; fruitless _now_, we shall be fruitless _then_. The\n_principle_ in the future retribution is thus laid down--\"He that is\nunjust, let him be unjust still; and he which is filthy, let him be\nfilthy still.\" The demand and scrutiny of Jesus will on that day be, not\nwhat is the number of your leaves, the height of your stem, the extent\nof your branches? not whether you have grown on the wayside or in the\nforest, been nurtured in solitude or in a crowd, on the mountain-height\nor in the lowly valley: all will resolve itself into the _one\nquestion_--Where is your _fruit_? What evidence is there that you have\nprofited by My admonitions, listened to My voice, and accepted My\nsalvation? Where are your proofs of love to Myself, delight in My\nservice, obedience to My will? Where are the sins you have crucified,\nthe sacrifices you have made, the new principles you have nurtured, the\namiability and love and kindness and generosity and unselfishness which\nhave supplanted and superseded baser affections? See that the leaves of\noutward profession be not a snare to you. You may be lulling yourselves\nto sleep with delusive opiates. You may be making these false coverings\nan apology for resisting the \"putting on of the armour of light.\" One\nhas no difficulty in persuading the tenant of a wretched hovel to\nconsent to have his mud-hut taken down; but the man who has the walls of\nhis dwelling hung with gaudy drapery, it is hard to persuade him that\nhis house is worthless and his foundation insecure. Think not that\nprivileges or creeds, or church-sect or church-membership, or the\nShibboleth of party will save you. It is to the _heart_ that God looks.\nIf the inner spirit be right, the outer conduct will be fruitful in\nrighteousness. Make it not your worthless ambition to APPEAR to be holy,\nbut _be_ holy! Live not a \"dying life\"--that blank existence which\nbrings neither glory to God nor good to men. Seek that _while_ you live,\nthe world may be the better for you, and when you die the world may miss\nyou. Unlike the pretentious tree in our parable-text, be it yours rather\nto have the nobler character and recompense, so beautifully delineated\nunder a similar figure three thousand years ago--\"He shall be like a\ntree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in\nhis season. His leaf, also, shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth\nshall prosper.\"[34]\n\nLet us further learn, from this solemn and impressive miracle, how true\nChrist is to His word. We think of Him as true to His _promises_, do we\nthink of Him, also, as _true to His threatenings_? Judgment, indeed, is\nHis strange work. Amid a multitude of other prodigies already performed\nby Him, this \"cursing\" of the fig-tree formed the alone exception to His\nmiracles of _mercy_.[35] All the others were proofs and illustrations of\nbeneficence, compassion, love. But He seems to interpose _this_ ONE, in\ncase we should forget, in the affluence of benignity and kindness, that\nthe same God, whose name and memorial is \"merciful and gracious,\" has\nsolemnly added that \"He can by no means clear the guilty.\" He would have\nus to remember that there is a point beyond which even _His_ love cannot\ngo, when the voice of ineffable _Goodness_ must melt and merge into\ntones of stern wrath and vengeance. The guilty may, for the brief\nearthly hour of their impenitence, affect to despise His divine\nwarnings, laugh to scorn His solemn expostulations. Sentence may not be\nexecuted speedily; amazing patience may ward off the descending blow.\nThey may, from the very _forbearance_ of Jesus, take impious\nencouragement to defy His threats, and rush swifter to their own\ndestruction. But come He _will_ and _must_ to assert His claims as \"He\nthat is HOLY, He that is TRUE.\" The disciples, on the present occasion,\nheard the voice of their Master. They gazed on the doomed Fig-tree, but\nthere seemed at the moment to be no visible change on its leaves. As\nthey took their final glance ere passing on their way, no blight seemed\nto descend, no worm to prey on its roots. The fowls of Heaven may have\nappeared soaring in the sky, eager to nestle as before on its branches,\nand to bathe their plumage on the dew-drops that drenched its foliage.\nBut was the word of Jesus in vain? Did that fig-tree take up a\nresponsive parable, and say, \"Who made Thee a ruler and a judge over\nme?\"\n\nThe Lord and His apostles passed the place a few hours afterwards on\ntheir return to Bethany.[36] But though the Passover moon was shining on\ntheir path, the darkness, and perhaps the distance from the highway,\nveiled from their view the too truthful doom to be revealed in morning\nlight. As the dawn of day (Tuesday) finds them once more on their road\nto Jerusalem, the eyes of the disciples wander towards the spot to see\nwhether the words of yesterday have proved to be indeed solemn verities.\nOne glance is enough! _There_ it stands in impressive memorial. One\nnight had done the work. No desert simoom, if it had passed over it,\ncould have effected it more thoroughly. Its leaves were shrivelled, its\nsap dried, its glory gone. Ever and anon afterwards, as the disciples\ncrossed the mountain, and as they gazed on this silent \"preacher,\" they\nwould be reminded that Jehovah-Jesus, their loving Master, was not \"a\nman that He should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent.\"\n\nAh! Reader, learn from all this, that the wrathful utterances of the\nSaviour are no idle threats. He _means_ what He _says_! He is \"the\nFaithful and True witness;\" and though \"mercy and truth go continually\nbefore His face,\" \"justice and judgment are the habitation of His\nthrone.\" You may be scorning His message--lulling yourself into a dream\nof guilty indifference. You may see in His daily dealings no sign or\nsymbol of coming retribution; you may be echoing the old challenge of\nthe presumptuous scoffer--\"Where is the promise of His coming?\" The fig\nleaves may have lost none of their verdure--the sky may be unfretted by\none vengeful cloud--nature, around you, may be hushed and still. You can\nhear no footsteps of wrath; you may be even tempted at times to think\nthat all is a dream--that credulity has suffered itself to be duped by a\ncounterfeit tale of superstitious terror! Or if, in better moments, you\nawake to a consciousness of the Bible averments being stern realities,\nyour next subterfuge is to trust to that rope of sand to which thousands\nhave clung, to the wreck of their eternities--an indefinite dreamy hope\nin the final _mercy_ of God! that on the Great Day the threatenings of\nJesus will undergo some modification; that He will not carry out to the\nvery letter the full weight of His denunciations; that the arm which\nlove nailed to the cross of Calvary will sheathe the sword of avenging\nretribution, and proclaim a universal amnesty to the thronging myriads\nat His tribunal!\n\n\"Nay! O man, who art thou that repliest against God?\" Come to the\nfig-tree \"over against\" Bethany, and let it be a dumb attesting witness\nto the Saviour's unswerving and immutable truthfulness! Or, passing from\nthe sign to the thing symbolised, behold that nation which God has for\neighteen centuries set up in the world as a monument of His undeviating\nadherence to His Word. See how, in their case, to the letter He has\nfulfilled His threatenings. Is not this fulfillment intended as an awful\nforeshadowing of eternal verities: if He has \"spared not the natural\nbranches,\" thinkest thou He will spare _thee_? \"If these things were\ndone in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?\"\n\nMourners! You for whose comfort these pages are specially designed, is\nthere no lesson of consolation to be drawn from this solemn \"memory?\"\nJesus smote down that _fig-tree_--blasted and blighted it. Never again\ndid He come to seek fruit on it. Ten thousand other buds in the\nFig-forest around were opening their fragrant lips to drink in the\nrefreshing dews of spring; but the curse of perpetual sterility rested\non this!\n\nHe has smitten _you_ also, but it is only to _heal_! He has bared your\nbranches--stripped you of your verdure--broken \"your staff and your\nbeautiful rod;\" but the pruning hook has been used to promote the Vigour\nof the tree; to lop off the redundant branches, and open the stems to\nthe gladsome sunlight. Murmur not! Remember, _but for_ these loppings of\naffliction you might have effloresced into the rank luxuriant growth of\nmere external profession. You might have rested satisfied with the\noutward display of _Religiousness_, without the fruits of true\n_Religion_. You might have lived and died unproductive _cumberers_,\ndeceiving others and deceiving yourselves. But He would not suffer you\nto linger in this state of worthless barrenness. Oh! better far, surely,\nthese severest cuttings and incisions of the pruning knife, than to\nlisten to the stern words--\"Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him\nalone!\" It is the most terrible of all judgments when God leaves a\nsinner undisturbed in his sinfulness--abandons him to \"the fruit of his\nown ways, and to be filled with his own devices;\" until, like a tree\nimpervious to moistening dews and fructifying heat, he dwarfs and\ndwindles into the last hopeless stage of spiritual decay and death!\n\n\"If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what\nson is he whom the Father chasteneth not?\"\n\n\"He purgeth it (_pruneth it_), that it may bring forth MORE FRUIT.\"\n\n\n\n\nXX.\n\nCLOSING HOURS.\n\n\nThe evenings of the two succeeding days seem to have closed around our\nadorable Lord at BETHANY. We may still follow Him in imagination, in the\nmellow twilight, as He and His disciples crossed the bridle-path of the\nholy mountain from Jerusalem to the house and village of His friend.\n\nMuch has changed since then; but the great features of unvarying nature\nretain their imperishable outlines, so that what still arrests the view\nof the modern traveller, in crossing the Mount of Olives, we know must\nhave formed the identical landscape spread out before the eyes of the\nIncarnate Redeemer. It is more than allowable, therefore, to appropriate\nthe words of the same trustworthy recent spectator, from whose pages we\nhave already quoted, as presenting a truthful and veritable picture of\nwhat the Saviour _then_ saw.\n\nFrom almost every point in the journey, there would be visible \"the\nlong purple wall of the Moab mountains, rising out of its unfathomable\ndepths; these mountains would then have almost the effect of a distant\nview of the sea, the hues constantly changing; this or that precipitous\nrock coming out clear in the evening shade--_there_ the form of what may\npossibly be Pisgah, dimly shadowed out by surrounding valleys--_here_\nthe point of Kerak, the capital of Moab, and future fortress of the\nCrusaders--and then, at times all wrapt in deep haze, the mountains\noverhanging the valley of the shadow of death, all the more striking\nfrom their contrast with the gray or green colours of the hills through\nwhich a glimpse was caught of them.\"[37]\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have no recorded incidents in connexion with these two nights at\nBethany. We are left only to realise in thought the refreshment alike\nfor body and spirit our Lord enjoyed. Exhausted with the fatigues of\neach day, and the advancing storm-cloud ready to burst on His devoted\nhead, we may well imagine how grateful repose would be in the old\nhomestead of congenial friendship.\n\nThe last evening He spent at the \"Palm-clad Village\" must in many ways\nhave been full of sorrowing thoughts. He had, in the afternoon, on His\nreturn from Jerusalem, when seated with his disciples \"over against the\nTemple,\" gazing on its doomed magnificence, been discoursing on the\nappalling desolation which awaited that loved and time-honoured\nsanctuary. This had led Him to the more sublime and terrific theme of a\nDay of Judgment. Not only did He foresee the grievous obduracy of His\nown infatuated countrymen, but His Omniscient eye, travelling down to\nthe consummation of all things, wept over the fate of myriads, who, in\nspite of atoning love and mercy, were to despise and perish.\n\nHe left the threshold, consecrated so oft by His Pilgrim steps, on the\nThursday of that week, not to return again till death had numbered Him\namong its victims. On that same morning He had sent His disciples into\nthe city to make preparation for the keeping of the Passover Supper. He\nHimself followed, probably towards the afternoon, and joined them in\n\"the Upper room,\" where, after celebrating for the last time the old\nJewish rite, he instituted the New Testament memorial of His own dying\nlove. Supper being ended, the disciples, probably, contemplated nothing\nbut a return, as on preceding evenings, by their old route to Bethany.\nSinging their paschal hymn, they descended the Jehoshaphat ravine, by\nthe side of the Temple. The brook Kedron was crossed, and they are once\nmore on the Bethany path. They have reached Gethsemane; their Master\nretires into the depths of the olive grove, as was often His wont, to\nhold secret communion with His Father. But the crisis-hour has at last\narrived! The Shepherd is about to be smitten, and the sheep to be\nscattered! Rude hands arrest Him on His way. In vain shall Lazarus and\nhis sisters wait for their expected Lord! For _Him_ that night there is\nno voice of earthly comforter--no couch of needed rest;--when the\nshadows of darkness have gathered around Bethany, and the pale passover\nmoon is lighting up its palm-trees, the Lord of glory is standing\nbuffetted and insulted in the hall of Annas.\n\nThe Remembrances of Bethany are here absorbed and overshadowed for a\ntime by the darker memories of Gethsemane and Calvary. Jesus may,\nindeed, afterwards revisit the loved haunt of former friendship; but\nmeanwhile He is first to accomplish that glorious Decease, _but for\nwhich_ the world could never have had on its surface one Bethany-home of\nlove, or been cheered by one ray of happiness or hope.\n\nIn vain do we try to picture, as we revert to the peaceful Village, the\nfeelings of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary on that day of ignominious\ncrucifixion! _where_ they were--_how_ they were employed! Can we imagine\nthat they could linger behind, unconcerned, in their dwelling, when\ntheir Best Friend was in the hands of His murderers? We cannot think so.\nWe may rather well believe that among the tearful eyes of the weeping\nwomen that followed the innocent Victim along the \"Dolorous way,\" not\nthe least anguished were the two Bethany mourners; and that as He hung\nupon the cross, and His languid eye saw here and there a faithful friend\nlingering around him while disciples had fled, Lazarus would be among\nthe few who soothed and smoothed that awful death-pillow! Perhaps even\nwhen death had sealed His eyes, and faithless apostles gave vent to\ntheir feelings of hopeless despondency, \"We trusted it had been He who\nshould have redeemed Israel,\" the family of Bethany would recollect how\noft He had spoken of this very hour of darkness and bereavement which\nhad now come; Mary would, in trembling emotion, (in connexion with the\nhumble token of her own gratitude and affection,) remember the words of\nthe Lord Jesus, how He said, \"Let her alone, against the day of my\n_burying_ hath she done this.\"\n\nWe need not pursue these thoughts. We may well believe, however, that\nwhen the first day of the week had come--and the glad announcement\nspread from disciple to disciple, \"_The Lord is risen indeed_,\"--on no\nhome in Judea would the tidings fall more welcome than on that of\nLazarus of Bethany. Martha and Mary had, a few weeks before, experienced\nthe happiness of a restored _Brother_. Now it was that of a restored\n_Saviour_! Whether He revisited these, His former friends, the days\nimmediately after His resurrection, we cannot tell. It is more than\nprobable He would. May not some hallowed _unrecorded_ \"Memories of\nBethany\" be included in the closing words of John's gospel--\"There are\nalso many OTHER things which Jesus did?\" On the way to Emmaus He joined\nHimself to two disciples, and \"caused their hearts to burn within them\nas He talked by the way.\" So may He not have joined Himself to the\nfriends with whom He had so oft held sacred intercourse during the days\nof His humiliation--breathing on them His benediction, and discoursing\nof those covenant blessings which He had died to purchase, and which He\nwas about to bestow, \"set as king on His holy hill of Zion.\" With what a\nnew and glorious meaning to Martha must her Saviour's words have now\nbeen invested, \"_I am the Resurrection and the Life_--he that believeth\non Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.\"\n\nAs the God-man, He had power over her brother's life--He had now\ndemonstrated that He had \"power over His own;\"--\"power\" not only to \"lay\nit down,\" but \"power to take it up again.\" Her Lord had \"spoken _once_,\nyea _twice_ had she heard this, that _power_ belongeth unto God.\"\n\nThe Grave of Bethany was thus in her eyes inseparably connected with the\ngrave at Golgotha. But for the rolling away of the stone from a more\naugust sepulchre, her brother must still have been slumbering in the\nembrace of death. \"But now had Christ risen from the dead, and become\nthe first-fruits of them that slept.\"\n\nThe Almighty Reaper had risen Himself from the tomb, with the sharp\nsickle in His hand. In the person of His dearest earthly friend He\npresented an earnest-sheaf of the great Resurrection-reaping-time--when\nthe mandate was to be carried to the four winds of heaven, \"Put ye in\nthe sickle, for the harvest is ripe;--Multitudes--multitudes in the\nValley of Decision.\"\n\nCan we participate in the joy of the family of BETHANY? Have we, like\nthem, followed Christ to His cross and His tomb, and listened to the\nangelic announcement, \"He is not here, He is risen?\" Have we seen in His\ndeath the secret of our life? Have we beheld Him as the Great Precursor\nemerging from Hades, and shewing to ransomed millions the purchased path\nof life--the luminous highway to glory? Let our hearts be as Bethany\ndwellings, to welcome in a dying risen Jesus. Let us not expel Him from\nour souls by our sins--crucifying the Lord afresh, and putting Him to\nan open shame. Let not God's restoring mercies be, as, alas! often they\nare to us, _unsanctified_;--receiving back our Lazarus from the brink of\nthe tomb, but refusing, on the return of health and prosperity, to share\nin bearing our Lord's cross--to \"go forth with Him without the\ncamp--bearing His reproach.\" If He has delivered our souls from death,\nand our eyes from tears, be it ours to follow Him through good and\nthrough bad report. Not alone amid the hosannahs of His people, or amid\nthe world's bright sunshine, but, if need be, to confront suffering, and\ntrial, and death for His sake. Like the Bethany family, let us mourn His\nabsence, and long for His return. It is but for \"a little while\" we\n\"shall _not_ see Him\"--\"again a little while and we _shall_ see Him.\"\nOh, blessed day! when the words of the old prophet will start once more\ninto fulfilment, and a voice from Heaven will thus address a waiting\nChurch--\"Rejoice, O daughter of Zion, behold thy King cometh!\" He\ncometh!--but it is now with no badges of humiliation--with no\nanticipations of sorrow and woe to mar that hour of glory. \"His head\nshall be crowned with many crowns\"--all His saints with Him to share\nHis triumph and enter into His joy. May we be enabled to look forward to\nthat blessed season when, arrayed in white robes, with golden crowns on\nour heads, and palms of victory in our hands, these shall be cast at His\nfeet, and the feeble Hosannahs of time shall be lost and merged in the\nrapturous Hallelujahs of eternity!\n\n\n\n\nXXI.\n\nTHE LAST VISIT.\n\n\nWhat saddening thoughts are associated with our final interview with a\nBeloved Friend! He was in health when we last met; we little dreamt, in\nparting, we were to meet no more. Every circumstance of that interview\nis stored up in the most hallowed chambers of the soul. His last\nwords--his last _look_--his last smile--they live there in undying\nmemorial! Such was now the case with the disciples. They had their last\nwalk together with their beloved Master. Ere another sun goes down over\nthe western hills of Jerusalem He will have returned from His\nconsummated Work to the bosom of His Father!\n\nAnd what is the spot which he selects as the place of Ascension?--What\nthe favoured height or valley that is to listen to His farewell words?\nStill it is BETHANY--the loved home of cherished friendship, where, so\nlately, hours of anticipated anguish had been mitigated and soothed. The\nspot which, above all others, had been witness to His tears and His\nOmnipotence, is selected as that _from_ which, or _near_ to which, He is\nto bid adieu to his sorrowing Church on earth. Although there seem to be\nno special reasons for this selection, we cannot think it was altogether\nundesigned or insignificant. Our Lord was still MAN--participating in\nevery tender feeling of our common nature; and just as many are known in\nlife to express a partiality for the place of their departure, where\nthey would desire their last hours to be spent, or for the sepulchre or\nchurchyard where they would prefer their ashes to be laid;--so may we\nnot imagine the Saviour, reverting in these, His last hours, to the\nhallowed memories of that hallowed village, wishful that He might ascend\nto heaven within view, at least, of the spot He loved so well?\n\nWhether this be the true explanation or no, we are called now to follow\nHim, in thought, from His concluding visit in Jerusalem to the scene of\nAscension. We may imagine it, in all likelihood, the early dawn of day.\nThe grey mists of morning were still hovering over the Jehoshaphat\nvalley, as for the last time he descended the well-known path. He must\nhave crossed the brook KEDRON--that brook which had so oft before\nmurmured in His ear during night-seasons of deep sorrow--He must have\npassed by GETHSEMANE--the thick Olives pendant with dew, the shadows of\nearly day still brooding over them. Their gloomy vistas must have\nrecalled terrible hours, when the sod underneath was moistened with\n\"great drops of blood.\" Can we dare to imagine His sensations and\nfeelings when passing _now_? Would they not be the same as that of every\nChristian still, while passing through memories of trial, \"It was good\nfor me to be here?\" Had He dashed untasted to the ground, the cup which\nin the depths of that awful solitude He had grasped six weeks before,\nHis work would have been undone--a world yet unsaved! But He shrunk not\nfrom that baptism of blood and suffering. Gethsemane can now be gazed\nupon as a place of triumph. His Omniscient eye, as He now skirts its\nprecincts, connects its awful struggles with the Redemption and joy of\nransomed myriads through all eternity. He has the first realising\nearnest of the prophet's words,--Seeing of the fruit of \"the travail of\nHis soul,\" He is \"satisfied.\"\n\nBut vain is it to conjecture feelings and emotions unrecorded. It would,\ndoubtless, not be on Himself the Great Redeemer would, in these waning\nhours of earthly communion, chiefly dwell. They would rather be occupied\nin preparing the hearts of the sorrowful band around Him for His\napproaching departure. He would unfold to them the glorious conquests\nwhich, in His name, they were on earth to achieve, as His\nstandard-bearers and apostles, and the ineffable bliss awaiting\nthem in that Heaven whither He was about to ascend as their\nForerunner and Precursor. It must indeed have been to them a season\nof severe and bitter trial! They had in their hearts a full and tender\nimpression--a gushing recollection of three years' unvarying\nkindness and affection--sorrows soothed--burdens eased--ingratitude\noverlooked--treachery forgiven. Many others they could only think of in\nconnexion with altered tones and changed affection. _He_ was _ever the\nsame_! But the sad day _has_ really come when they are to be parted for\n_time_! No more tender counsels in difficulty,--no more gentle rebukes\nin waywardness,--no more joyous surprises, as on the shores of Tiberias,\nor the road to Emmaus, when, with joyful lips, they would exclaim,--\"It\nis the Lord!\" This dream of blissful intercourse, like a meteor-flash,\nwas about to be quenched in darkness. Their Lord was to depart, and\nlong, long centuries were to elapse ere His gracious face was to be seen\nagain!\n\nWhether, in this ever-memorable walk to the place of Ascension, the\nAdorable Redeemer visited the village of Bethany, we cannot tell. It is\npossible--it is _more_ than possible--He may have honoured the home of\nLazarus with a farewell benediction; but this we can only conjecture.\nAll the notice we have regarding it is: that \"He led them out as far as\nto Bethany;\" that He there lifted up His hands and blessed them; and was\nfrom thence taken up to Heaven.[38] Honoured hamlet! thus to be alone\nmentioned in connexion with the closing scene in this mighty drama! He\nselected not _Bethlehem_, where angel hosts had chanted His praise; nor\n_Tabor_, where celestial beings had hovered around Him in homage; nor\n_Calvary_, where riven rocks and bursting grave-stones had proclaimed\nHis deity; nor the _Temple-court_, in all its sumptuous glory, where for\nages His own Shekinah had blazed in mystic splendour; but He hallows\nafresh the name of a lowly _Village_; He consecrates a Home of love.\nBETHANY is the last spot which lingers on His view, as the cloud comes\ndown and receives Him out of sight.\n\nLet us gather for a little in imagination on this sacred ground. Let us\nnote a few of the interesting thoughts which cluster around it, and\nlisten to the Saviour's farewell themes of converse there with His\nbeloved disciples.\n\n(1.) He cheers their hearts with the promised baptism of the Holy\nGhost.--\"John,\" He had said, a few hours before, at His last meeting\nwith them in Jerusalem, \"truly baptized with water; but ye shall be\nbaptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.\"[39] He, moreover,\nenjoined them to linger in the Holy City, and wait this \"promise of the\nFather\" which \"they had heard of Him;\" and now, once more, when on the\neve of Ascension, He speaks of the coming of the same Holy Ghost to\nqualify them for their future work.[40]\n\nThis, we know, was the great topic of consolation with which He had\noften before soothed their hearts at the thought of parting. _He_ was to\nleave them;--but an Almighty _Paraclete_ or _Comforter_ was to take His\nplace, whose gracious presence would more than compensate for the\nwithdrawal of His own. For when, on the intimation of His coming\ndeparture, He observed that sorrow was filling their hearts--\"It is\nexpedient,\" said He, \"for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the\nComforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto\nyou.\"[41]\n\nNow that the anticipated hour is come, He reverts to the same omnipotent\nground of comfort;--that this Divine Enlightener, Cheerer, Sanctifier,\nwould fill up the gap His own withdrawal would make. They were about to\nenter on a new dispensation--the dispensation of the SPIRIT--and the\napproaching Pentecost was to give them a pledge and earnest of His\nmighty agency in the conversion of souls.\n\nJesus, our adorable Lord, has ascended to \"His Father and our Father--to\nHis God and our God!\" We, like the disciples, have to mourn the denial\nof His personal presence. His Church is left widowed and lonely by\nreason of His departure. But have we known, in our experience, the\nvalue of the great compensating boon here spoken of? Have we known, in\nthe midst of our weakness and wants, our griefs and sorrows, the power\nand grace of the promised Paraclete? It is to be feared we do not\nrealise or value His blessed agency as we ought. To what is much of the\ndeadness, and dullness, and languor of our frames to be traced--the\npoverty of our faith, the lukewarmness of our love, the coldness of our\nSabbath services, the little hold and influence of divine things upon\nus? Is it not to the feeble realisation of the quickening, life-giving\npower of this Divine Agent? \"It is the Spirit that quickeneth.\" Church\nof the living God! if you would awake from your slumber and apathy; if\nyou would exhibit among your members more faithfulness, more zeal, more\nlove, more unselfishness, more union--if you would buckle on your armour\nfor fresh conquests in the outlying wastes of heathenism, it will be by\na fresh baptism of the Holy Ghost! Another Pentecost will usher in the\nMillennial morning. The showers of His benign influences will form the\nprelude to the world's great Spiritual Harvest. \"Pray ye, then, the Lord\nof the Harvest,\" that His Spirit may \"come down like rain upon the mown\ngrass, and as showers that water the earth,\" and that the promise\nregarding the latter-day glory may be fulfilled--\"I will pour down My\nSpirit upon all flesh.\" Or would you have Jesus made more precious to\nyour _own_ soul? Would you see more of His matchless excellences,--the\nglories of His person and work,--His suitableness and adaptation to all\nthe wants and weaknesses, the sorrows and temptations, of your tried and\ntempted natures. Pray for this gracious Unfolder of the Saviour's\ncharacter. This is one of His most precious offices--as the _Revealer_\nof Jesus. \"He shall glorify _Me_; for He shall receive of _Mine_, and\nshall shew it unto you!\"[42]\n\n(2.) Another theme of Christ's converse, when within sight of Bethany,\nwas _the nature of His Kingdom_--\"Lord, wilt thou at this time restore\nagain the kingdom of Israel?\" was the inquiry of the disciples. \"And he\nsaid unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which\nthe Father hath put in His own power.\"[43]\n\nThe thoughts of His followers were clinging to the last to the dream of\nearthly sovereignty. How difficult it is to get even the renewed and\nregenerated mind to understand and realise Heavenly things, and to wean\nit from what is of the earth earthy! He checks their presumption--He\ntells them these are questions which they may not pry into. There is to\nbe no present fulfilment of these visions of millennial glory. That day\nand that hour are to be wrapt in unrevealed and impenetrable secrecy.\nThe Church may not attempt rashly and inquisitively to lift the veil.\nShe is not to know the _time_ of the Saviour's appearing, that she may\nlive every day in the frame she would wish to be found in when the cry\nshall be heard, \"Behold the Bridegroom cometh.\" The apostolic band are,\nin the first instance, to be cross-bearers, as He their Master\nwas,--witnesses to His sufferings, earthen vessels, defamed, persecuted,\nreviled,--before they become partakers of His purchased happiness and\nbliss!\n\nNevertheless, it was a grand and glorious mission He sketched out for\nthem. How worthy of HIMSELF--of his loving, forgiving, unselfish\nSpirit--was the opening clause in that wondrous Missionary Charter He\nthen put into their hands. Even at the moment when all the memory of\nJewish ingratitude was fresh on His heart, He inserts a wondrous\nprovision of mercy and grace. They were to proclaim His name through the\nwide world; but was JERUSALEM (the scene of His ignominy) to form an\nexception? Nay, rather they were to _begin there_! The Gospel-Trumpet\nwas to be sounded in its streets. The assassins of Gethsemane, the\nmurderers of Calvary were to listen to the first offers of pardon and\nreconciliation--\"And He said unto them ... that repentance and remission\nof sins should be preached in His name among all nations, _beginning_ at\n_Jerusalem_!\" Precious warrant, surely, are these words to \"the chief of\nsinners\" to repair to this gracious Saviour. If even for \"_the Jerusalem\nsinner_\" there is mercy, can there be ground for one human being to\ndespair?\n\nBut \"_beginning_\" at Jerusalem, the Gospel Commission did not _end_\nthere? It was to embrace, first, \"Judea,\" then \"Samaria,\" then \"the\nuttermost parts of the earth.\"[44] The ascending Redeemer's expansive\nheart took in with a vast sweep the wide circle of humanity. From the\nelevated ridge of Olivet, on which He now stood with the arrested group\naround Him, He might tell them to gaze, in thought at least, far north\nbeyond the Cedar Heights of Lebanon and Hermon;--Southward to the desert\nand the Isles of the Ocean;--Westward to the fair lands washed by the\nGreat Sea;--Eastward across the palm-trees of Bethany and the chain of\nMoabite mountains on unexplored continents, where heathenism still\nrevelled in its rites and orgies of impurity and blood. With Palestine\nas their centre and starting-point, the vast World was to be their\ncircumference. The Gospel was to be preached \"as a witness to all\nnations.\" The Great Mission-Angel was to \"fly through the midst of\nHeaven,\" having its everlasting truths to \"preach to every nation, and\nkindred, and tongue, and people.\"\n\nAre _we_ faithfully fulfilling our Lord's farewell Apostolic Commission?\nAs members of the Church of God, component parts of the Royal\nPriesthood, are we doing what lies in our power, that His name, and\ndoctrine, and salvation, be proclaimed to the uttermost parts of the\nearth? Or is it so, that we are looking coldly, suspiciously,\nindifferently on the Church's efforts in the cause of Missions,\nsuffering her funds to fail, and her schemes to languish, and her\ndevoted servants to sink in discouragement? Or rather, are we prepared\nto incur the responsibility of heathen souls, through our neglect,\npassing hour by hour into eternity, with a Saviour's name unheard of,\nand a Saviour's love unknown? Go to the Rocky ridge above BETHANY, and\nlisten to the parting injunction of our Great Master. His last words,\nere the cloud received Him to glory, were _Missionary_ words, a\n_Missionary_ appeal, a pleading for the Gospel being sent to heathen\nshores. Ah! _our own Britain_ was then among the number! If the\nApostolic Company had in these days, like many among ourselves, refused,\non the ground of the _home-heathen_ in Judea, to send any of their band\nabroad, where would _we_ have been at this hour? With our Druids'\naltars, our bloody sacrifices, our cruel rites! But their best and\nnoblest were commissioned to speed from port to port in the\nMediterranean and the Isles of the Gentiles, with the Gospel errand on\ntheir lips, and the blessing of God on their labours! All honour to\nthese leal-hearted men, who, in spite of national and hereditary\nprejudices, implicitly followed the will of their Lord and Master, who\nhad given to them, as He has given to us, a great Missionary motto--\"THE\nFIELD IS THE WORLD!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd now His themes of instruction and comfort are over--He is about to\nAscend! The symbolic cloud--(invariable emblem of Deity)--comes down to\nconduct Him to His throne. What a moment was that! Glory in view--the\nhallelujahs of angels floating in His ear--the air thronged with\ncelestial hosts waiting as His retinue to bear Him upwards;--all heaven\nin eager expectancy for her returning Lord. And yet--how is He employed?\nIs the world, that had so disowned Him, disowned now in return? Are the\ndisciples, who have so oft deserted Him, now deserted in return?--their\nname forgotten in the thought of the loftier spirits who are to gather\naround Him in the skies? Nay, His every thought is centered on the\nweeping band of earth. \"He lifted up his hands and blessed them!\"[45]\nHis last words are those of mercy--His last act is outstretching His\narms to bless! It was an act replete with meaning to the Church of God\nin every age. Jesus, when He was last seen on earth, wore no terror on\nHis lips--but He left our world pouring a benediction on His redeemed\npeople.\n\nThere is something, moreover, significant in the recorded fact that\n\"WHILE He blessed them, He was parted from them!\" The Benediction was\nunfinished when the cloud bore Him away! As they gazed upwards and\nupwards till that glorious form was diminishing in the blue sky above,\nstill His hands were extended;--the last dim vision which lingered on\ntheir memories was the True High Priest blessing the representative\nIsrael of God! It would seem as if He wished to indicate that the act\nbegun on earth was to be carried on and perpetuated in heaven--that\nthough parted from them, His outstretched arms would still plead for\nthem on the Throne. His _voice_ could no longer be heard--but His\nblessing still would continue to descend till He came again!\n\nWondrous close to a wondrous life! We have traversed in thought many\nother memorials of Bethany. We have stood by the gate where Martha met\nher Lord--the silent sepulchre which listened to the voice of\nOmnipotence--the holy home where friendship was realised such as earth\nnever before or since beheld. But surely not less sacred or hallowed\nthan any of these is the scene presented on the green ridge rising to\nthe west of the village, overlooking its groves of palm. Before\nsuperstition ventured to raise its cumbrous monument on the heights of\nOlivet, may we not think of the scene of the Ascension, rather in\nconnexion with three _living_ Temples? May we not think of it as oft and\nagain visited by Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus? May we not well imagine\nit would form a hallowed retirement for solemn meditation! Amid more\nsorrowful thoughts, connected with their Lord's absence from them, would\nthey not there often muse in holy joy over the now fulfilled prophetic\nstrains of their minstrel King?--\"Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast\nled captivity captive: Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, _for_ the\nrebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among _them_.\"[46]\n\nDo _we_ love also to linger in spirit on that spot, and listen to that\nbenediction?--\"Blessed,\" we read, \"are they that know the joyful sound.\"\nIn these words there is a beautiful allusion to the sound of the pendant\nbells on the vestment of the High Priest in the Jewish temple of old.\nWhen the assembled multitudes in the outer court heard their music\nwithin the holiest of all, it conveyed the assurance that the High\nPriest was there, actively engaged in his official duties--sprinkling\nthe Mercy Seat with blood, and pleading for the nation. They felt\n\"blessedness\" in hearing and _knowing_ \"that joyful sound.\" Beautiful\ntype of JESUS the Great High Priest within the veil! We seem, as we\nbehold Him standing on the crest of Olivet, to listen to the first note\nof these gladsome chimes. He leaves His Church proclaiming nothing but\nblessings. As He rises upwards, and the diminishing cloud recedes from\nsight, still the music of benediction seems to float on the calm\nmorning air. The Golden Bells are sounding--and though the celestial\nnotes cease, it is only distance which renders them inaudible. They are\nstill pendant at His Royal Priestly robes, telling us that still He\nintercedes! Oh, let us now hear His benediction! Let the comforting\nthought follow us wherever we go--\"_Jesus is pleading for me within the\nVeil._\" He left this world _blessing_--He is engaged in _blessing_\nstill. \"HE EVER LIVETH TO MAKE INTERCESSION FOR US.\"\n\n\n\n\nXXII.\n\nANGELIC COMFORTERS.\n\n\nThe Lord has ascended. The disciples are left alone in wondering\namazement. The bright cloud which formed His chariot had swept\nmajestically upwards--till (dimming on their view) the gates of heaven\nclosed on Him, who, a moment before, had been breathing upon them\nfarewell benedictions of peace and love. Are they to be left alone?\nTerrible must have been the feeling of solitude on that lone\nmountain-ridge, as the voice of mingled Omnipotence and Love was hushed\nfor all time. \"Alone, but yet _not_ alone!\" While their eyes are still\ndirected up to the spot where they got the last glimpse of the vanishing\ncloud--transfixed there in speechless Sorrow, lo! \"two men stood by them\nin shining vestures!\" The Saviour has departed; the sunshine of His own\nloving presence is gone--but He leaves them not unsolaced. The vision\nof the patriarch is again realised. When, like that weary pilgrim,\ndejected, disconsolate, and sad--a ladder of comfort is stretched down\nfrom the heaven on which they gaze, and \"the Angels of God are ascending\nand descending on it!\"\n\nAh! whenever the Lord removes one comfort, He is ready to supply\nanother. He Himself leaves His disciples--but no sooner _does_ He leave,\nthan Angels come and minister to them; and this is immediately followed\nby a mightier than Angelic Comforter--even the fulfilled promise of the\nHoly Spirit. \"If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you,\nbut if I depart, I will send Him unto you.\" How graciously does Jesus\nthus adapt Himself to the character and trials of His people! What\ncompensations He gives when they are suffering tribulation! One blessing\nis taken away--it is only that they may be brought more fully to value\nothers which remain. A beloved friend is removed by death--the household\nis saddened at the stroke--its aching hearts are smitten and withered\nlike the grass--but new spiritual consolations are imparted, unknown\nbefore--brighter manifestations of the Saviour's grace and mercy are\nvouchsafed--the Promises of God, like the ministering angels on Mount\nOlivet, are sent to hover around these stricken spirits. They are made\nto sing of \"mercy\" in the midst of \"judgment!\"\n\nIs Hagar in the desert? There is a fountain (though at first unseen) at\nher side! Is Elijah trembling in the dark cave of Horeb? There is a\n\"still small voice\" amid the long-drawn breath of the tempest, and\nearthquake, and storm;--\"The Lord is _there_!\" Be assured He will never\nleave nor forsake any that truly seek Him. To all desolate ones, who,\nlike the Olivet disciples, lift the steadfast eye of faith heavenwards,\nbending like them in the silent attitude of resignation and faith--God\nwill send comfort. He will have his angels ready to wipe weeping eyes\nand soothe sorrowful hearts.\n\nWe cannot grapple with this doctrine. We who are creatures of sense, who\nare cognisant through a corporeal organism only of what is tangible and\nmaterial, cannot grasp what relates to the immaterial, invisible,\nspiritual. We strive in vain to realise the truth of Angelic Beings\ncompassing our earthly path, joying with us in our joys--aiding us in\nour perplexities, and mingling their accents of comfort with us in our\nseasons of sorrow. But though mysteriously invisible, we believe there\nare hosts of these blessed messengers thronging around, profoundly\ninterested in all that concerns us--\"bearing us up in all our\nways\"--following us, as Jacob saw them, step by step up the ladder of\nsalvation, till we reach our thrones and our crowns! Angelic agency is\nno mere gorgeous dream of inspired poetry--no mere symbolic way of\nstating the doctrine of Divine Providence, and the peculiar care which\nGod takes of His Church and people. The Bible gives us too many positive\nstatements on the subject to permit a figurative interpretation. These\nbright and holy Beings are there represented as having witnessed all\nalong with profound interest the gradual unfolding of the plan of\nsalvation--from the hour when, at creation's birth, the morning stars\nsang together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy--onwards to the\neventful night when they met over the plains of Bethlehem and chanted a\nresponsive anthem at the advent of the Prince of Peace! Now that\nRedemption is completed--they have gathered once more on Olivet to form\na royal retinue to conduct their Lord to His crown--to summon the gates\nof Heaven to \"lift up their heads\" that \"the King of Glory may enter\nin.\" If God, in bringing in His first-begotten into the world, said,\n\"Let all the angels of God worship Him;\" much more, when His work is\ndone, and the moral Conqueror, laden with the spoils of victory, is\nabout to return to His throne, may we expect that \"the chariots of God\"\n(\"twenty thousand, even thousands of angels\") are waiting to grace His\ntriumph.\n\nNor were they merely employed on earth as His servants and attendants\nduring the period of His incarnation--leaving our world, when _He_ left\nit, to \"serve him day and night in His heavenly temple.\" A portion of\nthis glorious bodyguard we find now, at the hour of Ascension, left\nbehind to certify to the disciples and the Church in every age, that\nAngels were still to continue their loving watchfulness and interest\nover the Pilgrims in a Pilgrim world--still to be sent forth on errands\nof mercy to \"minister to them who are heirs of salvation!\"\n\nIs it the House of God--the gates of Zion--the Holy place of\nSolemnities? The scene now before us on Mount Olivet forms a miniature\npicture of what takes place Sabbath after Sabbath in every meeting of\nChristian disciples. As we are assembled like the apostles in our\nSanctuary--looking upwards to Heaven, there are glorious Spirits, we may\nwell believe, clustering around us--hovering in silence over our\nassembly--engaged, it may be, in unseen conflict with the emissaries of\nevil--assisting us in our prayers--joining with us in our\npraises--waiting to waft these upwards, and get them perfumed with the\nincense of the Saviour's merits.\n\nNor is it the Sanctuary alone they overshadow with their wings of light.\nThe lowliest homestead of the believer is oftentimes made a MAHANAIM (\"a\nHost\"). The dwellers in the world's thousand Bethany-homes of simple\nfaith and lowly love are \"entertaining angels unawares.\" In the hour of\nsickness they are there unseen to smooth our pillow. In the hour of\ndanger they are at hand to \"shut the lions' mouths.\" In the hour of\nbereavement they are employed bringing messages of solace from the\nIntercessor within the veil, and enabling us to \"glorify God in the\nfires.\" In the hour of death they are waiting to lend their wings to the\nImmortal tenant as it bursts its earthly coil. Oh, if the _return_ of\nthe Repentant Sinner be to them an hour of joyous jubilee;--if their\nsongs of triumph greet the Believer _justified_;--what must it be to\nexult over the gladsome consummation--the Believer _glorified_; to be\nengaged on the Great Day as Reapers at the ingathering of the sheaves\ninto the heavenly garner--throwing open, at the bidding of their Great\nLord, the Golden Portals that the ransomed millions may enter in!\n\n    \"Oh never, till the clouds of time\n       Have vanish'd from the ken of man,\n     And he from yonder heaven sublime\n       Look back where mystic life began,\n     Will gather'd saints in glory know\n     What blessings men to angels owe.\n\n    \"This earth is but a thorny wild,\n       A tangled maze where griefs abound,\n     By sorrow vex'd, by sin defiled,\n       Where foes and friends our walk surround;\n     But does not God in mercy say,\n     Angelic guardians line the way?\n\n    \"Sickness and woe perchance may have\n       Ethereal hosts whom none perceive,\n     Whose golden wings around us wave\n       When all alone men seem to grieve;\n     But while we sigh or shed the tear,\n     Their sympathies may linger near.\n\n    \"When gracious beams of holy light\n       From heaven's half-open'd portals play,\n     And from our scene of suffering night\n       Melts nigh its haunted gloom away;\n     Each doubt perchance some angel sees,\n     And hovers o'er our bended knees!\n\n    \"And when at length this wearied life\n       Of toil and danger breathes its last,\n     Or ere the flesh, with parting strife,\n       Is down to clay and coldness cast;\n     The struggling soul can learn the story,\n     How angels waft the blest to glory.\"[47]\n\nBut, after all, can Angels really impart comfort? They cannot. They are\nbut servants and delegates of a Mightier than they. Like all ministers\nand messengers, if they can dry a human tear and soothe a human sorrow,\nit is by pointing, not to themselves, but to their glorious and\nglorified Lord. What was their message now? Was it, \"We are come to\nsupply the place of your Ascended Redeemer--we are henceforth to be your\nappointed helpers--the objects of your faith, and hope, and confidence,\nin the house of your pilgrimage?\" No! The eyes of the disciples are\ngazing upwards and heavenwards. The Angels tell them not in anywise to\nalter the direction of their thoughts and affections. They are musing\n(as in vain they still wistfully look for any relic of the\nchariot-cloud) on \"_Jesus only_.\" They are to think of \"_Him only_\"\nstill! The Celestial Visitants seem to say, \"Ye men of Galilee, _we_\ncannot comfort you;--_we_ would prove but poor solaces and compensations\nfor the Adorable Saviour who has left you. _We_ come not to take His\nplace--but to speak to you still regarding Him. He has left you! but it\nis only for a season; and better than this, although He has left you, He\nloves you as much as ever. Even in that distant glory to which He has\nsped His way, His heart is unchanged and unchangeable--His name is\n'Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.'\"\n\nHere then was their first theme of comfort. It was the NAME of _Jesus_.\nThat \"name of their Lord\" was still to be their \"strong tower!\" Oh,\nthere is something touchingly beautiful about this angelic address. What\na simple but sublime antidote for these stricken Spirits, \"THAT SAME\nJESUS.\" \"That _same_ Jesus,\"--He who laid His infant head on the manger\nat Bethlehem--He who walked on the Sea of Tiberias, and hushed its angry\nwaves--He who spoke comfort to a stricken spirit at the well of Sychar,\nand at the gate of Nain--He who, in yonder palm-clad village sleeping in\nquiet loveliness at their feet, soothed the pangs of deeply afflicted\nhearts, and made death itself yield its prey--He who had first\nshed His tears and then His blood over the city He loved--He who\nso freely forgave, so meekly suffered, so willingly died! \"THAT\nSAME JESUS\" was still on High! The Brother's form was still there! The\nKinsman-Redeemer's sympathy was still there! Though all heaven was then\ndoing Him homage--though He had exchanged the chilling ingratitude of\nearth for the glories of an unsullied world of purity and love--yet\nnothing could blot out from His heart the names of those whom He had\nstill left for a little season behind, to be bearers of His cross before\nthey became sharers of His crown!\n\nWhat a comfort, amid all earth's vicissitudes and changes, this\nmotto-verse! _Earth may_ change. Since the Lord ascended, earth _has_\nchanged! There are \"Written rocks\"--manifold more than those of\nSinai--that bear engraven on their furrowed brows, \"The world passeth\naway.\" Ocean's old shores have transgressed their boundaries--kingdoms\nhave risen and fallen--thronging cities have sprung up amid desert\nwastes--and proud capitals have been levelled with the dust. _Friends_\nmay change; our very lot and circumstances, in spite of ourselves, may\nchange. Our fondly planned schemes and cherished hopes may vanish into\nthin air, and the _place_ that now knows us know us no more! But there\nis ONE that changeth not--a Rock which stands immutable amid all the\nceaseless heavings and commotions of this mortal life--and that Rock is\nChrist!\n\nHas he ever failed us? Ask the _tried_ Christian. Ask the _aged_\nChristian. That gray-haired believer may be like a solitary oak in the\nforest--all his compeers cut down--tempest after tempest has sighed and\nswept amid the branches--tree by tree has succumbed to the blast--there\nmay be nothing but wreck and ruin and devastation all around. Friend\nafter friend has departed; some have _altered_ towards him; kindness may\nhave given way to alien looks and estranged affection; others are\nremoved by _distance_--old familiar faces and scenes have given place to\nnew ones;--others have been called away to the silent grave--sleeping\nquiet and still in \"the narrow house appointed for all living.\" That\naged lonely Christian can clasp his withered hands, and exclaim, through\nhis tears, \"_But_ THOU art the same, and _Thy_ years shall have no end.\"\n\"Heart and flesh do faint and fail, but God is the strength of my heart,\nand my portion for ever.\"\n\n    \"My God, I thank thee, Thou dost care for me;\n     I am content rejoicing to go on,\n     Even when my home seems very far away;\n     And over grief, and aching emptiness,\n     And fading hopes a higher joy ariseth.\n     In nightliest hours one lonely spot is bright,\n     High over head, through folds and folds of space;\n     It is the earnest star of all my heavens,\n     And tremulous in the deep-well of my being,\n     Its image answers. * * * * I WILL THINK OF JESUS.\"[48]\n\nBut, in addition to the name and nature of Jesus--the Angels added a\npromise of comfort regarding Him. \"He shall _so come_ in like manner as\nye have seen Him go into heaven.\"[49] _Jesus shall come again!_\n\nWhen a beloved brother or friend whom we love is taken from us by death,\nhow cheered we are by the thought of rejoining him in a brighter and\nbetter world. Even in earthly separations, how cheering the prospect of\nthose severed by oceans and continents meeting once more in the\nflesh--the associations of youth renewed and perpetuated--and the\nlong-severed links of friendship welded and cemented again! What must\nbe, to the bereft and lonely Christian, the thought of being restored,\nand that _for ever_, to his long-absent Saviour? _Jesus shall come\nagain_!--it is the Church's \"blessed hope\"--the day when her weeds and\nrobes of ashen sorrow shall be laid for ever aside, and she shall \"enter\ninto the joy of her Lord?\" It is His return, too, in a glorified\nmanhood. That _same Jesus shall SO come_! Yes! \"_so_ come,\" in the very\nbody with which He bade the sorrowing eleven that sad, farewell! He left\nthem with His hands extended, and with blessings on His lips. He will\nreturn in the same attitude to greet His expectant Church, with the\nwords, \"Come, _ye blessed_ of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared\nfor you from the foundation of the world.\"\n\nAnd if it be a comforting thought, \"Jesus _still_ the _same_, now seated\non the Mediatorial throne,\"--equally comforting surely is the prospect\nthat it will be in all the unchanging and undying sympathies of His\nexalted humanity, that He will come again as Judge. \"God hath appointed\na day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by _that_ MAN\nwhom he hath ordained.\" He shall come, not arrayed in the stern\nmagnificence of Godhead! As we behold Him, we need not crouch in terror\nat His approach. _Humanity_ will soften the awe which Deity would\ninspire. We can rejoice with Job not only that our Kinsman Redeemer\n\"_liveth_,\" but that, _as_ our Kinsman Redeemer, \"He shall stand at the\nlatter day upon the earth!\"\n\n_Would_ that we more constantly lived under the realising power of this\nelevating thought--\"Soon my Lord will come!\" \"Of the times and the\nseasons ye need not that I write unto you.\" It is not for us to\ndogmatize on the unrevealed period of the \"glorious appearing.\" The\nmillennial trumpet may in all probability sound over our slumbering\ndust--the millennial sun shine on the turf which may for centuries have\ncovered our graves!--But _who_, on the other hand, dare venture to\nquestion the _possibility_ of the nearer alternative?--that the Judge\nmay be \"standing before the door\"--the shadow of the Advent Throne even\nnow projected on an unthinking and unbelieving world! \"He that _shall_\ncome _will_ come, and will not tarry!\"--Although it be true that\neighteen hundred years have elapsed since that utterance was made, and\nstill no gleam of the coming morning streaks the horizon--although the\ncalculations and longing expectations of the Church have hitherto only\nissued in successive disappointments, yet the hour _is_ nearing! As\ngrain by grain drops in Time's sand-glass, it gives new significance and\ntruthfulness to the Divine monition--\"Behold, I come quickly!\"\n\nAh! if He _may_ come _soon_--if He MUST come at some time, how shall I\nmeet Him? Will it be with joy? Am I shaping my course in life--my\nplans--my schemes--my wishes with what I feel would be in accordance\nwith His will? Am I conscious of doing nothing that would lead me to be\nashamed before Him at His coming? It would save many a perplexity--it\nwould soothe many a heart-ache, and dry many a tear--if we were to make\nthis great culminating event in the world's history, with all its\nelevating motives, more our guide and regulator than we do;--living each\nday, and _all_ our days, as if _possibly_ the very next hour might\ndisclose \"the sign of the Son of Man in the midst of the Heavens!\" Not\nbuilding our nests too fondly here--not too anxious to nestle in\ncreature comforts, but occupying faithfully the talents to be traded on\nwhich He has committed to our stewardship; straining the eye of faith,\nlike the mother of Sisera, for His approaching chariot; and amid our\ngriefs, and separations, and sorrows, listening to the sublime inspired\nantidote--\"Stablish your hearts, FOR _the coming of the Lord draweth\nnigh_.\"\n\nBlessed--glorious--happy day! And as His _first_ coming was terminated\nby His Ascension, so will there be a second Ascension at His _second_\nAdvent, with this important difference, however, that, as in the former,\nHe left His Church behind Him, orphaned and forlorn, to battle in a\nworld of sorrow and sin; in the other, not one unit among the rejoicing\nmyriads, bought with His blood, will He debar from sharing in the\nsplendour of His final entrance within the celestial gates. \"The Lord\nHimself shall descend from heaven with a shout--with the voice of the\narchangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise\nfirst. Then they who are alive and remain, shall be caught up together\nwith them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we\never be with the Lord.\"\n\n    \"We must not stand to gaze too long,\n       Though on unfolding heaven our gaze we bend;\n     When lost behind the bright angelic throng,\n       We see Christ's entering triumph slow ascend.\n\n    \"No fear but we shall soon behold,\n       Faster than now it fades, that gleam revive,\n     When issuing from his cloud of fiery gold,\n       Our wasted frames feel the true Sun and live.\n\n    \"Then shall we see Thee as Thou art,\n       For ever fix'd in no unfruitful gaze,\n     But such as lifts the new created heart\n       Age after age in worthier love and praise.\"\n\n\n\n\nXXIII.\n\nTHE DISCIPLES' RETURN.\n\n\nThe time has come when the disciples must leave the crest of Olivet and\nbend their steps once more to Jerusalem. Ah! most sorrowful\nthought--most sorrowful pilgrimage! Often, often had it been trodden\nbefore with their Lord's voice of love and power sounding in their ears.\nOften had it proved an Emmaus journey, when their hearts \"burned within\nthem as He talked to them by the way and opened unto them the\nScriptures.\" But He is gone!--that voice is now hushed--the well-loved\npath, worn by His blessed footsteps, and consecrated by His midnight\nprayers, must be trodden by them alone! Willingly, perhaps, like Peter,\non Tabor, would they have tarried on the spot where they last saw His\nhuman form, and listened to the music of His voice, just as we still\nlove to revisit some haunt of hallowed friendship and associate it with\nthe name and words and features of the departed. But they dare not\nlinger. As the disciples of this great and good Master, they dare not\nremain to indulge in mere sentimental grief, or in vain hopes and\nexpectations of a speedy return. Life is too short--their Apostolic work\ntoo solemn and momentous, to suffer them to consume their hours in\nunavailing sorrow. We may imagine them taking their last look upwards to\nheaven, and then bending a tearful eye down upon Bethany--its hallowed\nremembrances all the _more_ hallowed, that the vision is now about to\npass away for ever! The Angels, too, have sped away, and the eleven\npilgrims begin their solitary return back to the city and temple from\nwhich the _true_ Glory had indeed departed!\n\n_And how did they return?_ What were their feelings as they rose to\npursue their way? Had we not been told far otherwise, we should have\nimagined them to have been those of deep dejection. We should have\npictured to ourselves a weary, weeping, troubled band; their\ncountenances shaded with a sorrow too profound for words;--the joyous\nmelodies of that morning hour, all in sad contrast with those hearts\nwhich were bowed down with a bereavement unparalleled in its nature\nsince a weeping world was bedewed with tears! They were going too, as\n\"lambs in the midst of wolves,\" to the very city where, a few weeks\nbefore, their Lord had been crucified,--the disciples of a hated Master,\n\"not knowing the things that might befall _them_ there.\" Could we\nwonder, if for the moment these aching spirits should have surrendered\nthemselves to mingled feelings of disconsolate grief and terror. But\n_how different_! Sorrow indeed they _must_ have had; but if so, it was\ncounterbalanced and overborne by far other emotions; for of the\n_sorrow_, the Evangelist says _nothing_; the simple record of this\nmournful journey is in these words, \"They returned to Jerusalem WITH\nGREAT JOY.\" Most wonderful, and yet most true! Never did mourner return\nfrom a funeral scene--(from laying in the grave his nearest and\ndearest)--with a heavier sense of an overwhelming loss than did that\nwidowed orphaned band. And yet, lo! they are _joyful_! A sunshine is\nlighting up their faces. The \"Sun of their souls\" has set behind the\nworld's horizon. But though vanished from the eye of sense, His glory\nand radiance seem still to linger on their spirits, just as the orb of\nday gilds the lofty mountain-peaks long after his descent. They tread\nthe old footway with elastic step! As Gethsemane, and Kedron, and the\nTemple-path, are in succession skirted, while \"_sorrowful_, they are\nalway REJOICING.\" Why is this? It was God Himself fulfilling in their\nexperience His own promise, \"_As thy day is, so shall thy strength be._\"\nHe metes out strength IN the day of trial, and FOR the day of trial.\nWhen _we_ expect nothing but fainting and trembling, sadness and\ndespondency, He whispers His own promise, and makes it good, \"My grace\nis sufficient for thee; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.\"\n\nWho so faint as these disciples? Think of them in their by-past history,\ntossed on Gennesaret, cowering with dread in their vessel! Think of them\nin the Judgment-Hall of Pilate; think of them at the cross! Nothing\nthere but pusillanimity and cowardice. Nay, when our Lord had spoken to\nthem on a former occasion of this same departure, we read that \"_sorrow\nhad filled their hearts_.\" They could not bear the thought of so cruel\na severance from all they held dear: But see them now--when the sad hour\nhas come--lonely--unbefriended--their Lord hopelessly removed from the\n_eye of sense_; though but a few days before, they were traitors to\ntheir trust--unfaithful in their allegiance--bending, like bruised\nreeds, before the storm--behold them now, retraversing their way to\nJerusalem, not with sorrow, as we might expect, but _with joy_. The\nEvangelist even notes the extent and measure of the emotion. It was not\na mere effort to overbear their sorrow--an outward semblance of\nreconciliation to their hard fate--but it was a deep fountain of real\ngladness, welling up from their riven spirits. They returned, he tells\nus, with \"GREAT JOY!\"\n\nOh! the wonders of the _grace of God_. What grace _has_ done--what grace\n_can_ do! We speak not of it now under its manifold other and\ndiversified phases,--_converting_ grace, and _restraining_ grace, and\n_sanctifying_ grace, and _dying_ grace. Here we have to do only with\n_sustaining_ and _supporting_ grace. But how many Christian disciples,\nin their Olivets of sorrow, have been able to tell the same experience?\nHow often, when a believer is stricken down with sore affliction--when\nthe hand of death enters his family--when the treasured life of the\ndwelling is taken, and he feels in the anticipation of such a blow as if\nit would smite _him_, too, to the dust, and it were impossible to\nsurvive the prostration of all that links him to life--when the\ntremendous blow _comes_, lo! sustaining grace he never could have\n_dreamed_ of comes along with it. He rises _above_ his trial. Underneath\nhim are the Everlasting arms. \"The joy of the Lord is his strength!\" He\ntreads along life's lonely way _sorrowful_, yet with a \"song in the\nnight.\" Amid earth's separations and sadness, he hears the voice of\nJesus, saying, \"Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the\nworld.\"\n\nOh, trust that Grace still! It is the secret of your spiritual strength.\n\"Not I, not I, but the grace of God that is with me!\" You may have to\nconfront \"a great fight of afflictions;\" but that grace sustaining you,\nyou will be made \"more than conquerors.\" \"All men forsook me,\" said the\ngreat Apostle, \"_nevertheless_, the LORD stood with me, and strengthened\nme, and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.\" \"And God is able\nto make _all_ grace abound toward YOU; that ye, always having\n_all-sufficiency_ in _all things_, may abound to every good work.\" You\nhave found Him faithful in the past;--trust Him in the future. Cast all\nyour cares, and each care, as it arises, on Him, saying, in childlike\nfaith, \"Undertake Thou for me!\" Then, then, in your very night-seasons,\n\"His song will be with you.\" The Mount of your trial--the mournful,\ndesolate, solitary, rugged path you tread, will be carpeted with love,\nfringed with mercy, and earth's darkest future will grow bright as you\nlisten to a voice stealing from the upper sanctuary, \"I will come again\nand receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.\"\n\nIn this scene of the disciples returning to Jerusalem, we are presented\nwith the last picture of the Home of BETHANY. Here the earthly vision is\nsealed, and we are only left to imagine Martha, and Mary, and Lazarus,\nwhen the joyous footfall that had cheered their dwelling could be heard\nno more, living together in sacred harmony, exulting in \"the blessed\nhope, even the glorious appearing of the Great God their Saviour.\"[50]\n\nDid they live to survive the destruction of Jerusalem? Did they live to\nhear the tramp of the Roman legions resounding through their quiet\nhamlet, and \"the abomination of desolation,\" the imperial eagles\ndesecrating the hallowed ridges of Olivet? Did they often repair to the\nmeetings of the infant Church in Jerusalem, and delight to mingle with\nthe _under_ shepherds, when the \"_Chief_ Shepherd\" had gone? Or did the\nvenerable company of Apostles love to resort, as their Lord before them,\nto the old village of palm-trees, whose every memory was fragrant with\ntheir Master's name? All these, and similar questions, we cannot answer.\nThis we know and feel assured of--they are now gathered a holy and happy\nfamily in the true Bethany above--_there_ never more to listen to the\nvoice of weeping, or hear the tread of the funeral crowd, or the wail of\nthe Mourner!\n\nAnd soon, too, shall many of us (let us trust) be _there_, to meet them!\nBETHANY, we have seen, had alike its tears and its joys; so will it be\nwith every spot and every scene in this mingled world. But where the\nFamily of Bethany _now_ are, the motto is--\"NEVER _sorrowful_, ALWAY\n_rejoicing_!\" And, better than all, while they never can be severed\nfrom one another, they never can be separated from their Lord. He is no\nlonger now, as formerly at their earthly home, like \"a wayfaring man\nthat turneth aside to tarry for a night.\" No Olivet now to remind of\nfarewells. They are \"_with Him_,\" \"seeing Him as He is,\" and that \"for\never and ever!\"\n\nAnd if, meanwhile, regarding ourselves, the journey of life has for a\nlittle still to be traversed, and the battle of life still to be fought;\nblessed be God, \"we go not a warfare on our own charges.\" The same grace\nvouchsafed to the disciples is promised to _us_. _That grace_ will\nenable us to rise superior to all the vicissitudes and changes of the\njourney. Let us rise from our Olivet-ridge and be going; and though\ntraversing different footpaths to the same Home--be it ours, like the\ndisciples, to reach at last--a holy and happy company--the true Heavenly\nJerusalem--\"WITH GREAT JOY.\"\n\n\nTHE END.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n[1] _Bethany_ signifies literally \"_The house of dates_.\"\n\n[2] \"The _figs_ of Bethany\" are mentioned specially by the Rabbins as\nbeing subject to tithing.\n\n[3] Stanley's \"Sinai and Palestine.\"\n\n[4] Anderson.\n\n[5] Bartlett's \"Walks about Jerusalem.\"\n\n[6] Neander's \"Life of Christ.\"\n\n[7] \"What Mary fell short in words she made up in tears. She said less\nthan Martha, but wept more; and tears of devout affection have a voice,\na loud prevailing voice--no rhetoric like that.\"--MATTHEW HENRY.\n\n[8] _Note_.--See p. 173.\n\n[9] \"Within and Without.\"\n\n[10] John xi. 11.\n\n[11] John xi. 20.\n\n[12] John xi. 21.\n\n[13] John xi. 26.\n\n[14] John xi. 27.\n\n[15] John xi. 39.\n\n[16] John xi. 39.\n\n[17] John xi. 41.\n\n[18] Rev. iii. 5.\n\n[19] Rom. viii. 34.\n\n[20] John v. 29.\n\n[21] As the Jewish sabbath began at six o'clock on Friday evening, and\nlasted till six on Saturday evening, we may infer it was after the close\nof its sacred hours (at \"eventide\") He reached Bethany.\n\n[22] It is supposed to have been equivalent to L10 of our money.\n\n[23] Tennyson.\n\n[24] An excellent Christian poet has thus amplified this thought:--\n\n    \"Thou hast thy record in the monarch's hall,\n       And on the waters of the far mid sea;\n     And where the mighty mountain shadows fall,\n       The Alpine hamlet keeps a thought of thee.\n     Where'er, beneath some Oriental tree,\n       The Christian traveller rests--where'er the child\n     Looks upward from the English mother's knee,\n       With earnest eyes, in wond'ring reverence mild,\n     There art thou known. Where'er the Book of Light\n       Bears hope and healing, there, beyond all blight,\n     Is borne thy memory--and all praise above.\n       Oh! say what deed so lifted thy sweet name,\n     Mary! to that pure, silent place of fame?--\n       One lowly offering of exceeding love.\"\n\n[25] This was a common opinion among the Fathers of the Church.\n\n[26] Mark xi. 1-12.\n\n[27] Stanley's \"Sinai and Palestine,\" p. 188-191. A work of rare\ninterest, which condenses in one volume the literature of the Holy Land.\n\n[28] \"Christian Year.\"\n\n[29] Bethphage, _lit._ \"the house of figs.\"\n\n[30] Stanley, p. 418.\n\n[31] \"If the miracles generally have a symbolical import, we have in\nthis case one that is _entirely_ symbolical.\"--NEANDER.\n\n[32] \"Trench on the Miracles,\" p. 444. See a full exposition of the\ndesign and import of this miracle in this exhaustive and admirable\ndissertation.\n\n[33] \"The fig-tree, rich in foliage, but destitute of fruit, represents\nthe Jewish people, so abundant in outward shows of piety, but destitute\nof its reality. Their vital sap was squandered upon leaves. And as the\nfruitless tree, failing to realise the aim of its being, was destroyed,\nso the theocratic nation, for the same reason, was to be overtaken,\nafter long forbearance, by the judgments of God, and shut out from His\nkingdom.\"--NEANDER.\n\n[34] Psalm i. 3.\n\n[35] \"In that of the devils in the swine there was no punishment, but\nonly a permitting of the thing.\"--See \"Stier's Words of the Lord Jesus,\"\nvol. iii. p. 100.\n\n[36] Mark xi. 19.\n\n[37] \"Sinai and Palestine,\" p. 165.\n\n[38] \"On the wild uplands,\" says Mr Stanley, \"which immediately\noverhangs the village, He finally withdrew from the eyes of His\ndisciples, in a seclusion which, perhaps, could nowhere else be found so\nnear the stir of a mighty city, the long ridge of Olivet screening those\nhills, and those hills the village beneath them, from all sight or sound\nof the city behind; the view opening only on the wide waste of desert\nrocks, and ever-descending valleys, into the depths of the distant\nJordan and its mysterious lake. At this point the last interview took\nplace. He led them out as far as to Bethany. The appropriateness of the\nwhole scene presents a singular contrast to the inappropriateness of\nthat fixed by a later fancy, 'Seeking for a sign' on the broad top of\nthe mountain, out of sight of Bethany, and in full sight of Jerusalem,\nand thus an equal contradiction to the letter and the spirit of the\nGospel narrative.\"--P. 192.\n\nThe same writer, in another place (p. 450), says, \"Even if the\nevangelist had been less explicit in stating that He led them out 'as\nfar as to Bethany,' the secluded hills (that especially to which Tobler\nassigns the name of Djebel Sajach) which overhang that village on the\neastern slope of Olivet, are evidently as appropriate to the whole tenor\nof the narrative, as the startling, the almost offensive publicity of\nthe traditional spot, in the full view of the whole city of Jerusalem,\nis wholly inappropriate, and (in the absence, as it now appears, of even\ntraditional support) wholly untenable.\"\n\n[39] Acts i. 5.\n\n[40] Acts i. 8.\n\n[41] John xvi. 7.\n\n[42] John xvi. 14.\n\n[43] Acts i. 6, 7.\n\n[44] Acts i. 8.\n\n[45] Luke xxiv. 50.\n\n[46] Ps. lxviii. 18.\n\n[47] Montgomery.\n\n[48] \"Within and Without.\"\n\n[49] Acts i. 11.\n\n[50] Is it lawful to think of Bethany in connexion with the Church of\nthe Future? Are there no foreshadowed glories found in the pages of Holy\nWrit, which include this lowly village--gilding it with the beams of a\nMillennial Sun? Is it destined to remain as it now is--a wreck of\nvanished loveliness? and is the crested ridge above it, which was the\nscene of the great terminating event of the Incarnation, to be\nassociated with no other august displays of the Redeemer's power and\nmajesty? The following remarkable prediction occurs in the prophet\nZechariah:--\"_And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of\nOlives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives\nshall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west,\nand there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall\nremove toward the north, and half of it toward the south._\" Zech. xiv.\n4. Were we of the number of those--(perhaps some who read these\npages)--who look with firm and joyful confidence to the Personal Reign\nof the Redeemer on earth, and who in their code of interpretation\nregarding unfulfilled prophecy, espouse the literal in preference to the\nspiritual meaning, we might here have an inviting picture presented to\nus of the BETHANY of the future. The Mount of Olives, by some great\nphysical, or rather supernatural agency, is represented as heaving from\nits foundations, and parting in twain. The middle summit disappears. The\nremaining two form the steep sides of a new Valley, which, as it is\nspoken of as opening at Jerusalem (from Gethsemane), eastwards, the\nVista must necessarily terminate with BETHANY; thus connecting the two\nmost memorable spots associated with our Lord's humiliation. \"His feet\nshall stand in that day on the _Mount of Olives_.\"--The once lowly\nSaviour again \"stands\" in power and great glory on the very spot over\nBethany from which He formerly ascended. A new highway from the \"Village\nof Palms\" is made for His triumphal entrance to the Holy City, while the\nair resounds with the old welcome--\"Rejoice, O daughter of Zion, behold\nthy King cometh!\" If further we turn with the literalists to the\nmajestic Temple-Visions of Ezekiel, we find the front of the\nnewly-erected structure _facing up_ this valley; a new stream--(indeed a\nmighty river)--gushes down from the temple-colonnade, flowing through\nthe same gorge, and discharging its purifying waters into the Dead Sea.\n(Verse 8, and Ezekiel xlvii. 1-12; Joel iii. 18. The reader is referred\nto these passages in full.) From the geographical position, this river\nmust needs, in the course assigned to it, flow nigh to the restored\npalm-groves of _Bethany_--thus murmuring by scenes consecrated for\ncenturies by the footsteps and tears of a weeping Saviour.\n\nBut if we cannot participate in these gorgeous literal picturings, we\nare abundantly warranted to take the words of the Prophet as delineating\nthe glorious results of the future _restoration_ of the Jews to their\nown Jerusalem. We can think of the City of the Great King raised from\nher desolation, \"her walls salvation, and her gates praise.\" The\nMessiah, once rejected, now owned and welcomed--\"the children of Zion\njoyful in their King.\" We can think of the valley which is to divide the\nMount of _Olives_--(the mountain bedewed with the memory of the\nSaviour's _prayers_)--we can think of _that_ valley, and the stream\nwhich flows through it, as emblematic of spiritual blessings. \"Ask of\nMe,\" says God, addressing His adorable Son, \"and I will give Thee the\nheathen for thine inheritance.\" Is not the symbolic answer here given?\nThe Mountain where the Saviour so \"oft resorted\" to \"ask of His Father,\"\nis rent in sunder--every barrier to the progress of the truth is now\nswept away--the living stream of Gospel mercy issues from Zion (or\nrather, from Him who is the True Temple), that it may flow to the\nremotest nations of the earth! As it enters the bituminous waters of the\nAsphaltite Lake, it is represented as curing them of their bitterness\n(Ezek. xlvii. 8, 9); descriptive of the power of the Gospel, whose\nliving streams, like the symbolic \"leaves of the tree of life,\" are for\n\"the healing of the nations.\" Then shall the words of Isaiah be\nfulfilled, \"Every valley shall be exalted, and _every mountain and hill\nshall be made low_, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the\nrough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all\nflesh shall see it together.\" (Isa. xl. 4.) In the prophecy of\nZechariah, to which we have just referred, we are told that in that same\nhappy millennial period, the representatives of the world's nations will\ngo up \"year by year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep\n_the feast of Tabernacles_.\" (Zech. xiv. 16.) Who can tell but this may\nbe a literal revival of the old Hebrew festival, only invested with a\nnew Gospel and Christian meaning. \"This feast,\" says a gifted expositor,\n\"is the only unfulfilled one of the great feasts of Israel. _Passover_\nwas fulfilled at Christ's death, and _Pentecost_ at the outpouring of\nthe Spirit. But this feast represents the LORD _tabernacling with men_,\nand is only fulfilled when '_The Lord my God shall come, and all the\nsaints with Thee_.' On the Transfiguration-Hill, Peter, almost\nunwittingly, set forth this truth. He seemed to mean to say, 'Is not\nthis the true joy of the Feast of Tabernacles? Is not the Lord here?'\" If\nthis be so, we can think of the palm-groves of Bethany again bared of\ntheir branches;--these waved in triumph as a new and nobler \"Hosannah\"\nawakes the ancient echoes of Olivet--\"Blessed is He that cometh in the\nname of the Lord!\" As the regenerated children of Abraham build up the\nwaste places in and around Zion, which for ages have been \"without\ninhabitant,\" and whose names are still dear to them--think we, amid\nother scenes of hallowed interest, they will not love oftentimes to take\nthe old \"Sabbath-day's journey\" to the site of \"the Home of Mary and her\nsister Martha.\" While seated nigh the reputed burial-place, with the\nGospel in their hands, reading, through their tears, the story of their\nfathers' impenitency, and of their Saviour's compassion and sympathy at\nthe grave of His friend, will not a new and impressive truthfulness\ninvest one of the old Bethany utterances, \"THEN said the Jews, Behold\nhow He loved him!\"\n\nBut these, after all, are merely speculative thoughts, on which we can\nbuild nothing. We have in these \"Memories\" to deal with the Bethany of\nthe _past_, not with the imagined Bethany of the _future_. However\npleasing, in connexion with the Honoured Village, these thoughts of a\nMillennial day may be, \"nevertheless WE, according to His promise,\nrather look for _new_ Heavens and a _new_ Earth, wherein dwelleth\nrighteousness.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nTRANSCRIBER'S NOTES\n\n\nPage numbers refer to the original text.\nFootnote numbers refer to this transcribed version.\n\nTitle page: Added missing quotation mark.\n\np6: Retained spelling of \"Perea\" in text, and \"Peraean\" in quotation.\n\np58: Hyphen added to \"death-bed\" for consistency.\n\np119: Replaced \"he\" (referring to Jesus) with \"He\" twice.\n\np188: Hyphen retained in \"child-like\" in quoted poem.\n\np220: Inconsistent capitalisation of \"Hosannahs\" retained.\n\np248: Used single quotes to clarify quotation within speech.\n\nFootnote 8 (referenced on p24): Missing full stop added.\n\nFor consistency, various ellipses have been rendered as \"...\"","title":"Memories of Bethany","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":51730}