“It matters little at what hour o’ the dayThe righteous falls asleep. Death cannot comeTo him untimely who is fit to die.The less of this cold world the more of heaven;The briefer life, the earlier immortality.”—Milman.
“It matters little at what hour o’ the dayThe righteous falls asleep. Death cannot comeTo him untimely who is fit to die.The less of this cold world the more of heaven;The briefer life, the earlier immortality.”—Milman.
“Our friend Lazarus sleepeth.” This tells us that Christ forgets not the dead. The dead often bury their dead, and remember them no more. The name of their silent homes has passed into a proverb, “The land of forgetfulness.” Butthey are not forgotten by Jesus. That which sunders and dislocates all other ties—wrenching brother from brother, sister from sister, friend from friend—cannot sunder us from the living, loving heart on the throne of heaven. His is a friendship and love stronger than death, and surviving death. While the language of earth is
“Friend after friend departs—Who hath not lost a friend?”
“Friend after friend departs—Who hath not lost a friend?”
the emancipated spirit, as it wings its magnificent flight among the ministering seraphim, can utter the challenge, “Who shall separate me from the love of Christ?” The righteous are had with Him “in everlasting remembrance.” Their names “written among the living in Jerusalem;” yea, “engraven on the palms of His hands.”
One other thought.—Jesus had at first kindly and considerately disguised from His disciples the stern truth of Lazarus’ departure. “Our friend sleepeth.” “They thought that He had spoken of taking of rest in sleep.” They understood it as the indication of the crisis-hour in sickness when the disease has spent itself, and is succeeded by a balmy slumber—the presage of returning health;but now He says unto them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.” How gently He thus breaks the sad intelligence! And it is His method of dealing still. HepreparesHis people for their hours of trial. He does not lay upon them more than they are able to bear. He considers their case—He teaches by slow and gradual discipline, leading on step by step; staying His rough wind in the day of His east wind. As the Good Physician, He metes out drop by drop in the bitter cup—as the Good Shepherd, His is not rough driving, but gentle guiding from pasture to pasture. “He leadeth them out;” “He goeth before them.” He is Himself their sheltering rock in the “dark and cloudy day.” The sheep who are inured to the hardships of the mountain, He leaves at times to wrestle with the storm; but “thelambs” (the young, the faint, the weak, the weary) “He gathers in His arms and carries in His bosom.” He speaks in gentle whispers. He uses the pleasing symbol of quiet slumber before He speaks plainly out the mournful reality, “Lazarus is dead.” Truly “He knoweth our frame—He remembereth that we are dust.” “Like as a father pitieth hischildren, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him!”
But let us resume our narrative, and follow the journey of the dead man’s “Friend.” It is a mighty task He has undertaken; to storm the strong enemy in his own citadel, and roll back the barred gates! In mingled majesty and tenderness He hastens to the bereft and desolate home on this mission of power and love. We left the sisters wondering at His mysterious delay. Again and again had they imagined that at last they heard His tardy step, or listened to His hand on the latch, or to the loving music of His longed-for voice. But they are mistaken; it was only the beating of the vine-tendrils on the lattice, or the footfall of the passer by. The Lord is still absent! Their earnest and importunate heart-breathings are expressed by the Psalmist—“O Lord our God, early do we seek Thee: our soul thirsteth for Thee, our flesh longeth for Thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see Thy power and Thy glory, as wehaveseen Thee.” Be still, afflicted ones! He is coming. He will, however, let the cup of anguish be first filled tothe brim that He may manifest and magnify all the more the might of His omnipotence, and the marvels of His compassion. The thirsty land is about to become streams of water. The sky is at its darkest, when, lo! the rainbow of love is seen spanning the firmament, and a shower of blessings is about to fall on the “Home of Bethany!”
Lights and Shadows.
The sounds of lamentation had now been heard for four days in the desolate household.
In accordance with general wont, the friends and relatives of the deceased had assembled to pay their tribute of respect to the memory of a revered friend, and to solace the hearts of the disconsolate survivors. They needed all the sympathy they received. It was now the dull dead calm after the torture of the storm, the leaden sea strewn with wrecks, enabling them to realise more fully the extent of their loss. Amid the lulls of the tempest, while Lazarus yet lived, hope shrunk from entertaining gloomy apprehensions. But now that the storm has spent its fury, now that the worst has come, the future rises up before them crowded with ten thousand imagesof desolation and sorrow. The void in their household is daily more and more felt. All the past bright memories of Bethany seem to be buried in a yawning grave.
We may picture the scene. The stronger and more resolute spirit of Martha striving to stem the tide of overmuch sorrow. The more sensitive heart of Mary, bowed under a grief too deep for utterance, able only to indicate by her silent tears the unknown depths of her sadness.
Thus are they employed, when Martha, unseen to her sister, has been beckoned away. “The Master has come.” But desirous of ascertaining the truth of the joyful tidings, ere intruding on the grief of Mary, the elder of the survivors rushes forth with trembling emotion to give full vent to her sorrow at the feet of the Great Friend of all the friendless![11]
He has not yet entered the village. She cannot, however, wait His arrival. Leaving home and sepulchre behind, she hastens outside the groves of palm at its gate.
It requires no small fortitude in the season ofsore bereavement to face an altered world; and, doubtless, passing all alone now through the little town, meeting familiar faces wearing sunny smiles which could not be returned, must have been a painful effort to this child of sorrow. But what will the heart not do to meet such a Comforter? What will Martha be unprepared to encounter if the intelligence brought her be indeed confirmed? One glance is enough. “It is the Lord!” In a moment she is a suppliant at His feet. Doubt and faith and prayer mingle in the exclamation, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died!”[12]
That she had faith and assured confidence in the love and tenderness of Jesus we cannot question. But a momentary feeling of unbelief (shall we say, of reproach and upbraiding?) mingled with better emotions. “Why, Lord,” seemed to be the expression of her inner thoughts, “wert Thou absent? It was unlike Thy kind heart. Thou hast often gladdened our home in our season of joy—why this forgetfulness in the night of our bitter agony? Death has torn from us a lovedbrother—the blow would have been spared—these hearts would have been unbroken—these burning tears unshed, ifThou hadstbeen here!”
Such was the bold—theunkindreasoning of the mourner. It was the reasoning of a finite creature. Ah! if she could but have looked into the workings of that infinite Heart she was ungenerously upbraiding, how differently would she have broached her tearful suit!
Herexclamation is—“Why thisunkindabsence?”
Hiscomment on thatsameabsence to His disciples isthis—“I wasgladfor your sakes that I wasnotthere!”
How often areGodandmanthus in strange antagonism, with regard to earthly dispensations! Man, as he arraigns the rectitude of the Divine procedure, exclaiming—“How unaccountable this dealing! How baffling this mystery! Where is now my God?” This sickness—why prolonged? This thorn in the flesh—why still buffeting? This family blank—why permitted? Why the most treasured and useful life taken—the blow aimed where it cut most severely and levelled lowest?
Hush the secret atheism! This trial, whatever it be, has this grand motto written upon it in characters of living light;—we can read it on anguished pillows—aching hearts—ay, on the very portals of the tomb—“Thisis for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby!”
At the very moment we are mourning what are called “darkprovidences”—“untoward calamities”—“strokes of misfortune”—“unmitigated evils”—Jesus has a different verdict;—“I amgladfor your sakes.”
The absence at Jordan—the still more unaccountable lingering for two days in the same place after the message had been sent, instead of hastening direct to Bethany, all was well and wisely ordered. And although Martha’s upbraidings were now received in forbearing silence, her Saviour afterwards, in a calmer moment, read the rebuke—“Said I not unto thee, if thou wouldstbelieve, thou shouldst see the glory of God?”
It is indeed a comforting assurance in all trials, that God has some holy and wise end to subserve. He never stirs a ripple on the waters,but for His own glory, or the good of others. The delay on the present occasion, though protracting for a time the sorrows of the bereaved, was intended for the benefit of the Church in every age, and for the more immediate benefit of the disciples.
Theywere destined in a few brief weeks also to be desolate survivors—to mourn a Brother dearer still! He who had been to them Friend—Father—Brother, all in one, was to be, like Lazarus, laid silent in a Jerusalem sepulchre. The Lord of Life was to be the victim of Death! His body was to be transfixed to a malefactor’s cross, and consigned to a lonely grave! He knew the shock that awaited their faith. He knew, as this terrible hour drew on, how needful some overpowering visible demonstration would be of His mastery over the tomb.
Nowa befitting opportunity occurred in the case of their friend Lazarus to read the needed lesson. “I was glad for your sakes, ... to the intent ye might believe.”
Would that we could feel as believers more than we do—that the dealings of our God arefor the strengthening of our faith, and the enlivening and invigorating of our spiritual graces. Let us seek to accept more simply in dark dealings the Saviour’s explanation, “It is foryoursake!” He gives us a blank for our every trial, indorsing it with His own gracious word, “This,thisis for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.”
The words of Martha, then, surely teach as their great lesson, never to be hasty in our surmises and conclusions regarding God’s ways.
“Lord!ifThouhadstbeen here?” Could she question for a moment that that loving eye of Omniscience had all the while been scanning that sick-chamber—marking every throb in that fevered brow—and every tear that fell unbidden from the eyes that watched his pillow?
“Lord!ifThou hadst been here?” Could she question His ability, had He so willed it, to prevent the bereavement altogether—to put an arrest on the hand of death ere the bow was strung?
O faithless disciple, wherefore didst thou doubt? But thou art ere long to learn what each of uswill learn out in eternity, that “allthings are for our sakes, that the abundant grace might, through the thanksgiving of many, redoundto the glory of God.”
But the momentary cloud has passed. Faith breaks through. The murmur of upbraiding has died away. He who listens makes allowance for an anguished heart. The glance of tender sympathy and gentleness which met Martha’s eye, at once hushes all remains of unbelief. Words of exulting confidence immediately succeed. “But I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.”
What is this, but that which every believer exults in to this hour, as the sheet-anchor of hope and peace and comfort, when tossed on a tempestuous sea—a gracious confidence in the ability and willingness of Christ to save. The Friend of Bethany is still the Friend in Heaven. To Him “all power has been committed;” “as a prince He has power with God, and must prevail.”
Yes, gracious antidote to the spirit in the moment of its trial; when bowed down withanticipated bereavement; the curtains of death about to fall over life’s brightest joys. How blessed to lay hold on theperfectconviction that “the Ever-living Intercessor in glory has all power to revoke the sentence if He sees meet”—that evennow(yesnow, in a moment) the delegated angel may be sent speeding from his throne, to spare the tree marked to fall, and prolong the lease of existence!
Let us rejoice in the power of this God-man Mediator, that He is as able as He is willing, and as willing as He is able. “Him the Father heareth always.” “Father, I will,” is His own divineformulafor every needed boon for His people.
How it ought to make our sick-chambers and death-chambers consecrated to prayer! leading us to make our every trial and sorrow a fresh reason for going to God. Laying our burden, whatever it may be, on the mercy-seat, it will beconsideredby Him, who is too wise to grant what is better to be withdrawn, and too kind to withhold what, without injury to us, may be granted.
Let us imitate Martha’s faith in our approachesto Him. Ah, in our dull and cold devotions, how little lively apprehension have we of the graciouswillingnessof Christ to listen to our petitions! Standing as the great Angel of the Covenant with the golden censer, His hand never shortened—His ear never heavy—His uplifted arm of intercession never faint. No variety bewildering Him—no importunity wearying Him—“waiting to be gracious”—loving the music of the suppliant spirit.
Would that we had ever before us as the superscription of faith written on our closet-devotions, and domestic altars, and public sanctuaries,wheneverandwhereverthe knee is bent, and the Hearer of prayer is invoked—“Iknowthat evennowwhatsoeverThouwilt ask of God, God will give it Thee.”
The Mourner’s Comfort.
Martha’s tearful utterances are now met with an exalted solace.
“Thy brother shall rise again.” It is the first time her Lord has spoken. She now once more hears those well-remembered tones which were last listened to, when life was all bright, and her home all happy.
It is the self-same consolation which steals still, like celestial music, to the smitten heart, when every chord of earthly gladness ceases to vibrate. And it is befitting too thatJesusshould utter it. He alone is qualified to do so. The words spoken to the bereaved one of Bethany are words purchased by His own atoning work. “Thy brother—thy sister—thy friend, shall rise again!”
This brief oracle of comfort was addressed, inthe first instance, specially to Martha. It had a primary reference, doubtless, to the vast miracle which was on the eve of performance. But there were more hearts to comfort and souls to cheer than one; that Almighty Saviour had at the moment troops of other bereaved ones in view; myriads on myriads of aching, bleeding spirits who could not, like the Bethany mourner, rush into His visible presence for consolation and peace. He expands, therefore, for their sakes the sublime and exalted solace which He ministers toher. And in words which have carried their echoes of hope and joy through all time, He exclaims—“I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die!”
If Bethany had bequeathed no other “memory” thanthis, how its name would have been embalmed in hallowed recollection! Truly these two brief verses are as apples of gold in pictures of silver. “Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life.” Himself conquering death, He has conquered it for His people—opening the kingdom of heaven to all believers.
The full grandeur of that Bethany utterance could not be appreciated by her to whom it was first spoken. His death and resurrection was still, even to His nearest disciples, a profound mystery. Little did that trembling spirit, who was now gazing on her living Lord with tearful eye, dream that in a few brief days the grave was to holdHim, too, as its captive; and that guardian angels were to proclaim words which would now have been all enigma and strangeness, “The Lord is risen!” With us it is different. The mighty deed has been completed. “Christ has died; yea, rather has risen again!” The resurrection and revival of Lazarus was a marvellous act, but it was only the rekindling of a little star that had ceased to twinkle in the firmament. A week more—and Martha would witness the Great Sun of all Being undergoing an eclipse; in a mysterious moment veiled and shrouded in darkness and blood; and then all at once coming forth like a Bridegroom from his chamber to shine the living and luminous centre of ransomed millions!
Christians! we can turn now aside and see thisgreat sight—death closing the lips of the Lord of life—a borrowed grave containing the tenantless body of the Creator of all worlds! Is death to hold that prey? Is the grave to retain in gloomy custody that immaculate frame? Is the living temple to lie there an inglorious ruin, like other crumbling wrecks of mortality? The question of our eternal life or eternal death was suspended on the reply! If death succeeds in chaining down the illustrious Victim, our hopes of everlasting life are gone for ever. In vain can these dreary portals be ever again unbarred for the children of fallen humanity. He has gone there as their surety-Saviour. If his suretyship be accepted—if He meet and fulfil all the requirements of an outraged law, the gates of the dismal prison-house will and must be opened. If, on the other hand, there be any flaw or deficiency in His person or work as the Kinsman-Redeemer, then no power can snap the chains which bind Him; the tomb will refuse to surrender what it has in custody; the hopes of His people must perish along with Him! Golgotha must become the grave of a world’s hopes!
But the stonehasbeen rolled away. The grave-clothes are all that are left as trophies of the conqueror. Angels are seated in the vacant tomb to verify with their gladdening assurance His own Bethany oracle, “The Lord has risen.” “He is indeed the resurrection and the life; he that liveth and believeth on Him shall never die!”
Yes! however many be the comforting thoughts which cluster around the grave of Lazarus, grander still is it to gather, as Jesus Himself here bids us, around His own tomb, and to gaze on His own resurrection scene! It was the most eventful morning of all time. It will be the focus point of the Church’s hope and triumph through all eternity.
“The Lord is risen!” It proclaimed the atonement complete, sin pardoned, mediation accepted, the law satisfied, God glorified! “The Lord is risen!” It proclaimed resurrection and life for His people—life (the forfeitedgiftof life) now repurchased. That mighty victor rose not for Himself, but as the representative and earnest of countless multitudes, who exult in His death as their life—in His resurrection as the pledge and guarantee oftheir everlasting safety;—“I am He that liveth,” and “because I live ye shall live also.”
Anticipating His own glorious rising, He might well speak to Martha, standing before Him as the representative of weeping, sinful, woe-worn humanity, “He that liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.” “In Me, death is no longer death; it is only a parenthesis in life—a transition to a loftier stage of being.In Me, the grave is the vestibule of heaven, the robing-room of immortality!”
Reader, yours is the same strong consolation. “Believe,” “Only believe” in that risen Lord. He has purchased all, paid all, procured all! Look into that vacant tomb; see sin cancelled, guilt blotted out, the law magnified, justice honoured, the sinner saved!
Ay, and more than that, as you see the moral conqueror marching forth clothed with immortal victory, you see Him not alone! He is heading and heralding a multitude which no man can number. Himself the victorious precursor, he is shewing to these exulting thousands “thepathof life.” He tells them to dread neither for themselvesor others that lonesome tomb. The curse is extracted from it; the envenomed sting is plucked away. In passing through its lonesome chambers they may exult in the thought that a mightier than they has sanctified it by His own presence, and transmuted what was once a gloomy portico into a triumphal arch, bearing the inscription, “O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction!”
The Mourner’s Creed.
How stands our faith?
These mighty thoughts and words of consolation—are they really believed, felt, trusted in, rejoiced over?
Christian, “Believestthou this?”[13]Art thou really looking to this exalted life-giving Saviour? Hast thou in some feeble measure realised this resurrection-life as thine own? Hast thou the joyful consciousness of participating in this vital union with a living Lord? In vain do we listen to these sublime Bethany utterances unless we feel “Jesus speaks to me,” and unless we be living from day to day under their invigorating power.
He had unfolded to Martha in a single verse a whole Gospel; He had irradiated by a few wordsthe darkness of the tomb; and now, turning to the poor dejected weeper at his side, He addresses the all-important question, “Believest thouthis?”
Her faith had been but a moment before staggering. Some guilty misgivings had been mingling with her anguished tears. She has now an opportunity afforded of rising above her doubts,—the ebbings and flowings of her fitful feelings,—and cleaving fast to the Living Rock.
It elicits an unfaltering response—“Yea, Lord, I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”[14]
Remarkable confession! We should not so much have wondered to hear it after the grave, hard by, had been rifled, and the silent lips of Lazarus had been unsealed; or had she stood like the other Mary at her Lord’s own sepulchre in the garden, and after a few brief, but momentous days and hours, seen a whole flood of light thrown on the question of His Messiahship.
But as yet there was much to damp such a bold confession, and lead to hesitancy in the avowal of such a creed. The poverty, the humiliations,the unworldly obscurity of that solitaryOnewho claimed no earthly birthright, and owned no earthly dwelling, were not all these, particularly to a Jew, at variance with every idea formed in connexion with the coming Shiloh?
Was Martha’s then a blind unmeaning faith? Far from it. It was nurtured, doubtless, in that quiet home of holy love, where, while Lazarus yet lived, this mysterious Being, in an earthly form and in pilgrim garb, came time after time discoursing to them often, as we are warranted to believe, on the dignity of His nature, the glories of His person, the completeness of His work. It was neither the evidence of miracle or prophecy which had revealed to that weeping disciple that Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God. With the exception of Micah’s statement regarding Bethlehem-Ephratah as His birthplace, we question if any other remarkable prediction concerning Him had yet been fulfilled; and so far as miracles were concerned, though she may and must have doubtless known of them by hearsay, we have no evidence that she had as yet so much as witnessedone. We never read till this time of their quiet villagebeing the scene of any manifestations of His power. These had generally taken place either in Jerusalem or in the cities and coasts of Galilee. The probability, therefore, is that Martha, had never yet seen that arm of Omnipotence bared, or witnessed those prodigies with which elsewhere He authenticated His claims to Divinity.
Whence then her creed?May we not believe she had made her noble avowal mainly from the study of that beauteous, spotless character—from those looks, and words, and deeds—from that lofty teaching—so unlike every human system—so wondrously adapted to the wants and woes, the sins, the sorrows, and aching necessities of the human heart. All this had left on her own spirit, and on that of Lazarus and Mary, the irresistible impression and evidence that he was indeed the Lord of Glory—“the Hope of Israel, and the Saviour thereof.”
And is it not the same evidence we exult in still? Is this not thereasonof 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 ourimpregnable Christianity? Ask them why they believe? why their faith is so firm—their love so strong?
They will tell you that that Saviour, in all the glories of His person, in all the completeness of His work, in all the beauties of His character, is the very Saviour they need!—that His Gospel is the very errand of mercy suited to their souls’ necessities;—that His words of compassion, and tenderness, and hope, are in every way adapted to meet the yearnings of their longing spirits. They need to stand by the grave of no Lazarus to be certified as to His Messiahship. His looks and tones—His character and doctrine,—His cures and remedies for the wants and woes of their ruined natures, point Him out as the true Heavenly Physician.
They can tell of the best of all evidences, and the strongest of all—theexperimentalevidence! 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—theyhave 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 theSon of God and Saviour of the world!
Reader, is this your experience? Have you tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious? Have you felt the preciousness of His gospel, the adaptation of His work to the necessities of your ruined condition?—the power of His grace, the prevalence of His intercession, the fulness and glory and truthfulness of His promises? Are you exulting in Him as the Resurrection and Life, who has raised you from the death of sin, and will at last raise you from the power of death, and invest you with that eternal life which His love has purchased?
Precious as is this hope and confidence at all times, specially so is it, mourners in Zion! in yourseasons of sorrow. When human refuges fail, and human friendships wither, and human props give way, how sustaining to have this “anchor of the soul sure and steadfast”—union with a living Lord on earth, and the joyful hope of endless and uninterrupted union and communion with Him in glory! Are you even now enjoying, through your tears, this blessed persuasion, and exulting in this blessed creed? Do you know the secret of that twofold solace, “the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings?”—the “fellowship of His sufferings” telling of His sympathy with your sorrows below;—the “power of His resurrection” assuring you of the glorious gift of everlasting life in a world where sorrow dare not enter. Rest not satisfied with a mere outward creed and confession that “Jesus is the Saviour.” Let yours be the noblerformulaof an appropriating faith—“He is my Saviour; He lovedme, and gave Himself forme.” Let it not be with you a salvationpossible, but a salvationfound; so that, with a tried apostle, you can rise above the surges of deepening tribulation as you glory in the conviction, “Iknowin whom Ihavebelieved, 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 anunknown Christ; and, amid the hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for the first time, theonlytrue 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 moorednowto 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 temptThe sea of life, by summer gales impell’d,Have ye this anchor? Sure a time will comeFor storms to try you, and strong blasts to rendYour painted sails, and shred your gold like chaffO’er the wild wave. And what a wreck is man,If sorrow find him unsustain’d by God!”
“Say, ye who temptThe sea of life, by summer gales impell’d,Have ye this anchor? Sure a time will comeFor storms to try you, and strong blasts to rendYour painted sails, and shred your gold like chaffO’er the wild wave. And what a wreck is man,If sorrow find him unsustain’d by God!”
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 backLike that pale changeless brow. Calmly she stoodAs marble statue.In that maiden’s breastSorrow and loneliness sank darkly down,Though the blanch’d lips breathed out no boisterous plaintOf common grief.”
“To her all earth could render nothing backLike that pale changeless brow. Calmly she stoodAs marble statue.
In that maiden’s breastSorrow and loneliness sank darkly down,Though the blanch’d lips breathed out no boisterous plaintOf 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 suddenbreak in her trance of anguish. She had up till that moment, with the instinctive aversion which mourners only know, and which we have formerly alluded to in the case of Martha, been shrinking from facing the gladsome light of heaven, caring not to look abroad on the blight of an altered world. But the few words her sister uttered, and which the other auditors manifestly had not comprehended, all at once rouse her from her seat of pensive sadness, and her shadow is seen hurrying by the darkened lattice. They can form but one surmise: that, in accordance with wont, she has betaken herself to the burial-ground to feed her morbid grief “She goeth unto the grave to weep there.” Ah! little did they know how much nobler was her motive—how truer and grander the solace she sought and found.
There is little that is really profitable or hallowed in visiting the grave of loved ones. Though fond affection will, from some false feeling of the tribute due to the memory of the departed, seek to surmount sadder thoughts, and linger at the spot where treasured ashes repose, yet—think and act as we may—there is nothing cheering, nothingelevatingthere. The associations of the burial-place are all with the humiliating triumphs of the King of Terrors. It is a view of death taken from theearthlyentrance of the valley, not theheavenlyview of it as that valley opens on the bright plains of immortality. The gay flowers and emerald sod which carpet the grave are poor mockeries to the bereft spirit, shrouding, as they do, nobler withered blossoms which the foot of the destroyer has trampled into dust, and which no earthly beauty can again clothe, or earthly spring reanimate. They are to be pitied who have no higher solace, no better remedy for their grief, than thus to water with unavailing tears the trophies of death; or to read the harrowing record which love has traced on its slab of cold marble, telling of the vanity of human hopes.
Such, however, was not Mary’s errand in leaving the chamber of bereavement. That drooping flower was not opening her leaves, only to be crushed afresh with new tear-floods of sorrow. She soughtOnewho would disengage her soiled and shattered tendrils from the chill comforts of earth, and bathe them in the genial influences of Heaven. Themusic of her Master’s name alone could put gladness into her heart—tempt her to muffle other conflicting feelings and hasten to His feet. “The Master is come!” Nothing could have roused her from her profound grief but this. While her poor earthly comforters are imagining her prostrate at the sepulchre’s mouth, giving vent to the wild delirium of her young grief, she is away, not to the victim of death, but to the Lord of Life, either to tell to Him the tale of her woe, or else to listen from His lips to words of comfort no other comforter had given. Is there not the same music in that name—the same solace and joy in that presence still? Earthly sympathy is not to be despised; nay, when death has entered a household, taken the dearest and the best and laid them in the tomb, nothing is more soothing to the wounded, crushed, and broken one, than to experience the genial sympathy of true Christian friendship. Those, it may be, little known before (comparative strangers), touched with the story of a neighbour’s sorrow, come to offer their tribute of condolence, and to “weep with those that weep.” Never istruefriendship so tested as then. Hollowattachments, which have nothing but the world or a time of prosperity to bind them, discover their worthlessness. “Summer friends” stand aloof—they have little patience for the sadness of sorrow’s countenance and the funereal trappings of the death-chamber; while sympathy, based on lofty Christian principle, loves to minister as a subordinate healer of the broken-hearted, and to indulge in a hundred nameless ingenious offices of kindness and love.
But“thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.” The purest and noblest and most disinterested of earthly friends can only go a certain way. Their minds and sympathies are limited. They cannot enter into the deep recesses of the smitten heart—the yawning crevices that bereavement has laid bare.ButJesuscan! Ah! there are capacities and sensibilities in that Mighty Heart that can probe the deepest wound and gauge the profoundest sorrow. While from thebestof earthly comforters the mind turns away unsatisfied; while the burial-ground and the grave only recall the deep humiliations of the body’s wreck and ruin—with what fond emotion does the spirit, like Mary,turn to Him who possesses the majesty of Deity with all the tenderness of humanity. The Mighty Lord, and yet the Elder Brother!
The sympathy of man is often selfish, formal, constrained, commonplace, coming more from the surface than from the depths of the heart. It is the finite sympathy of a finite creature. The Redeemer’s sympathy is that of the perfect Man and the infinite God—able to enter into all the peculiarities of the case—all the tender features and shadings of sorrow which are hidden from the keenest and kindliesthumaneye.
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 hearsher 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 castourselves 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 thatOneis nigh who will more than compensate for the loss of all—“The Master is come, and calleth for thee!”
It is the very end and design our gracious God has in all His dealings, to leadus, as he led Mary, to the feet of Jesus.
Yes! thou poor weeping, disconsolate one, “The Master calleth forthee.”Theeindividually, as if thou stoodest the alone sufferer in a vast world. He wishes to pour His oil and wine into thy wounded heart—to give thee some overwhelming proof and pledge of the love he bears thee in this thy sore trial. He has come to pour drops of comfort in the bitter cup—to ease thee of thy heavy burden, and to point thee to hopes full of immortality. Go and learn what a kind, and gentle, and gracious Master He is! Go forth, Mary, and meet thy Lord. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning!”
We may imagine her hastening along the foot-road, with the spirit of the Psalmist’s words on her tongue—“As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God—for the living God!”
Second Causes.
With a bounding heart, Mary was in a moment at her Master’s feet. She weeps! and is able only to articulate, in broken accents, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” It is the repetition of Martha’s same expression. Often at a season of sore bereavement some one poignant thought or reflection takes possession of the mind, and, for the time, overmasters every other. This echo of the other mourner’s utterance leads us to conclude that it had been a familiar and oft-quoted phrase during these days of protracted agony. This independent quotation, indeed, on the part of each, gives a truthful beauty to the whole inspired narrative.
The twin sisters—musing on the terrible past, gazing through their tears on the vacant seat attheir home-hearth—had been every now and then breaking the gloomy silence of the deserted chamber by exclaiming, “IfHehad been here, this never would have happened! This is the bitterest drop in our cup, that all might have been different! These hot tears might never have dimmed our eyes; our loved Lazarus might have been a living and loving brother still! Oh! that the Lord had delayed for a brief week that untoward journey, or anticipated by four days his longed-for return; or would that we had despatched our messenger earlier for Him. It is now too late. Though Hehasat 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.Hisfriend andourbrother 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 oversecond causes. “If such and such had been done, my child had still lived. If that mean, or that remedy, or that judicious caution had beenemployed, this terrible overthrow of my earthly hopes would never have occurred; that loved one would have been still walking at my side; that chaplet of sorrows would not now have been girding my brows; the Bethany sepulchre would have been unopened—‘This my brother had not died!’”
Hush! hush! these guilty insinuations—that dethroning of God from the Providential Sovereignty of His own world—that hasty and inconsiderate verdict on His divine procedure.
“IfThouhadst been here!” Can we,darewe doubt it? Is the departure of the immortal soul to the spirit-world so trivial a matter that the life-giving God takes no cognisance of it? No! Mourning one, in the deep night of thy sorrow, thou must rise above “untoward coincidences”—thou must cancel the words “accident” and “fate” from thy vocabulary of trial. God,thyGod, wasthere! If therebeperplexing accompaniments, be assured they were ofHispermitting; all was planned—wisely, kindly planned. Question not the unerring rectitude of His dealings. Thoughapparentlyabsent, He wasreallypresent. The apparent veiling of His countenance is only what Cowper calls “the severer aspect of His love.” Kiss the rod that smites—adore the hand that lays low. Pillow thy head on that simple, yet grandest source of composure—“The Lord reigneth!” It is not for us to venture to dictate what the procedure of infinite love and wisdom should be. To our dim and distorted views of things, it might have been more for the glory of God and the Church’s good, if the “beautiful bird of light” had still “sat with its folded wings” ere it sped to nestle in the eaves of Heaven. But if its earthly song has been early hushed; if those full of promise have been allowed rather to fall asleep in Jesus, “Even so, Father; for it seems good in Thy sight!” It was from no want of power or ability on God’s part that they were not recalled from the gates of death. “We will be dumb—we will open not our mouths, becauseThoudidst it.”
Afflicted one! if the brother or friend whom you now mourn be a brother in glory—if he be now among the white-robed multitude—his last tear wept—for ever beyond reach of a sinning and sorrowing world—can you upbraid your God forhis 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?