The Gospel of St. John Part 13

would have been to deceive them, unless He showed them what the Christ was, unless He made them understand that He was in nearly all respects unlike the Christ they had imagined for themselves. 'May we not then, after His example, avoid direct answers? May we not use expressions which people call ambiguous?' Yes, if the answers we give are more perilous to ourselves than those we avoid, as His were; if the expressions that are _called_ ambiguous bring the hearers more face to face with facts, than those which are called straight. This is our Lord's example. Let all who dare follow it.

'_Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me. But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. I and my Father are one._'

He had told them that He had come from the Father; He had testified by acts what His Father was. He had shown them that the Father was working for them on common days and Sabbath-days to bless them. This act had begotten no faith in them; would the words, '_I am the Christ_,' beget faith in them? Neither words nor acts, so long as they were not seeking as sheep for the true Shepherd. He had said to them before, that instead of looking for a shepherd who should point the way to them and the humblest Israelite,--who should fold them together,--they were aspiring to be independent shepherds; they were refusing to enter by the same door as the sheep. Those who were sheep,--those who needed a shepherd,--would own His voice. They did not want Him to tell them that He was the Christ. A sure and divine instinct would tell them, that He who gave up Himself, He who entered into their death, must be the guide they were created to follow,--that there could be no other. And He would justify their confidence. They were longing for life,--for the life of spirits,--for the life of G.o.d; nothing less would satisfy them. He would give them that life,--that eternal life of love, in which He had dwelt with the Father. They were surrounded by enemies who were seeking to rob them of life, to draw them into death. He was stronger than these enemies. They should not perish; neither man nor devil should take them out of His hands. The eternal will which He came to fulfil was on their side. _The Father who gave them to Him was greater than all._ Those who were seeking to separate them from their Lord and Shepherd were at war with this Father; for He had owned them, they were His.

To this mighty declaration all His discourse concerning the sheep and the shepherd has been tending; but at the ground of it lies a mightier still: '_I and my Father are one_.' All that He has been teaching is without foundation, if it has not this foundation. The unity of the Father and the Son is the only ground of the unity between the shepherd and the sheep; undermine one, and you undermine both. And when I say this, I mean you undermine all unity among men, all the order and principles of human society. For if these do not rest upon certain temporary conventions; if they have not been devised to facilitate the exchange of commodities, and the operations of the money market; if there is not a lie at the root of all fellowship and all government, which will be detected one day, and which popular rage or the swords of armed men will cut in pieces;--we must recognise, at last, the spiritual const.i.tution of men in one Head and Shepherd, who rules those wills which every other power has failed and shall fail to rule. We must recognise it. The existence of a Christendom either means _this_,--either affirms that such a const.i.tution is, and that national unity and family unity imply it, and depend upon it;--or it means nothing, and will dissolve into a collection of sects and parties, which will become so intolerable to men, and so hateful to G.o.d, that He will sweep them from His earth. Do you think sects would last now for an hour, if there was not in the heart of each of them a witness for a fellowship, which combinations and shibboleths did not create, and which, thanks be to G.o.d, they cannot destroy? The true Shepherd makes His voice to be heard, through all the noise and clatter of earthly shepherds; the sheep hear that voice, and know that it is calling them to follow Him into a common fold where all may rest and dwell together. And when once they understand that still deeper message which He is uttering here, and which the old creeds of Christendom are repeating to us, '_I and my Father are one_;' whenever they understand that the unity of the Church and the unity of mankind depends on this eternal distinction and unity in G.o.d Himself, and not upon the authority or decrees of any mortal pastor, the sects will crumble to pieces, and there will be, in very deed, '_one flock and one Shepherd_.'

But, that we may enter thoroughly and deeply into the meaning of these words, we should meditate earnestly upon those which followed them, those especially in which our Lord justified what the Jews declared to be blasphemy. '_Then the Jews took up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, Many good works have I shewed you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me? The Jews answered Him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself G.o.d. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are G.o.ds? If he called them G.o.ds, unto whom the word of G.o.d came, and the scripture cannot be broken; say ye of Him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of G.o.d? If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in Him._'

We are eager to quote these words of Jesus, as a proof that He is G.o.d.

I fear that, very often, we only mean, _that He took to Himself the name of G.o.d_. We a.s.sociate with that name a certain idea of power and absoluteness; we believe that He vindicated that power and absoluteness to Himself. No, brethren. He came--if we may believe His own words--to show us what G.o.d is; to deliver us from our crude, earthly, dark notions of Him; to prevent us from identifying His nature with mere power and sovereignty, as the heathens did, as the Jews in that day were doing. He came to show us the Father. Instead, therefore, of eagerly grasping at the divine name, and appropriating it to Himself, the method which He takes of proving His unity with the Father is, to humble Himself, to identify Himself with men, to refuse to be separate from them. 'You charge me with calling myself G.o.d.

"_But did not he call them G.o.ds, to whom the word of G.o.d came?_"' We are startled at the defence. We ask ourselves whether He was not abandoning the very claim which He had put forward; whether He was not allowing others to share the incommunicable glory with Him? No! but He was showing that a dignity and a glory had been put upon men by the word of G.o.d itself, which proved that there must be a Son of Man who was indeed the Son of G.o.d.

It was not only heathen sages who had spoken of man's divine faculties, divine origin, divine destiny. The Scriptures had called those whom G.o.d had set over men, G.o.ds. Psalmists, who were most jealous for the honour of Jehovah, had not feared to use the language.

Prophets could not maintain the truth of their own mission--could not declare that the word of G.o.d was speaking by them and in them--without falling into it. There _was_ the greatest peril of men becoming Lucifers,--of their setting themselves up in the place of G.o.d. It is the very danger of which Christ has been speaking in this discourse,--the temptation into which kings, prophets, priests,--even teachers who pretended to no inspiration, who merely stood on the ground of their traditional greatness, or of men's preference for them,--had fallen. Nor was there any deliverance from such pretensions, and from the robberies and murders which were the consequence of them, unless One came who did not exalt Himself, who did the works of His Father, who simply glorified Him. Such a One could justify all the high words that had ever been spoken of our race, and yet could lay low the pride of those who had aspired to be the lords of it. He could show what the true man is; and, in doing so, could show what the true G.o.d is. By putting Himself into the position of the lowest of the sheep, by enduring the death to which each one of the sheep had been subjected, He could prove that the glory of man is to serve; He could show that the true sons of G.o.d had been the true servants of men; He could show that the perfect servant of all must be _the_ Son of G.o.d. All t.i.tles, honours, dignities among men, had derived their virtue and efficacy from Him. Their virtue and efficacy lay in His Sonship. He was content to be a Son, to be nothing else than a Son. So He showed forth His eternal consubstantial union with the Father. If G.o.d is merely absolute Power, then all this Christian theology is a dream and a falsehood,--then there is no Son of G.o.d or Son of Man, in any real sense of the words. But if G.o.d is absolute Love, then He who died for the sheep must be His perfect image and likeness, the '_only-begotten, full of grace and truth_;' then to separate Him from the Father, to seek for the Father in any but Him, must lead to the denial of both, ultimately to the glorification of an evil spirit, a being of absolute selfishness, in place of both. From which frightful consummation, brethren, may the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the one G.o.d, whose name is Love, preserve us and His whole Church!

DISCOURSE XX.

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.

[Lincoln's Inn, 4th Sunday after Trinity, June 15th, 1856.]

ST. JOHN XI. 25.

_Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live._

The words, '_I and my Father are one_;' '_The Father is in me and I in Him_,' which were spoken in the porch of the Temple at the feast of Dedication, had the same effect as the words, '_Before Abraham was, I am_,' which were spoken after the feast of Tabernacles. In both cases the Jews sought to take Jesus that they might stone Him; in both Jesus escaped out of their hands. On the last occasion we are told whither He retired: '_He went away again beyond Jordan into the place where John at first baptized, and there He abode_.' The disciples who had been with Him in the crowd of the city found themselves in the lonely place where they had first heard Him proclaimed as the Lamb of G.o.d.

Since that time there had been a whirl of new thoughts and strange hopes in their minds. The kingdom of G.o.d had appeared to be indeed at hand; they had seen their Master exercising the powers of it; they had exercised those powers themselves. Some day His throne would be established; they should sit beside Him. The vision had pa.s.sed away; they were the companions of a fugitive; they were in the desert where they had first learned, not that they were princes to sit and judge, but sinners wanting a Deliverer.

I cannot doubt that He who was educating them, not only by His speech but by all His acts, had devised this lesson for them, that it was just what they needed at that time. How often do we all need just such a discipline; the return to some old haunt that some past experience has hallowed; the return to that experience which we seem to have left far behind us, that we may compare it with what we have gone through since! How good it would be for us if when circ.u.mstances take us back to the past, we believed that the Son of Man had ordered those circ.u.mstances, and was Himself with us to draw the blessing out of them!

Others beside the disciples were profiting, the Evangelist tells us, by this choice of a place. '_And many resorted unto Him, and said, John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this Man were true._' They had perhaps contrasted John the preacher in the wilderness, with Jesus who ate with publicans and sinners; John, who said, Repent, with Jesus, who opened the eyes of the blind. Now they were reminded of the likeness between them. Jesus drew them away from earthly things, as John had done. Jesus made them conscious of a light shining into them, as John had done. Only what John had said was true.

They needed a baptism of the Spirit, that the baptism for the remission of sins might not be in vain. They needed a Lamb of G.o.d and a Son of G.o.d, who should do for them what no miracles could do. Was He not here? '_And many believed on Him there._'

I can conceive no diviner introduction than this to the story of the raising of Lazarus. It prepares us to understand that what we are about to hear of, is not one of those signs which Jesus rebuked His countrymen as sinful and adulterous for desiring; not one of those wonders which draw men away from the invisible to the visible,--from the object of faith to an object of sight; but just the reverse of this,--a witness that what _John spake of Jesus was true_,--a witness that in Him was Life, and that this Life always had been, was then, and always would be, the Life as well as the Light of men. With what care the story is related so that it shall leave this impression on our minds--how all those incidents contribute to it which would have been pa.s.sed over by a reporter of miracles, nay, which would have been rejected by him as commonplace, and therefore as interfering with his object--I shall hope to point out as we proceed. And I would thankfully acknowledge at the outset, that, on the whole, the mind of Christendom has responded to the intention of the divine narrator; that whatever scholars and divines may have made of the story, the people have apprehended its human and domestic characteristics, and have refused to be cheated of its application to themselves under the pretext that it would serve better as an evidence for Christianity if its meaning were limited to one age. I am still more thankful that the Church, by adopting the words of my text into her Burial Service, has sanctified this rebellion. An attempt, therefore, to discover the exact meaning of the Evangelist will not introduce novelties, but will deepen old faith. And I cannot help feeling that unless we do seek to deepen that faith, unless we are willing to learn again from St. John some of the lessons which we may think we know very perfectly, or have left behind us in our nurseries, we shall find that we have less of belief than many Jews and many heathens had before our Lord came in the flesh.

'_Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)_' The story of Mary and the alabaster box of ointment has not yet been told by our Evangelist. But he had too distinct and high an object to care for preserving the conventional proprieties of a narrator. He never pretended to be giving those who read him their first information about the events that happened while our Lord was upon earth. Their memories, he knew, were stored with these events.

What they wanted was to see further into the meaning of them; to see how they exhibited the life of the Son of Man and the Son of G.o.d. He will tell us afterwards what is the context and significance of Mary's act. Here he a.s.sumes that it was known at Ephesus,--as it was to be known wherever the Gospel was preached,--and he uses it to identify Lazarus. But how could Lazarus need to be identified? Must not his name and his fame have been spread as widely as his sister's? Was any other more likely to be preserved in the first century, by tradition, if not by record? The answer is contained in the narrative. Lazarus, as a man who had been in a grave and had come forth out of it, might be spoken of then as he is spoken of now. A glorious halo might surround him. It would be shocking to connect him with ordinary feelings and interests. A like halo would encircle her head who had anointed the Lord's body for the burial. Men would refuse to look upon her as one of the common children of earth. It was just this which John dared to do, which it was essential to his purpose that he should do. He would have us know that Mary dwelt in the little town of Bethany; that she had a sister Martha; that Lazarus was her brother.

The story is stripped of its fantastical ornaments. The hero and heroine have pa.s.sed into the brother and sister. If they have to do with an unseen world, it is not with a world of dreams, but of realities; not with a heaven that scorns the earth, but with a heaven that has entered into fellowship with earth.

'_Therefore his sisters sent unto Him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick._' The man who was healed at the Pool of Bethesda, the blind man who was sent to wash in the Pool of Siloam, were merely suffering Jews; the bread at Capernaum was given to five thousand men gathered indiscriminately; the n.o.bleman of Capernaum seems to have heard for the first time of Jesus; the guests at the marriage-feast may have been His neighbours, or even His kinsmen, but we are not told that they were. This message is the first which directly appeals to the private affection of the Son of Man, which calls Him to help a friend because he is a friend. The words which follow of our Lord and of His Apostle are worthy of all study in reference to this point.

'_When Jesus heard that, He said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of G.o.d, that the Son of G.o.d might be glorified thereby.

Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was._' He had a work to do. This was the first thought of all. The sickness was to glorify G.o.d, just as the blindness of the man to whom He restored sight was to glorify G.o.d. The Son of G.o.d who had been revealed as the Light of the world, was to be revealed as the Restorer of life. Death was not to be conqueror here, any more than darkness there. All other thoughts must give way to this. Yet '_Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus_.' The individual sympathy was not crushed by the universal, but grew and expanded in the light and warmth of it. He did respond to the message in His inmost heart.

The love which it a.s.sumed to be there--the love for that particular man--was there. And in spite of it, yea, because of it, He continued in the desert, and made no sign of moving towards Bethany. These sentences enable us to enter into the Divine humanity of Jesus, as a thousand prelections and discourses would not enable us to enter into it. They do not present to us first the Divine side of His life, and then the human, as if they were opposing aspects of the same Being.

They make us feel that the one is the only medium through which we can behold the other.

'_Then after that He saith to His disciples, Let us go into Judaea again. His disciples say unto Him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of the world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him._' I suppose many persons have asked themselves, 'What does this sentence mean just here? why was it introduced?' I do not know that we, who are living easy and comfortable lives, can quite solve the question. But many a patriot and confessor, who has been concealing himself from the anger of those whom he wished to bless, has, I doubt not, learnt the meaning of the sentence, and has felt the support of it. If he tried to rush forth into danger, merely in obedience to some instinct or pa.s.sion of his own, he was walking in the night, and was sure to stumble. If he heard a voice in his conscience bidding him go and do some work for G.o.d,--go and aid some suffering friend,--he would be walking in a track of light; it signified not what enemies might be awaiting him, what stones might be cast at him, he could move on fearlessly and safely. The sun was in the heavens,--the stones would miss until his hour was come. If it was come, the sooner they struck the better.

'_These things said He: and after that He saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said His disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that He had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless let us go unto him. Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him._' These words, '_Our friend sleepeth_,' recal what was said, in the other Gospels, of the daughter of Jairus; and they point onwards to the language of the Epistles to the Thessalonians and to the Corinthians, concerning those that are fallen asleep in Jesus. Our Lord is evidently teaching His disciples a new language; a language drawn from nature and experience; one which had mixed itself with other forms of speech in the dialect of all nations; but yet which was not easy for them to learn, and which we understand very imperfectly yet. It might not help them much then, but it helped them afterwards, that He did not speak merely of a man having fallen asleep, but of '_our friend_' sleeping. They might not have seen Lazarus for weeks or months, or heard any tidings of him. All the outward tokens by which the existence of friendship is ascertained, might have ceased.

They might never meet again. Would, therefore, the name lose its meaning or its power? What limit would you fix for that meaning or that power? Surely there is something immortal about the name; it prepares us for understanding how thin the thread is which separates death from taking of rest in sleep. The words, '_I go to awake him out of sleep_,' could, of course, convey little sense till the event interpreted them. But the expression, '_Nevertheless let us go to him_,' must have had a strange sound. 'Go to one who was already dead,--what could that mean? What did it all mean?' Thomas, the greatest doubter among them, a.s.suredly could not tell. But he was willing to die with his Master; and that was the best preparation for understanding whatever He had to teach.

'_Then when Jesus came, He found that he had lain in the grave four days already._' The commentator takes this opportunity of saying a word about Eastern customs, and the need of a burial immediately after death. Does he suppose that that necessity makes the story less near and dear to the sorrower of the West? The longer he is permitted to look at a face which appears often as if it had lost its restlessness,--not its beauty or its life,--the more dark and terrible must be the grave which is to hide it from him altogether, the more earnestly he must ask, Can light ever penetrate into that darkness? It is because the story of Lazarus has been believed to meet this question; because it comes into contact with the fact which speaks most directly to the senses and to the imagination of every one of us, that we cling to it when the topics of ordinary consolation are wearisome, unintelligible, even hateful, to us.

By such topics the sisters of Lazarus were tormented; for St. John says,--'_Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off: and many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother_.' They endure the visitation impatiently or patiently, according to their different dispositions. '_Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him: but Mary sat still in the house._' The impulse of the first is to find a Friend to whom she can dare to make complaints, because she trusts Him; the other retreats into herself, and, perhaps, finds that same Friend there, teaching her another kind of lore than that which the well-meaning comforters are pouring into her ear.

'_Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died._' It is the language of reproach; but it is the kind of reproach which has faith and confidence for the ground of it,--which comes from a longing that the person who is the object of it should clear himself, and prove that he has not failed in the office of friendship, however he may have seemed to do so. And then, as if His face had already answered the uneasy suspicion which her words had expressed--had given her a hope of some unknown, inconceivable blessing--she adds, '_But I know that even now, whatsoever thou shalt ask of G.o.d, G.o.d will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again._' The words sound grand and glorious; they were really disappointing. What else she thought He might ask of G.o.d she could not say; but it was not _this_. She had heard often of a resurrection; the Jews, who had come to Bethany, had, no doubt, been telling her many good discourses of the elders concerning it. Ages hence he would, she thought, awake out of the dust; in the meantime, the light in their house had been quenched; he was gone from them. She said, '_I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live._' If He intended to give back Lazarus to her at once, could He not have told her so? Might He not have said, 'In thy special case, for my love to Lazarus and Mary and thee, I am about to break through ordinary laws, and to raise a body out of the grave,--not at the last day, but now.' Why not? Because, if He had said so, He would have contradicted His own words, His own acts, the whole tenor of His life. He did not come into the world to show special favours, but to a.s.sert and manifest universal truth. He did not come into the world to break G.o.d's laws, but to establish them, and to show forth the will which was at the foundation of them.

Therefore, instead of limiting Martha's words about a resurrection in the last day, He expanded her words,--He uttered what was a _more_ general proposition than that one,--not bounded to a certain moment in the future, but extending over the present and the past. The resurrection in the last day,--vague and loose as Martha's thoughts were about it,--was still practically bounded by the feeling which occupied her soul in that hour. 'I know that _my brother_ shall rise again,' did not mean very much to her; the rising of any besides her brother meant nothing. But '_I am the resurrection and the life_,'

were words that applied to herself as much as to Lazarus,--to her sister as much as to either. She could not apprehend them, even in the slightest degree, without feeling that they were spoken of _human_ beings,--not merely of that being who had been lying in the grave four days. And yet how immeasurably more they met her own case, her own sorrow, than the others! '_I am the resurrection and the life._' 'You have a Friend, an almighty Friend, who restores life, who is the Giver of life. Do not task your poor, feeble, sorrow-stricken fancy to conceive of some distant world-gathering. There may be such a one; but, if you are to know anything of it, know Me first. Trust in an actual person; leave yourself and the world to Him.' And He went on: '_He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die_.' I do not say that she could understand this, or that we can. But I am sure she did understand that she was meant to believe in Him--to rest in Him; and that this belief and this rest might be exercised, not only by those who could look into His countenance and hear sounds coming from His lips, but by those who were out of sight,--who had pa.s.sed into the unseen world. The dead might hear His word speaking to them. The dead might believe in Him. The dead might be quickened by that word and that faith. Therefore, when He asked her the question, '_Believest thou this?_'--though she could not dare to say, 'I believe it all; I take it in just as Thou hast spoken it,'--she could say, '_Yea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of G.o.d, which should come into the world_.' She could trust absolutely, unreservedly in Himself, whatever His language might or might not import.

'_And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly, and came to Him._'

Martha went into a presence which she felt to be dear, with a confidence that she should be welcome, with a certain sense that she had a right to speak; Mary must wait in silence and awe till she had some intimation that He was seeking for her. This difference of characters is as marked in the nineteenth century as in the first; it affects all the common subordinate relations of life; it reaches to the highest and most divine. Each has its own worth, and its own temptations. We have no business to disparage either; for Christ has imparted both, and has made each a way to Himself.

'_Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in that place where Martha met Him. The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary, that she rose up hastily and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there. Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died._'

The good-natured comforters can give their victim no peace,--even the grave is not too sacred a place for their persecutions; her only safety is where her sister had sought it and found it. The words Mary uses are the same as Martha's; they are the simplest expressions of the thought which must have been in both of them,--the thought which each must have understood the other to be vexed with, if nothing was spoken,--the thought which Martha will have been able to utter, and which Mary will probably have kept closed within her till that moment.

And is there anything in that thought to make a chasm between the household in Bethany, and any English household in the nineteenth century? Is not the feeling the very same, in the heart of every one who has lost a friend or brother? 'He might have been saved; Christ might have ordered this differently. In this and in that case He did; why not in mine?'

'_When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see.

Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him! And some of them said, Could not this Man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?_' The strength of these words, which has been so great for those who have taken them simply and naturally, has often been diluted. 'What need had He to weep, seeing that He was about to remove the cause for weeping?' But what if that grief of Mary was in kind the grief of every sister that had lost a brother, since death entered into the world,--of every sister who shall lose one, till death be finally swallowed up in victory? What if the grief of those about her, though less earnest, yet was at least a testimony that each of us has a share and a right in that which any other is afflicted with? Would the Son of Man, who had taken man's flesh, who had entered into man's sorrows, sympathise less with her who was beside Him then, because He knew the depth and cause of her grief better than she knew it herself; because He knew that it could not be cured by the smile of a brother, or the pressure of his hand, if that were granted her again; because He knew in Himself the mystery of the death of every man, and was to bear it Himself for every man? Surely it would have been a woful thing for us, and for the world, if He had not groaned in spirit at the sight of that cave, merely because Lazarus was to come out of it; if He had not wept when He saw Mary and the Jews weep, merely because a sudden joy was to succeed their tears! And was it not a cause for groaning, that those who saw how minute, and tender, and personal His affection was for this one man, should take so poor a measure of His love as to suppose that He cared for him, and not for them,--for Mary and Martha, and not for every human sorrower,--that He might from partiality have caused that this man should not have died, but had no power of delivering all from death?

'_Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of G.o.d?_'

He had said to her, '_Thy brother shall rise again_.' He changes the language now, that He may convey a deeper sense. It was G.o.d's glory that was to be revealed in that act. Hereafter she would know how much more it concerned her, and her sister, and her brother, that Jesus should manifest that, than that He should have caused her brother not to have gone into the grave, or to come forth from it again.

'_Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a_ _loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go._'

The thanksgiving to His Father for the power which He felt He had been endued with to finish that work, unfolds the mystery of His life; the sense of filial dependence and trust that was at the root of it; the pressure of human misery and death which turned His confidence into cries and groans for deliverance and help; the quickening energy which answered the cry; because, as He tells us so often, He was not doing His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him. This time it was needful that the cry should be heard by others. They must be taught that He was not exercising some rare and unwonted privilege to serve a partial end,--that He could bid Lazarus come forth, because He was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, the resurrection and the life.

St. John, who has told us the story with such care and minuteness, does not stop for an instant to comment upon it, or to utter any expressions of astonishment; he merely tells us: '_Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on Him. But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done._'

Could he have spoken otherwise, brethren? Did he not wish us to consider this act as the sign of a truth, as the exercise of a power, which circ.u.mstances cannot affect, which is proving its vitality from age to age? Why should he comment? Why should he wonder? The commentary was to be in the history of the world; the wonder was to be renewed in the case of every brother, whom Christian hands were to lay in the grave, 'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' in sure and certain hope that Christ is '_the resurrection and the life, and that whosoever believeth in Him, though he were dead, yet should he live_.' When we think of the return of Lazarus to his house at Bethany, it is not with an unmixed delight. We ask whether he could have welcomed the world's confusions which he had escaped? whether the thought must not have haunted him, that after a little while he should be in the same cave again? These are questions which it may be well for us to consider; though, perhaps, they are not different in kind from those which arise when any one who has been on the borders of the unseen world, who has taken leave of kinsfolk and friends, who has had glimpses of another country, suddenly recovers, and has to adapt himself once more--for a time probably with a strange sense of awkwardness and incoherency--to the business and intercourse of the earth. In one case as in the other, I conceive there is but this solution of the difficulty. The man must be glad to be placed where it pleases Christ that he should be placed. He will not certainly be nearer Him by complaining of his destiny, or by not desiring exactly the work which has been given him to do. If he has dreamed of a heaven above where he shall be under some other law than that, or where his will must not be in conformity with that law, the dream will never be realized. So, doubtless, Lazarus was taught by his discipline. And this may have been to him, if he could take it in, a greater comfort than even his appearance again beside the old hearth,--a compensation for all he might suffer then or afterwards,--that through him mult.i.tudes unborn were to learn the meaning of their own death, the secret of their own life, and who is the Friend that interprets them both. To each man who has been near the grave, and has come back to ever such commonplace duties, something of the same blessing may be given. He may think of One who hallows the common feast as well as the grave, who binds both worlds together.

To the question--

"Where wast thou, brother, those four days?

There lives no record of reply, Which telling us what it is to die, Had surely added praise to praise."

So we think very naturally. And yet, if we reflect, we shall perceive that those four days can only have been a part of the education of Lazarus,--that they cannot have been separate from all his previous and all his later experience.

The first cry of life, when he came out of the womb, as much testified of One in whom is life, who is the Source of life, as the look with which he greeted his sisters or his Lord, when he was commanded to come out of the grave. The opening of every sense to take in the sights and sounds of the world around him,--the opening of every affection which apprehended his human relations,--testified of the same living Word. The revival of past acts and scenes in the memory,--the awakening of the conscience, which bound those acts and scenes to his own individual self,--declared that there is One who not only gives life, but brings it back, who is the resurrection as well as the life. As the years of manhood brought him into converse with beings of his own race, whom he must meet on equal terms, whom he must recognise as having powers, affections, and responsibilities like his own,--as creatures looking before and after like himself,--he had a witness that there must be a common life, a common resurrection. As intercourse with Jesus gradually brought him to the knowledge of One who was a friend, and more than a friend,--a Master to whom he could submit,--an inspirer of strange thoughts,--a deliverer from infinite perplexities,--the discerner of mysteries which eye could not see, or ear hear; there was a more and more direct witness to his heart and reason: 'Thou hast found the Christ. Thou hast found the resurrection and the life.'

When one looks at the subject in this way, I am not sure whether one cares so much to know what pa.s.sed in those four days. Let death and the grave claim their rights and keep their secrets, as long as they can. They were to a.s.sert a higher right than they a.s.serted over this man of Bethany. Within a few days they were to claim dominion over Him who said, '_I am the resurrection and the life_;' they were to try whether they could not hold Him as their thrall for ever. If they succeeded, it does not much concern us what has happened elsewhere in the universe; there is one thick impenetrable cloud over it all. If they failed, life must have fuller and more perfect dominion in the unseen region than it has in ours. Nothing which seems to die here can be under the sway of death there. And Christ, by raising one poor man before He was raised Himself, testified that death shall have no power, that the grave shall have no power, to extinguish one faculty of the soul, one sense of the body, in any creature whose nature He has taken.

Brethren, here is the doctrine of the resurrection of the spirit and of the body taught in Christ's own manner, not in words, but in an act. And here, too, is that doctrine of a general resurrection at the last day, which Martha had learnt from the Pharisees,--which, separated from the words, '_I am the resurrection and the life_,' is the hardest and most unpractical of all opinions,--which, united to them, as it is in the Burial Service of our Church, is the most consolatory. A particular resurrection for individual men, without a general resurrection of our race, without such a rest.i.tution of all things as has been spoken of by prophets since the world began, would be utterly unsatisfactory, because it would not set forth the glory of G.o.d and the love of G.o.d. The general resurrection in Scripture is described in various forms of speech, all answering to deep human necessities. It is spoken of as a revelation of the Son of G.o.d; it is spoken of as a revelation or unveiling of the sons of G.o.d in Him; it is spoken of as a gathering together in Him of all things in heaven and all in earth.