the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world."[14]
Remarkable confession! We should not so much have wondered to hear it
after the grave, hard by, had been rifled, and the silent lips of
Lazarus had been unsealed; or had she stood like the other Mary at her
Lord's own sepulchre in the garden, and after a few brief, but momentous
days and hours, seen a whole flood of light thrown on the question of
His Messiahship.
But as yet there was much to damp such a bold confession, and lead to
hesitancy in the avowal of such a creed. The poverty, the humiliations,
the unworldly obscurity of that solitary _One_ who claimed no earthly
birthright, and owned no earthly dwelling, were not all these,
particularly to a Jew, at variance with every idea formed in connexion
with the coming Shiloh?
Was Martha's then a blind unmeaning faith? Far from it. It was nurtured,
doubtless, in that quiet home of holy love, where, while Lazarus yet
lived, this mysterious Being, in an earthly form and in pilgrim garb,
came time after time discoursing to them often, as we are warranted to
believe, on the dignity of His nature, the glories of His person, the
completeness of His work. It was neither the evidence of miracle or
prophecy which had revealed to that weeping disciple that Jesus of
Nazareth was the Son of God. With the exception of Micah's statement
regarding Bethlehem-Ephratah as His birthplace, we question if any other
remarkable prediction concerning Him had yet been fulfilled; and so far
as miracles were concerned, though she may and must have doubtless known
of them by hearsay, we have no evidence that she had as yet so much as
witnessed _one_. We never read till this time of their quiet village
being the scene of any manifestations of His power. These had generally
taken place either in Jerusalem or in the cities and coasts of Galilee.
The probability, therefore, is that Martha, had never yet seen that arm
of Omnipotence bared, or witnessed those prodigies with which elsewhere
He authenticated His claims to Divinity.
_Whence then her creed?_ May we not believe she had made her noble
avowal mainly from the study of that beauteous, spotless character--from
those looks, and words, and deeds--from that lofty teaching--so unlike
every human system--so wondrously adapted to the wants and woes, the
sins, the sorrows, and aching necessities of the human heart. All this
had left on her own spirit, and on that of Lazarus and Mary, the
irresistible impression and evidence that he was indeed the Lord of
Glory--"the Hope of Israel, and the Saviour thereof."
And is it not the same evidence we exult in still? Is this not the
_reason_ of many a humble believer's creed and faith--who may be all
unlettered and unlearned in the evidences of the schools--the external
and internal bulwarks of our impregnable Christianity? Ask them why
they believe? why their faith is so firm--their love so strong?
They will tell you that that Saviour, in all the glories of His person,
in all the completeness of His work, in all the beauties of His
character, is the very Saviour they need!--that His Gospel is the very
errand of mercy suited to their souls' necessities;--that His words of
compassion, and tenderness, and hope, are in every way adapted to meet
the yearnings of their longing spirits. They need to stand by the grave
of no Lazarus to be certified as to His Messiahship. His looks and
tones--His character and doctrine,--His cures and remedies for the wants
and woes of their ruined natures, point Him out as the true Heavenly
Physician.
They can tell of the best of all evidences, and the strongest of
all--the _experimental_ evidence! They are no theorists. Religion is no
subject with them of barren speculation; it is a matter of inner and
heartfelt experience. They have tried the cure--they have found it
answer;--they have fled to the Physician--they have applied His
balm--they have been healed and live! And you might as well try to
convince the restored blind that the sunlight which has again burst on
them is a wild dream of fancy, or the restored deaf that the world's
joyous melodies which have again awoke on them are the mockeries of
their own brain, as convince the spiritually enlightened and awakened
that He who has proved to them light and life, and joy and peace--their
comfort in prosperity--their refuge in adversity--is other than the _Son
of God and Saviour of the world_!
Reader, is this your experience? Have you tasted and seen that the Lord
is gracious? Have you felt the preciousness of His gospel, the
adaptation of His work to the necessities of your ruined condition?--the
power of His grace, the prevalence of His intercession, the fulness and
glory and truthfulness of His promises? Are you exulting in Him as the
Resurrection and Life, who has raised you from the death of sin, and
will at last raise you from the power of death, and invest you with that
eternal life which His love has purchased?
Precious as is this hope and confidence at all times, specially so is
it, mourners in Zion! in your seasons of sorrow. When human refuges
fail, and human friendships wither, and human props give way, how
sustaining to have this "anchor of the soul sure and steadfast"--union
with a living Lord on earth, and the joyful hope of endless and
uninterrupted union and communion with Him in glory! Are you even now
enjoying, through your tears, this blessed persuasion, and exulting in
this blessed creed? Do you know the secret of that twofold solace, "the
power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings?"--the
"fellowship of His sufferings" telling of His sympathy with your sorrows
below;--the "power of His resurrection" assuring you of the glorious
gift of everlasting life in a world where sorrow dare not enter. Rest
not satisfied with a mere outward creed and confession that "Jesus is
the Saviour." Let yours be the nobler _formula_ of an appropriating
faith--"He is my Saviour; He loved ME, and gave Himself for ME." Let it
not be with you a salvation _possible_, but a salvation _found_; so
that, with a tried apostle, you can rise above the surges of deepening
tribulation as you glory in the conviction, "I _know_ in whom I _have_
believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have
committed unto Him."
Sad, indeed, for those who, when "deep calleth unto deep," have no such
"strong consolation" to enable them to ride out the storm; who, when
sorrow and bereavement overtake them--the lowering shadows of the dark
and cloudy day--have still to grope after an _unknown Christ_; and, amid
the hollowness of earthly and counterfeit comforts, have to seek, for
the first time, the _only_ true One.
Oh! if our hour of trial has not yet come, let us be prepared for
it--for come it will. Let us seek to have our vessels moored _now_ to
the Rock of Ages, that when the tempest arises--when the floods beat,
and the winds blow, and the wrecks of earthly joy are seen strewing the
waters--we may triumphantly utter the challenge, "Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ?"
"Say, ye who tempt
The sea of life, by summer gales impell'd,
Have ye this anchor? Sure a time will come
For storms to try you, and strong blasts to rend
Your painted sails, and shred your gold like chaff
O'er the wild wave. And what a wreck is man,
If sorrow find him unsustain'd by God!"
X.
THE MASTER.
Martha can withhold no longer from her sister the joyful tidings which
she has been the first to hear. With fleet foot she hastens back to the
house with the announcement, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee."
Mary hears, but makes no comment. Wrapt in the silence of her own
meditative grief, "when she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto
Him."
"To her all earth could render nothing back
Like that pale changeless brow. Calmly she stood
As marble statue.
In that maiden's breast
Sorrow and loneliness sank darkly down,
Though the blanch'd lips breathed out no boisterous plaint
Of common grief."
The formal sympathisers who gathered around her had observed her
departure. They are led to form their conjectures as to the cause of
this sudden break in her trance of anguish. She had up till that
moment, with the instinctive aversion which mourners only know, and
which we have formerly alluded to in the case of Martha, been shrinking
from facing the gladsome light of heaven, caring not to look abroad on
the blight of an altered world. But the few words her sister uttered,
and which the other auditors manifestly had not comprehended, all at
once rouse her from her seat of pensive sadness, and her shadow is seen
hurrying by the darkened lattice. They can form but one surmise: that,
in accordance with wont, she has betaken herself to the burial-ground to
feed her morbid grief "She goeth unto the grave to weep there." Ah!
little did they know how much nobler was her motive--how truer and
grander the solace she sought and found.
There is little that is really profitable or hallowed in visiting the
grave of loved ones. Though fond affection will, from some false feeling
of the tribute due to the memory of the departed, seek to surmount
sadder thoughts, and linger at the spot where treasured ashes repose,
yet--think and act as we may--there is nothing cheering, nothing
elevating _there_. The associations of the burial-place are all with the
humiliating triumphs of the King of Terrors. It is a view of death taken
from the _earthly_ entrance of the valley, not the _heavenly_ view of it
as that valley opens on the bright plains of immortality. The gay
flowers and emerald sod which carpet the grave are poor mockeries to the
bereft spirit, shrouding, as they do, nobler withered blossoms which the
foot of the destroyer has trampled into dust, and which no earthly
beauty can again clothe, or earthly spring reanimate. They are to be
pitied who have no higher solace, no better remedy for their grief, than
thus to water with unavailing tears the trophies of death; or to read
the harrowing record which love has traced on its slab of cold marble,
telling of the vanity of human hopes.
Such, however, was not Mary's errand in leaving the chamber of
bereavement. That drooping flower was not opening her leaves, only to be
crushed afresh with new tear-floods of sorrow. She sought _One_ who
would disengage her soiled and shattered tendrils from the chill
comforts of earth, and bathe them in the genial influences of Heaven.
The music of her Master's name alone could put gladness into her
heart--tempt her to muffle other conflicting feelings and hasten to His
feet. "_The Master is come!_" Nothing could have roused her from her
profound grief but this. While her poor earthly comforters are imagining
her prostrate at the sepulchre's mouth, giving vent to the wild delirium
of her young grief, she is away, not to the victim of death, but to the
Lord of Life, either to tell to Him the tale of her woe, or else to
listen from His lips to words of comfort no other comforter had given.
Is there not the same music in that name--the same solace and joy in
that presence still? Earthly sympathy is not to be despised; nay, when
death has entered a household, taken the dearest and the best and laid
them in the tomb, nothing is more soothing to the wounded, crushed, and
broken one, than to experience the genial sympathy of true Christian
friendship. Those, it may be, little known before (comparative
strangers), touched with the story of a neighbour's sorrow, come to
offer their tribute of condolence, and to "weep with those that weep."
Never is _true_ friendship so tested as then. Hollow attachments, which
have nothing but the world or a time of prosperity to bind them,
discover their worthlessness. "Summer friends" stand aloof--they have
little patience for the sadness of sorrow's countenance and the funereal
trappings of the death-chamber; while sympathy, based on lofty Christian
principle, loves to minister as a subordinate healer of the
broken-hearted, and to indulge in a hundred nameless ingenious offices
of kindness and love.
_But_ "thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." The purest and noblest
and most disinterested of earthly friends can only go a certain way.
Their minds and sympathies are limited. They cannot enter into the deep
recesses of the smitten heart--the yawning crevices that bereavement has
laid bare. _But_ JESUS _can_! Ah! there are capacities and sensibilities
in that Mighty Heart that can probe the deepest wound and gauge the
profoundest sorrow. While from the _best_ of earthly comforters the mind
turns away unsatisfied; while the burial-ground and the grave only
recall the deep humiliations of the body's wreck and ruin--with what
fond emotion does the spirit, like Mary, turn to Him who possesses the
majesty of Deity with all the tenderness of humanity. The Mighty Lord,
and yet the Elder Brother!
The sympathy of man is often selfish, formal, constrained, commonplace,
coming more from the surface than from the depths of the heart. It is
the finite sympathy of a finite creature. The Redeemer's sympathy is
that of the perfect Man and the infinite God--able to enter into all the
peculiarities of the case--all the tender features and shadings of
sorrow which are hidden from the keenest and kindliest _human_ eye.
Mary's procedure is a true type and picture of what the broken heart of
the Christian feels. Not undervaluing human sympathy, yet, nevertheless,
all the crowd of sympathising friends--Jewish citizens, Bethany
villagers--are nothing to her when she hears _her Lord has come_!
Happy for us if, while the world, like the condoling crowd of Jews, is
forming its own cold speculations on the amount of our grief and the
bitterness of our loss, we are found hastening to cast ourselves at our
Saviour's feet; if our afflictions prove to us like angel messengers
from the inner sanctuary--calling us from friends, home, comforts,
blessings, all we most prize on earth--telling us that ONE is nigh who
will more than compensate for the loss of all--"_The Master is come, and
calleth for thee!_"
It is the very end and design our gracious God has in all His dealings,
to lead _us_, as he led Mary, to the feet of Jesus.
Yes! thou poor weeping, disconsolate one, "The Master calleth for
_thee_." _Thee_ individually, as if thou stoodest the alone sufferer in
a vast world. He wishes to pour His oil and wine into thy wounded
heart--to give thee some overwhelming proof and pledge of the love he
bears thee in this thy sore trial. He has come to pour drops of comfort
in the bitter cup--to ease thee of thy heavy burden, and to point thee
to hopes full of immortality. Go and learn what a kind, and gentle, and
gracious Master He is! Go forth, Mary, and meet thy Lord. "Weeping may
endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning!"
We may imagine her hastening along the foot-road, with the spirit of the
Psalmist's words on her tongue--"As the hart panteth after the
water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth
for God--for the living God!"
XI.
SECOND CAUSES.
With a bounding heart, Mary was in a moment at her Master's feet. She
weeps! and is able only to articulate, in broken accents, "Lord, if thou
hadst been here, my brother had not died." It is the repetition of
Martha's same expression. Often at a season of sore bereavement some one
poignant thought or reflection takes possession of the mind, and, for
the time, overmasters every other. This echo of the other mourner's
utterance leads us to conclude that it had been a familiar and
oft-quoted phrase during these days of protracted agony. This
independent quotation, indeed, on the part of each, gives a truthful
beauty to the whole inspired narrative.
The twin sisters--musing on the terrible past, gazing through their
tears on the vacant seat at their home-hearth--had been every now and
then breaking the gloomy silence of the deserted chamber by exclaiming,
"If _He_ had been here, this never would have happened! This is the
bitterest drop in our cup, that all might have been different! These hot
tears might never have dimmed our eyes; our loved Lazarus might have
been a living and loving brother still! Oh! that the Lord had delayed
for a brief week that untoward journey, or anticipated by four days his
longed-for return; or would that we had despatched our messenger earlier
for Him. It is now too late. Though He _has_ at last come, His advent
can be of little avail. The fell destroyer has been at our cottage door
before Him. He may soothe our grief, but the blow cannot be averted.
_His_ friend and _our_ brother is locked in sleep too deep to be
disturbed."
Ah! is it not the same unkind surmise which is still often heard in the
hour of bereavement and in the home of death?--a guilty, unholy brooding
over _second causes_. "If such and such had been done, my child had
still lived. If that mean, or that remedy, or that judicious caution had
been employed, this terrible overthrow of my earthly hopes would never
have occurred; that loved one would have been still walking at my side;
that chaplet of sorrows would not now have been girding my brows; the
Bethany sepulchre would have been unopened--'This my brother had not
died!'"
Hush! hush! these guilty insinuations--that dethroning of God from the
Providential Sovereignty of His own world--that hasty and inconsiderate
verdict on His divine procedure.
"IF _Thou_ hadst been here!" Can we, _dare_ we doubt it? Is the
departure of the immortal soul to the spirit-world so trivial a matter
that the life-giving God takes no cognisance of it? No! Mourning one, in
the deep night of thy sorrow, thou must rise above "untoward
coincidences"--thou must cancel the words "accident" and "fate" from thy
vocabulary of trial. God, _thy_ God, was _there_! If there _be_
perplexing accompaniments, be assured they were of _His_ permitting; all
was planned--wisely, kindly planned. Question not the unerring rectitude
of His dealings. Though _apparently_ absent, He was _really_ present.
The apparent veiling of His countenance is only what Cowper calls "the
severer aspect of His love." Kiss the rod that smites--adore the hand
that lays low. Pillow thy head on that simple, yet grandest source of
composure--"_The Lord reigneth!_" It is not for us to venture to dictate
what the procedure of infinite love and wisdom should be. To our dim and
distorted views of things, it might have been more for the glory of God
and the Church's good, if the "beautiful bird of light" had still "sat
with its folded wings" ere it sped to nestle in the eaves of Heaven. But
if its earthly song has been early hushed; if those full of promise have
been allowed rather to fall asleep in Jesus, "Even so, Father; for it
seems good in Thy sight!" It was from no want of power or ability on
God's part that they were not recalled from the gates of death. "We will
be dumb--we will open not our mouths, because _Thou_ didst it."
Afflicted one! if the brother or friend whom you now mourn be a brother
in glory--if he be now among the white-robed multitude--his last tear
wept--for ever beyond reach of a sinning and sorrowing world--can you
upbraid your God for his early departure? Would you weep him back if
you could from his early crown?
Fond nature, as it stands in trembling agony watching the ebbing pulses
of life, would willingly arrest the pale messenger--stay the
chariot--and have the wilderness relighted with his smile.
But when all is over, and you are able to contemplate, with calm
emotion, the untold bliss into which the unfettered spirit has entered,
do you not feel as if it were cruel selfishness alone that would denude
that sainted pilgrim of his glory, and bring him once more back to
earth's cares and tribulations?
"We sadly watch'd the close of all,
Life balanced in a breath;
We saw upon his features fall
The awful shade of death.
All dark and desolate we were;
And murmuring nature cried--
'Oh! surely, Lord! hadst _Thou_ been here
Our brother had not died!'
"But when its glance the memory cast
On all that grace had done;
And thought of life's long warfare pass'd,
And endless victory won.
Then faith prevailing, wiped the tear,
And looking upward, cried--
'O Lord! Thou surely _hast_ been here,
Our brother has _not_ died!'"
We have already had occasion to note the impressive and significant
silence of the Saviour to Mary. We may just again revert to it in a
sentence here. Martha had, a few moments before, given vent to the same
impassioned utterance respecting her departed brother. Jesus had replied
to her; questioned her as to her faith; and opened up to her sublime
sources of solace and consolation. With Mary it is different. He
responds to her also--but it is only in silence and in tears!
Why this distinction? Does it not unfold to us a lovely feature in the
dealings of Jesus--how He adapts Himself to the peculiarities of
individual character. With those of a bolder temperament He can argue
and remonstrate--with those of a meek, sensitive, contemplative spirit,
He can be silent and weep!
The stout but manly heart of Peter needed at times a bold and cutting
rebuke; a similar reproof would have crushed to the dust the tender soul
of John. The character of the one is painted in his walking on the
stormy water to meet his Lord; of the other, in his reclining on the
bosom of the same Divine Master, drinking sacred draughts at the
Fountain-head of love!
So it was with Martha and Mary, "the Peter and John of Bethany;" and so
it is with His people still.
How beautifully and considerately Jesus _studies_ their case--adapting
His dealings to what He sees and knows they can bear--fitting the yoke
to the neck, and the neck to the yoke. To some He is "the Lion of the
tribe of Judah, uttering His thunders"--pleading with Martha-spirits "by
terrible things in righteousness;"--to others (the shrinking, sensitive
Marys) whispering only accents of gentleness--giving expression to no
needless word that would aggravate or embitter their sorrows.
Ah, believer! how tenderly considerate is your dear Lord! Well may you
make it your prayer, "Let me fall into the hands of God, for great are
His mercies!" He may at times, like Joseph to His brethren, _appear_ to
"speak roughly," but it is dissembled _kindness_. When a father inflicts
on his wayward child the severest and harshest discipline, none but he
can tell the bitter heart-pangs of yearning love that accompany every
stroke of the rod. So it is with your Father in Heaven; with this
difference, that the earthly parent _may_ act unwisely, arbitrarily,
indiscreetly--he may misjudge the necessities of the case--he may do
violence and wrong to the natural disposition of his offspring. Not so
with an all-wise Heavenly Parent. He will inflict no redundant or
unneeded chastisement. Man _may_ err, _has_ erred, and _is_ ever
erring--but "as for God, His way is perfect!"
XII.
THE WEEPING SAVIOUR.
The silent procession is moving on. We may suppose they have reached the
gates of the burial-ground. But a new scene and incident here arrest our
thoughts!
It is not the humiliating memorials of mortality that lie scattered
around,--the caves and grottoes and grassy heaps sacred to many a
Bethany villager. It is not even the newly sealed stone which marks the
spot where Lazarus "sleeps." Let us turn aside for a little, and see
this great sight. It is the Creator of all worlds in tears!--the God-man
Mediator dissolved in tenderest grief! Of all the memories of Bethany,
this surely is the _most_ hallowed and the most wondrous. These tears
form the most touching episode in sacred story; and if we are in sorrow,
it may either dry our own tears, or give them the warrant to flow when
we are told--_Jesus wept!_