depended on ourselves; but at the same time entertaining the loftier
conviction that _all_ depends upon God. Jesus, when He invites to the
strait gate, does not inculcate remaining outside, in a state of
passive and listless inaction, until the portals be seen to
move by the Divine hand. His exhortation and command rather is,
"Strive"--"knock"--_agonise_ to "enter in!" We are not to ascend to
heaven, seated, like Elijah, in a chariot of fire, without toil or
effort, but rather to "_fight_ the good fight of faith." The saying of
the great Apostle is a vivid portraiture of what the Christian's
feelings ought to be regarding personal holiness--"I laboured, ... yet
not I, but the grace of God which was with me."
As the Lord of Bethany gives the summons, "Roll ye away the stone," His
words seem paraphrased in this other Scripture, "Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you
both to will and to do of his good pleasure." You may feel assured that
He will not impose upon you one needless burden; He will not exact more
than He knows your strength will bear; He will ask no Peter to come to
Him on the water, unless He impart at the same time strength and support
on the unstable wave; He will not demand of you the endurance of
providences, and trials, and temptations you are unable to cope with;
He will not ask you to draw water if the well is too deep, or withdraw
the stone if too heavy. But neither, at the same time, will He admit as
an impossibility that which, as a free and responsible agent, it is in
your power to avert. He will not regard as your misfortune what is your
crime. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me."
Oh! let life be, more than it ever has been, one constant effort to roll
away the stone from the moral sepulchre--carefully to remove every
barrier between our souls and Jesus--looking forward to that glorious
day when the voice of the Restorer shall be heard uttering the
omnipotent "_Come forth!_" and to His angel assessors the mandate shall
be given regarding the thronging myriads of risen dead, "_Loose them and
let them go!_"
XIV.
UNBELIEF.
Man--short-sighted man--often raises impossibilities when God does not.
It is hard for rebellious unbelief to lie submissive and still. In
moments when the spirit might well be overawed into silence, it gives
utterance to its querulous questionings and surmisings rather than
remain obedient at the feet of Christ, reposing on the sublime aphorism,
"All things are possible to him that believeth." In the mind of Martha,
where faith had been so recently triumphant, doubt and unbelief have
begun again to insinuate themselves. This "Peter of her sex" had
ventured out boldly on the water to meet her Lord. She had owned Him as
the giver of life, and triumphed in Him as her Saviour! But now she is
beginning to sink. A natural difficulty presents itself to her mind
about the removal of the incumbent grave-stone. She avers how needless
its displacement would be, as by this time corruption must have begun
its fatal work. Four brief days only had elapsed since the eye of
Lazarus had beamed with fraternal affection. Now these lips must be
"saying to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my
mother and my sister." Death, she felt, must now be stamping his
impressive mockery on that cherished earthly friendship, and, attired in
his most terrible insignia, putting the last fatal extinguisher on the
glimmerings of her faith and hope. "What need is there, Lord," she seems
to say, "for this redundant labour? My brother is far beyond the reach
even of a voice like Thine. Why excite vain expectations in my breast
which never can be realised? That grave has closed upon him for the 'for
ever' of time. Nothing now can revoke the sentence, or reanimate the
silent dust, save the trump of God on the final day."[16]
Thus blindly did Martha reason. She can see no other object her Redeemer
can have for the removal of the stone, save to gaze once more on a form
and countenance He loved. Both for His sake, and the strangers
assembled, she recoils from the thought of disclosing so humiliating a
sight.
Alas! how little are fitful frames and feelings to be trusted. Only a
few brief moments before, she had made a noble protestation of her faith
in the presence of her Lord. His own majestic utterances had soothed her
griefs, dried her tears, and elicited the confession that He was truly
the Son of God. But the sight of the tomb and its mournful
accompaniments obliterate for a moment the recollection of better
thoughts and a nobler avowal. She forgets that "things which are
impossible with men are possible with God." She is guilty of "limiting
the Holy One of Israel."
How often is it so with us! How easy is it for us, like Martha, to be
bold in our creed when there is nothing to cross our wishes, or dim and
darken our faith. But when the hour of trial comes, how often does
_sense_ threaten to displace and supplant the nobler antagonist
principle! How often do we lose sight of the Saviour at the very moment
when we most need to have Him continually in view! How often are our
convictions of the efficacy of prayer most dulled and deadened just
when the dark waves are cresting over our heads, and voices of unbelief
are uttering the upbraiding in our ears, "Where is now thy God?" But
will Jesus leave His people to their own guilty unbelieving doubts? Will
Martha, by her unworthy insinuations, put an arrest on her Lord's arm;
or will He, in righteous retribution for her faithlessness, leave the
stone sealed, and the dead unraised?
Nay! He loves His people too well to let their stupid unbelief and
hardness of heart interfere with His own gracious purposes! How tenderly
He rebukes the spirit of this doubter. "Why," as if He said, "Why
distrust me? Why stultify thyself with these unbelieving surmises. Hast
thou already forgotten my own gracious assurances, and thine own
unqualified acceptance of them. My hand is never shortened that it
cannot save; my ear is never heavy that it cannot hear. I can call the
things which are not, and make them as though they were. Said I not unto
thee, in that earnest conversation which I had a little ago outside the
village, in which Gospel faith was the great theme, if thou wouldst
believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God?"
This Bethany utterance has still a voice,--a voice of rebuke and of
comfort in our hours of trial. When, like aged Jacob, we are ready to
say, "All these things are against me;" when we are about to lose the
footsteps of a God of love, or _have_ perhaps lost them, there is a
voice ready to hush into silence every unbelieving doubt and surmise.
"Although thou sayest thou canst not see Him, yet judgment is before
Him, therefore trust thou in Him." God often thus hides Himself from His
people in order to try their faith, and elicit their confidence. He puts
us in perplexing paths--"allures" and "brings into the wilderness,"
only, however, that we may see more of Himself, and that He may "speak
comfortably unto us." He lets our need attain its extremity, that His
intervention may appear the more signal. He suffers apparently even His
own promises to fail, that He may test the faith of His waiting
people;--tutor them to "hope against hope," and to find, in _unanswered_
prayers and baffled expectations, only a fresh reason for clinging to
His all-powerful arm, and frequenting His mercy-seat. He dashes first
to the ground our human confidences and refuges, shewing how utterly
"vain is the help of man;" so that faith, with her own folded, dove-like
wings, may repose in quiet confidence in His faithfulness, saying, "In
the Lord put I my trust: why say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your
mountain?"
Reader! It would be well for you to hear this gentle chiding of Christ,
too, in the moment of your _spiritual_ depression;--when complaining of
your corruptions, the weakness of your graces, your low attainments in
holiness, the strength of your temptations, and your inability to resist
sin. "_Said I not unto thee_," interposes this voice of mingled reproof
and love, "My grace is sufficient for thee?" "The bruised reed I will
not break, the smoking flax I will not quench." "Look unto _Me_, and be
ye saved, all the ends of the earth." We are too apt to look to
_ourselves_, to turn our contemplation _inwards_, instead of keeping the
eye of faith centered undeviatingly on a faithful covenant-keeping God,
laying our finger on every promise of His Word, and making the challenge
regarding each, "Hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he
spoken, and shall he not bring it to pass?"
Yes; there may be much to try and perplex. Sense and sight may stagger,
and stumble, and fall; we may be able to see no break in the clouds;
"deep may be calling to deep," and wave responding to wave, "yet the
Lord will command his loving-kindness in the daytime, and in the night
his song shall be with me." If we only "_believe_" in spite of unbelief;
hoping on, and praying on, and trusting on; like the great Father of the
faithful, in the midst of adverse providences, "strong in faith, giving
glory to God," He will yet cause the day-spring from on high to visit
us. Even in _this_ world perplexing paths may be made plain, and
slippery places smooth, and judgments "bright as the noonday;" but if
not _here_, there _is_ at least a glorious day of disclosures at hand,
when the reign of unbelieving doubt shall terminate for ever, when the
archives of a chequered past will be ransacked of their every
mystery;--all events mirrored and made plain in the light of eternity;
and this saying of the weeping Saviour of Bethany obtain its true and
everlasting fulfilment, "SAID I NOT UNTO THEE, IF THOU WOULDST BELIEVE,
THOU SHOULDST SEE THE GLORY OF GOD?"
XV.
THE DIVINE PLEADER.
The stone is rolled away, but there is a solemn pause just when the
miracle is about to be performed.
_Jesus prays!_ The God-Man Mediator--the Lord of Life--the Abolisher of
Death--the Being of all Beings--who had the boundless treasures of
eternity in His grasp--pauses by the grave of the dead, and lifts up His
eyes to heaven in supplication! How often in the same incidents, during
our Lord's incarnation, do we find His manhood and His Godhead standing
together in stupendous contrast. At His birth, the mystic star and the
lowly manger were together; at His death, the ignominious cross and the
eclipsed sun were together. Here He weeps and prays at the very moment
when He is baring the arm of Omnipotence. The "mighty God" appears in
conjunction with "the man Christ Jesus." "His name is Immanuel, God with
us."
The body of Lazarus was now probably, by the rolling away of the stone,
exposed to view. It was a humiliating sight. Earth--the grave--could
afford no solace to the spectators. The Redeemer, by a significant act,
shews them where alone, at such an hour, comfort can be found. He points
the mourning spirit to its only true source of consolation and peace in
God Himself, teaching it to rise above the mortal to the immortal--the
corruptible to the incorruptible--from earth to heaven.
Ah! there is nothing but humiliation and sadness in every view of the
grave and corruption. Why dwell on the shattered casket, and not rather
on the jewel which is sparkling brighter than ever in a better world?
Why persist in gazing on the trophies of the last enemy, when we can
joyfully realise the emancipated soul exulting in the plenitude of
purchased bliss? Why fall with broken wing and wailing cry to the dust,
when on eagle-pinion we can soar to the celestial gate, and learn the
unkindness of wishing the sainted and crowned one back to the nether
valley?
It is _Prayer_, observe, which thus brings the eye and the heart near to
heaven. It is _Prayer_ which opens the celestial portals, and gives to
the soul a sight of the invisible.
Yes; ye who may be now weeping in unavailing sorrow over the departed,
remember, in conjunction with the _tears_, the _prayers_ of Jesus. Many
a desolate mourner derives comfort from the thought--"Jesus wept."
Forget not this other simple entry in our touching narrative, telling
where the spirit should ever rest amid the shadows of death--"_Jesus
lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard
me. And I knew that Thou hearest me always._"[17]
Let us gather for a little around this incident in the story of Bethany.
It is one of the many golden sayings of priceless value.
That utterance has at this moment lost none of its preciousness; that
voice, silent on earth, is still eloquent in heaven. The Great
Intercessor still is there, "walking in the midst of the seven golden
candlesticks;" loving to note all the wants and weaknesses, the
necessities and distresses, of every Church, and every member of His
Church. What He said of old to Peter, He says to every trembling
believer--"I _have_ prayed, and _am_ praying for _thee_, that thy faith
fail not!" "For _thee_!" We must not merge the interest which Jesus has
in each separate member of His family, in His intercession for the
Church in general. While He lets down His censer, and receives into it,
for presentation on the golden altar, the prayers of the vast aggregate;
while, as the true High Priest, He enters the holiest of all with the
names of His spiritual Israel on His breastplate--carrying the burden of
their hourly needs to the foot of the mercy-seat;--yet still, He pleads,
as if the case of _each_ stood separate and alone! He remembers _thee_,
dejected Mourner, as if there were no other heart but thine to be
healed, and no other tears but thine to be dried. His own words,
speaking of believers, not collectively but individually, are these--"I
will confess _his_ name before my Father and his angels."[18] "_Who_
touched me?" was His interrogation once on earth, as His discriminating
love was conscious of some special contact amid the press of the
multitude,--"_Somebody_ hath touched me!" If we can say, in the language
of Paul's appropriating faith, "He loved _me_, and gave Himself for
_me_," we can add, He pleads for _me_, and bears _me_! He bears this
very heart of _mine_, with all its weaknesses, and infirmities, and
sins, before His Father's throne. He has engraven each stone of His Zion
on the "palms of His hands," and "its walls are continually before Him!"
How untiring, too, in His advocacy! What has the Christian so to
complain of, as his own cold, unworthy prayers--mixed so with
unbelief--soiled with worldliness--sometimes guiltily omitted or
curtailed. Not the fervid ejaculations of those feelingly alive to their
spiritual exigencies, but listless, unctionless, the hands hanging down,
the knees feeble and trembling!
But notwithstanding all, Jesus _pleads_! Still the Great Intercessor
"waits to be gracious." He is at once Moses on the mountain, and Joshua
on the battle-plain--fighting _with_ us in the one, praying _for_ us in
the other. No Aarons or Hurs needed to sustain His sinking strength, for
it is His sublime prerogative neither to "faint nor grow weary!" There
is no loftier occupation for faith than to speed upwards to the throne
and behold that wondrous Pleader, receiving at one moment, and at
_every_ moment, the countless supplications and prayers which are coming
up before Him from every corner of His Church. The Sinner just awoke
from his moral slumber, and in the agonies of conviction, exclaiming,
"What must I do to be saved?"--The Procrastinator sending up from the
brink of despair the cry of importunate agony.--The Backslider wailing
forth his bitter lamentation over guilty departures, and foul
ingratitude, and injured love.--The Sick man feebly groaning forth, in
undertones of suffering, his petition for succour.--The Dying, on the
brink of eternity, invoking the presence and support of the alone arm
which can be of any avail to them.--The Bereaved, in the fresh gush of
their sorrow, calling upon Him who is the healer of the broken-hearted.
But _all heard_! Every tear marked--every sigh registered--every
suppliant succoured. Amalek may come threatening nothing but
discomfiture; but that pleading Voice on the heavenly Hill is "greater
far than all that can be against us!" He pleads for His elect in every
phase of their spiritual history--He pleads for their inbringing into
His fold--He pleads for their perseverance in grace--He pleads for their
deliverance at once from the accusations and the power of Satan--He
pleads for their growing sanctification;--and when the battle of life is
over, He uplifts His last pleading voice for their complete
glorification. The intercession of Jesus is the golden key which unlocks
the gates of Paradise to the departing soul. At a saint's dying moments
we are too often occupied with the lower _earthly_ scene to think of the
_heavenly_. The tears of surrounding relatives cloud too often the more
glorious revelations which faith discloses. But in the muffled stillness
of that death-chamber, when each is holding his breath as the King of
Terrors passes by--if we could listen to it, we should hear the "Prince
who has power with God" thus uttering His final prayer, and on the
rushing wings of ministering angels receiving an answer while He is yet
speaking--"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be
with me where I am, that they may behold my glory!"
Reader! exult more and more in this all-prevailing Advocate. See that ye
approach the mercy-seat with no other trust but in His atoning work and
meritorious righteousness. There was but _One_ solitary man of the whole
human race who, of old, in the Jewish temple, was permitted to speak
face to face with Jehovah. There is but ONE solitary Being in the vast
universe of God who, in the heavenly sanctuary, can effectually plead in
behalf of His Spiritual Israel. "Seeing, then, that we have a Great High
Priest passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, ... let us come
boldly to the throne of grace." If Jesus delights in asking, God
delights in bestowing. Let us put our every want, and difficulty, and
perplexity, in His hand, feeling the precious assurance, that all which
is really good for us will be given, and all that is adverse will, in
equal mercy, be withheld. There is no limitation set to our requests.
The treasury of grace is flung wide open for every suppliant. "Verily,
verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father _in my name_
He will give it you." Surely we may cease to wonder that the Great
Apostle should have clung with such intense interest to this elevating
theme--the Saviour's _intercession_;--that in his brief, but most
comprehensive and beautiful creed,[19] he should have so exalted, as he
does, its relative importance, compared with other cognate truths. "It
is Christ that died, _yea rather_, that is risen again, who is even at
the right hand of God, _who also maketh intercession for us_." Climbing,
step by step, in the upward ascent of Christian faith and hope, he seems
only to "reach the height of his great argument" when he stands on "_the
mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense_." _There_, gazing on the
face of the great officiating Priest who fills all heaven with His
fragrance, and feeling that against _that_ intercession the gates of
hell can never prevail, he can utter the challenge to devils, and
angels, and men, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
XVI.
THE OMNIPOTENT SUMMONS.
The moment has now come for the voice of Omnipotence to give the
mandate. The group have gathered around the sepulchral grotto--the
Redeemer stands in meek majesty in front--the teardrop still glistening
in His eye, and that eye directed heavenward! Martha and Mary are gazing
on His countenance in dumb emotion, while the eager bystanders bend over
the removed stone to see if the dead be still there. Yes! _there_ the
captive lies--in uninvaded silence--attired still in the same solemn
drapery. The Lord gives the word. "_Lazarus come forth!_" peals through
the silent vault. The dull, cold ear seems to listen. The pulseless
heart begins to beat--the rigid limbs to move--_Lazarus lives_! He rises
girt in the swaddling-bands of the tomb, once more to walk in the light
of the living.
Where Scripture is silent, it is vain for us to picture the emotions of
that moment, when the weeping sisters found the gloomy hours of
disconsolate sorrow all at once rolled away. The cry of mingled wonder
and gratitude rings through that lonely graveyard,--"This our brother
was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found!"
O most wondrous power--Death vanquished in his own territory! The
sleeper has awoke a moral Samson, snapping the withs with which the King
of Terrors had bound him. The star of Bethlehem shines, and the Valley
of Achor becomes a door of hope. The all-devouring destroyer has to
relinquish his prey.
Was the joy of that moment confined to these two bosoms? Nay! The Church
of Christ in every age may well love to linger around the grave of
Lazarus. In _his_ resurrection there is to His true people a sure pledge
and earnest of their own. It was the first sheaf reaped by the mower's
sickle anticipatory of the great Harvest-home of the Final day "when all
that are in their graves" shall hear the same voice and shall "come
forth."[20]
Solemn, surely, is the thought that that same portentous miracle
performed on Lazarus is one day to be performed on _ourselves_. Wherever
we repose--whether, as _he_ did, in the quiet churchyard of our native
village, or in the midst of the city's crowded cemetery, or far away
amid the alien and stranger in some foreign shore, our dust shall be
startled by that omnipotent summons. How shall we hear it? Would it
sound in our ears like the sweet tones of the silver trumpet of Jubilee?
Would it be to gaze like Lazarus on the face of our best friend--to see
_Jesus_ bending over us in looks of tenderness--to hear the living tones
of that same voice, whose accents were last heard in the dark valley,
whispering hopes full of immortality? True, we have not to wait for a
Saviour's love and presence till then. The hour of _death_ is to the
Christian the birthday of endless life. Guardian angels are hovering
around his dying pillow ready to waft his spirit into Abraham's bosom.
"The souls of believers do _immediately_ pass into glory." But the full
plenitude of their joy and bliss is reserved for the time when the
precious but redeemed dust, which for a season is left to moulder in the
tomb, shall become instinct with life--"the corruptible put on
incorruption, and the mortal immortality." The spirits of the just enter
at _death_ on "the inheritance of the saints in light;" but at the
_Resurrection_ they shall rise as separate orbs from the darkness and
night of the grave, each to "shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of
their Father." However glorious the emancipation of the soul in the
moment of dissolution, it is not until the plains and valleys of our
globe shall stand thick with the living of buried generations--each
glorified body the image of its Lord's--that the predicted anthem will
be heard waking the echoes of the universe--"O death, where is thy
sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" Then, with the organs of their
resurrection-bodies ennobled, etherealised, purified from all the
grossness of earth, they shall "behold the King in his beauty." "The
King's daughter," all glorious without, "all glorious within"--"her
clothing of wrought gold"--resplendent _without_ with the robes of
righteousness--radiant _within_ with the beauties of holiness--shall be
brought "with gladness and rejoicing," and "enter into the King's
palace." This will form the full meridian of the saints' glory--the
essence and climax of their new-born bliss--the full vision and fruition
of a Saviour-God. "When He shall appear, ... we shall see Him as He is!"
The first sight which will burst on the view of the Risen ones will be
_Jesus_! _His_ hands will wreath the glorified brows, in presence of an
assembled world, with the crown of life. From _His_ lips will proceed
the gladdening welcome--"Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!"