Memories of Bethany Part 5

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

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

The probability, therefore, is that Martha, had never yet seen that arm of Omnipotence bared, or witnessed those prodigies with which elsewhere He authenticated His claims to Divinity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

X.

THE MASTER.

Martha can withhold no longer from her sister the joyful tidings which she has been the first to hear. With fleet foot she hastens back to the house with the announcement, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee."

Mary hears, but makes no comment. Wrapt in the silence of her own meditative grief, "when she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto Him."

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

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

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

little did they know how much n.o.bler was her motive--how truer and grander the solace she sought and found.

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

Such, however, was not Mary's errand in leaving the chamber of bereavement. That drooping flower was not opening her leaves, only to be crushed afresh with new tear-floods of sorrow. She sought _One_ who would disengage her soiled and shattered tendrils from the chill comforts of earth, and bathe them in the genial influences of Heaven.

The music of her Master's name alone could put gladness into her heart--tempt her to m.u.f.fle other conflicting feelings and hasten to His feet. "_The Master is come!_" Nothing could have roused her from her profound grief but this. While her poor earthly comforters are imagining her prostrate at the sepulchre's mouth, giving vent to the wild delirium of her young grief, she is away, not to the victim of death, but to the Lord of Life, either to tell to Him the tale of her woe, or else to listen from His lips to words of comfort no other comforter had given.

Is there not the same music in that name--the same solace and joy in that presence still? Earthly sympathy is not to be despised; nay, when death has entered a household, taken the dearest and the best and laid them in the tomb, nothing is more soothing to the wounded, crushed, and broken one, than to experience the genial sympathy of true Christian friendship. Those, it may be, little known before (comparative strangers), touched with the story of a neighbour's sorrow, come to offer their tribute of condolence, and to "weep with those that weep."

Never is _true_ friendship so tested as then. Hollow attachments, which have nothing but the world or a time of prosperity to bind them, discover their worthlessness. "Summer friends" stand aloof--they have little patience for the sadness of sorrow's countenance and the funereal trappings of the death-chamber; while sympathy, based on lofty Christian principle, loves to minister as a subordinate healer of the broken-hearted, and to indulge in a hundred nameless ingenious offices of kindness and love.

_But_ "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." The purest and n.o.blest and most disinterested of earthly friends can only go a certain way.

Their minds and sympathies are limited. They cannot enter into the deep recesses of the smitten heart--the yawning crevices that bereavement has laid bare. _But_ JESUS _can_! Ah! there are capacities and sensibilities in that Mighty Heart that can probe the deepest wound and gauge the profoundest sorrow. While from the _best_ of earthly comforters the mind turns away unsatisfied; while the burial-ground and the grave only recall the deep humiliations of the body's wreck and ruin--with what fond emotion does the spirit, like Mary, turn to Him who possesses the majesty of Deity with all the tenderness of humanity. The Mighty Lord, and yet the Elder Brother!

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

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

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

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

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

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

XI.

SECOND CAUSES.

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

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

_His_ friend and _our_ brother is locked in sleep too deep to be disturbed."

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

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

"IF _Thou_ hadst been here!" Can we, _dare_ we doubt it? Is the departure of the immortal soul to the spirit-world so trivial a matter that the life-giving G.o.d takes no cognisance of it? No! Mourning one, in the deep night of thy sorrow, thou must rise above "untoward coincidences"--thou must cancel the words "accident" and "fate" from thy vocabulary of trial. G.o.d, _thy_ G.o.d, was _there_! If there _be_ perplexing accompaniments, be a.s.sured they were of _His_ permitting; all was planned--wisely, kindly planned. Question not the unerring rect.i.tude of His dealings. Though _apparently_ absent, He was _really_ present.

The apparent veiling of His countenance is only what Cowper calls "the severer aspect of His love." Kiss the rod that smites--adore the hand that lays low. Pillow thy head on that simple, yet grandest source of composure--"_The Lord reigneth!_" It is not for us to venture to dictate what the procedure of infinite love and wisdom should be. To our dim and distorted views of things, it might have been more for the glory of G.o.d and the Church's good, if the "beautiful bird of light" had still "sat with its folded wings" ere it sped to nestle in the eaves of Heaven. But if its earthly song has been early hushed; if those full of promise have been allowed rather to fall asleep in Jesus, "Even so, Father; for it seems good in Thy sight!" It was from no want of power or ability on G.o.d's part that they were not recalled from the gates of death. "We will be dumb--we will open not our mouths, because _Thou_ didst it."

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

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

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

"We sadly watch'd the close of all, Life balanced in a breath; We saw upon his features fall The awful shade of death.

All dark and desolate we were; And murmuring nature cried-- 'Oh! surely, Lord! hadst _Thou_ been here Our brother had not died!'

"But when its glance the memory cast On all that grace had done; And thought of life's long warfare pa.s.s'd, And endless victory won.

Then faith prevailing, wiped the tear, And looking upward, cried-- 'O Lord! Thou surely _hast_ been here, Our brother has _not_ died!'"

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

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

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