Chapter 2
Mary, again, was the type of reflection; calm, meek, devotional, contemplative, sensitive in feeling, ill suited to battle with the cares and sorrows, the strifes and griefs of an engrossing and encumbering world; one of those gentle flowers that pine and bend under the rough blasts of life, easily battered down by hail and storm, but as ready to raise its drooping leaves under heavenly influences. Her position was at her Lord's feet, drinking in those living waters which came welling up fresh from the great Fountain of life; asking no questions, declining all arguments, gentle and submissive, a beautiful impersonation of the childlike faith which "beareth all things, hopeth all things, believeth all things." While her sister can so command her feelings as to be able to rush forth to meet her Lord outside the village, calm and self-possessed, to unbosom to Him all her hopes and fears, and even to interrogate Him about death and the resurrection, Mary can only meet Him buried in her all-absorbing grief. The crushed leaves of that flower of paradise are bathed and saturated with dewy tears. She has not a word of remonstrance. Jesus speaks to Martha--chides her--reasons with her; with Mary, He knew that the heart was too full, the wound too deep, to bear the probing of word or argument; He speaks, therefore, in the touching pathos of her own silent grief. Her melting emotion has its response in His own. In one word, Martha was one of those meteor spirits rushing to and fro amid the ceaseless activities of life, softened and saddened, but not prostrated and crushed by the sudden inroads of sorrow. Mary, again, we think of as one of those angel forms which now and then seem to walk the earth from the spirit-land; a quiet evening star, shedding its mellowed radiance among deepening twilight shadows, as if her home was in a brighter sphere, and her choice, as we know it was, "a better part, that never could be taken from her."[7] Beautifully and delicately has a Christian poet thus drawn her loving character:--
"Oh, blest beyond all daughters of the East! What were the Orient thrones to that low seat, Where thy hush'd spirit drew celestial birth! Mary! meek listener at the Saviour's feet, No feverish cares to that divine retreat Thy woman's heart of silent worship brought, But a fresh childhood, heavenly truth to meet With love and wonder and submissive thought. Oh! for the holy quiet of thy breast, Midst the world's eager tones and footsteps flying, Thou whose calm soul was like a well-spring, lying So deep and still in its transparent rest, That e'en when noontide burns upon the hills, Some one bright solemn star all its lone mirror fills."
Of Lazarus, around whom the main interest of the narrative gathers, we have fewer incidental touches to guide us in giving individuality to his character. This, however, we may infer, from the poignant sorrow of the twin hearts that were so unexpectedly broken, that he was a loved and lamented only brother, a sacred prop around which their tenderest affections were entwined. Included too, as he was, in the love which the Divine Saviour bore to the household (for "Jesus loved Lazarus"), is it presumptuous to imagine that his spirit had been cast into much the same human mould as that of his beloved Lord, and that the friendship of Jesus for him had been formed on the same principles on which friendships are formed still--a similarity of disposition, some mental and moral resemblances and idiosyncrasies? They were like-minded, so far as a fallible nature and the nature of a stainless humanity _could_ be assimilated. We can think of him as gentle, retiring, amiable, forgiving, heavenly-minded; an imperfect and shadowy, it may be, but still a faithful reflection and transcript of incarnate loveliness. May we not venture to use regarding him his Lord's eulogy on another, "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!"
Nor must we forget, in this rapid sketch, what a precious unfolding we have in this home portraiture of the humanity of the Saviour! "_The Man_ Christ Jesus" stands in softened majesty and tenderness before our view. He who had a heart capacious enough to take in all mankind, had yet His likings (sinless partialities) for individuals and minds which were more than others congenial and kindred with His own. As there are some heart sanctuaries where we can more readily rush to bury the tale of our sorrows or unburden our perplexities, so had He. "Jesus wept!"--this speaks of Him as the human Sympathiser. "Jesus loved Lazarus"--this speaks of Him as the human Friend! He had an ardent affection for all His disciples, but even among _them_ there was an inner circle of holier attachments--a Peter, and James, and John; and out of this sacred _trio_ again there was one pre-eminently "Beloved." So, amid the hallowed haunts of Palestine, the homes of Judea, the cities of Galilee, there was but _one_ Bethany. It is delightful thus to think of the heart of Jesus in all but sin as purely _human_, identical and identified with our own. He was no hermit-spirit dwelling in mysterious solitariness apart from His fellows, but open to the charities of life;--in all His refined and hallowed sensibilities "made like unto His brethren." Friendship is itself a holy thing. The bright intelligences in the upper sanctuary know it and experience it. They "cry one to another." Theirs is no solitary strain--no isolated existence. Unlike the planets in the material firmament, shining distant and apart, they are rather clustering constellations, whose gravitation-law is unity and love, this binding them to one another, and all to God. Nay--with reverence we say it--may not the archetype of all friendship be found shadowed forth in what is higher still, those mystic and ineffable communings subsisting between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a past eternity? We can thus regard the friendship of Jesus on earth--like all ennobled, purified affections--as an emanation from the Divine; a sacred and holy rill, flowing direct from the Fountain of infinite love. How our adorable Lord in the days of His flesh fondly clung even to hearts that grew faithless when fidelity was most needed! What was it but a noble and touching tribute to the longings and susceptibilities of His holy soul for human friendship, when, on entering the precincts of Gethsemane, He thus sought to mitigate the untold sorrows of that awful hour--"Tarry _ye_ here and _watch_ with _Me_!"
But to return. Such was the home around which the memories of its inmates and our own love to linger.
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus--all three partakers of the same grace, fellow-pilgrims Zionward, and that journey sanctified and hallowed by a sacred fellowship with the Lord of pilgrims. The Saviour's own precious promise seems under that roof of lowly unobtrusive love to receive a living fulfilment: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Though many a gorgeous palace was at that era adorning the earth, where was the spot, what the dwelling, half so consecrated as this? Solomon had a thousand years before, two miles distant, in presence of assembled Israel, uttered the exclamation, "But will God in very deed dwell with men upon earth?" He was now verily dwelling! Nor was it under any gorgeous canopy or august temple. He had selected Three Human Souls as the shrines He most loved. He had sought their holy, heavenly converse as the sweetest incense and costliest sacrifice. How or where they first saw Jesus we cannot tell. They had probably been among the number of those pious Jews who had prayerfully waited for the "consolation of Israel," and who had lived to see their fondest wishes and hopes realised. The Evangelist gives no information regarding their previous history. The narrative all at once, with an abruptness of surpassing beauty, leaves us in no doubt that the Divine Redeemer had been for long a well-known guest in that sunlit home, and that, when the calls and duties of His public ministry were suspended, many an hour was spent in the enjoyment of its peaceful seclusion.
We can fancy, and no more, these oft happy meetings, when the Pilgrim Saviour, weary and worn, was seen descending the rocky footpath of Olivet,--Lazarus or his sisters, from the flat roof of their dwelling, or under the spreading fig-tree, eager to catch the first glimpse of His approach.
When seated in the house, we may picture their converse: Themes of sublime and heavenly import, unchronicled by the inspired penmen, which sunk deep into those listening spirits, and nerved two of them for an after-hour of unexpected sorrow. If there be bliss in the interchange of communion between Christian and Christian, what must it have been to have had the presence and fellowship of the Lord Himself! Not seeing Him, as _we_ see Him, "behind the lattice," but seated underneath His shadow, drinking in the living tones of His living voice. These "children of Zion" must, indeed, have been "joyful in their King."
One of these hallowed seasons is that referred to in the 10th of St Luke, where Martha the ministering spirit, and Mary the lowly disciple, are first introduced to our notice. That visit is conjectured to have occurred when Jesus was returning to the country from the Feast of Tabernacles. The Bethany circle dreamt not then of their impending trial. But, foreseen as it was by Him who knows the end from the beginning, may we not well believe one reason (the main reason) for His going thither was to soothe them in the prospect of a saddened home? So that, when the stroke _did_ descend, they might be cheered and consoled with the remembrances of His visit, and of the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth.
And is not this still the way Jesus deals with His people? He visits them often by some precious love-tokens--some special manifestations of His grace and presence before the hour of trial. So that, when that hour does come, they may not be altogether prostrated or overwhelmed with it. Like Elijah of old, they have their miraculous food provided before they encounter the sterile desert. When they come to speak of their crushed hearts, they have solaces to tell of too. Their language is, "I will sing of _mercy_ and _judgment_!"
* * * * *
We may be led to inquire why a character so lovely as that of Lazarus was not enlisted along with the other disciples in the active service of the Apostleship. Why should Peter and Andrew, John and James, be summoned from their boats and nets on Gennesaret to follow Jesus, and this other, imbued with the same spirit and honoured with the same regard, be left alone and undisturbed in his village home?
"To every man there is a work." Some are more peculiarly called to active duty, and better fitted for it; others for passive obedience and suffering. Some are selected as bold standard-bearers of the cross, others to give their testimony in the quiet seclusion of domestic life. Some are specially gifted, as Paul, to appear in the halls of Nero or on the heights of Mars' Hill, and, confronting face to face the world's boasted wisdom, maintain intact the honour of their Lord. Others are required to glorify Him on beds of sickness, or in homes of sorrow, or in the holy consistent tenor of their everyday walk. Some are called as Levites to temple service; others to give the uncostly cup of cold water, or the widow's mite; others to manifest the meek, gentle, unselfish, resigned, forgiving heart, when there is no cup or mite to offer!
Believer! rejoice that your path is marked out for you. Your lot in life, with all its "accidents," is your Lord's appointing. Dream not, in your own short-sighted wisdom, that, had you occupied some other or more prominent position--had your talents been greater, or your worldly influence more extensive--you might have glorified your God in a way which is at present denied to you. He can be served in the lowliest as well as in the most exalted stations. As the tiniest leaf or smallest star in the world of nature reflects His glory as well as the giant mountain or blazing sun, so does He graciously own and recognise the humblest effort of lowly love no less than the most lavish gifts which splendid munificence and costly devotion can cast into His treasury. Let it be your great aim and ambition to honour Him just in the position He has seen meet to assign you. "Let every man," says the Apostle, "wherein he is called, therein abide with God." However limited your sphere, you may become a centre of holy influences to the little world around you. Your heart may be an incense-altar of love and affection, kindness and gentleness to man--your life a perpetual hymn of praise to your Father in Heaven; glorifying Him, like Martha, by active service; like Mary, by sitting at His feet; or, like Lazarus, by holy living and happy dying, and leaving behind you "the Memory of the Just" which is "blessed."
III.
LESSONS.
As yet the home of Bethany is all happiness. The burial-ground has been untraversed since, probably years before the dust of one, or perhaps both parents had been committed to the sepulchre.[8] Death had long left the inmates an unbroken circle. Can it be that the unwelcome intruder is so nigh at hand?--that their now joyous dwelling is so soon to echo to the wail of lamentation? We imagine it but lately visited by Jesus. In a little while the arrow hath sped; the sacredness of a divine friendship is no guarantee against the incursion of the sleepless foe of human happiness. Bethany is a mourning household. The sisters are bowed in the agony of their worst bereavement--the prop of their existence is laid low--"_Lazarus is dead!_"
At the very threshold of this touching story, are we not called on to pause, and read _the uncertainty of earth's best joys and purest happiness_; that the brightest sunshine is often the precursor of a dark cloud. When the gourd is all flourishing, a worm may unseen be preying at its root! When the vessel is gliding joyously on the calm sea, the treacherous rock may be at hand, and, in one brief hour, it has become a shattered wreck!
It is the touching record of the inspired historian in narrating Abraham's heaviest trial--"After _these things_, God did tempt Abraham." After _what_ things? After a season of rich blessings, gilding a future with bright hopes!
Would that, amidst our happy homes, and sunshine hours, and seasons of holy and joyous intercourse between friend and friend, we would more habitually bear in mind "This is not to last!" In one brief and unsuspected moment Lazarus may be taken. The messenger may now be on the wing to lay low some treasured object of earthly solicitude and love. God would teach us--while we are glad of our gourds--not to be "exceeding glad;" not to nestle here as if we were to "live alway," but rather, as we are perched on our summer boughs, to be ready at His bidding to soar away, and leave behind us what most we prize.
It tells us, too, _the utter mysteriousness of many of the divine dispensations_.
"LAZARUS IS DEAD!" What! He, the head, and support, and stay of two helpless females? The joy and solace of a common orphanhood,--a brother evidently made and born for their adversities? What! Lazarus, whom Jesus tenderly loved? How much, even to his Lord, will be buried in that early grave! We may well expect, if there be one homestead in all Palestine guarded by the overshadowing wings of angels to debar the entrance of death, whose inmates may pillow their heads night after night in the confident assurance of immunity from trial, it must surely be that loved resort--that "Arbour in His Hill Difficulty," where the God-man delighted oft to pause and refresh His wearied body and aching mind. Will Omnipotence not have set its mark, as of old, on the door-posts and lintels of that consecrated dwelling, so that the destroyer, in going his rounds elsewhere, may pass by it unscathed? How, too, can the infant Church spare him? The aged Simeon or Anna we dare not wish to detain. Burdened with years and infirmities, after having got a glimpse of their Lord and Saviour, let them depart in peace, and receive their crowns. These decayed trees in the forest--those to whom old age on earth is a burden--let them bow to the axe, and be transplanted to a nobler clime. But one in the vigour of life--one so beautifully combining natural amiability with Christian love--one who was pre-eminently the _friend_ of Jesus, and that _word_ profoundly suggestive of all that was lovely in a disciple's character. Death may visit other homes in that sequestered village, and spread desolation in other hearts, but surely the Church's Lord will not suffer one of its pillars so prematurely to fall!
And yet it is even so! The mysterious summons has come!--the most honoured home on earth has been rudely rifled!--the most loving of hearts have been cruelly torn; and inscrutable is the dealing, for "_Lazarus is dead_!"
"He, the young and strong, who cherish'd Noble longings for the strife, By the roadside fell, and perish'd On the threshold march of life."
And worse, too, than all, "the Lord is absent." Why is Omniscience tarrying elsewhere, when His presence and power are above all needed at the house of His friend?
The disconsolate sisters, in wondering amazement, repeat over and over again the exclamation, "If Jesus had been here, this our brother had not died!" "Hath He forgotten to be gracious?" "Surely our way is hid from the Lord, our judgment is passed over from our God."
Ah! the experience of His people is often still the same. What are many of God's dispensations?--a baffling enigma--all strangeness--all mystery to the eye of sense. _Useless_ lives prolonged, _useful_ ones taken! The honoured minister of God struck down, the unfaithful watchman spared! The philanthropic and benevolent have an arrest put on their manifold deeds of kindness and generosity; the grasping, the avaricious, the mean-souled--those who neither fear God nor do good to man, are suffered to live on from day to day! What is it but the picture here presented eighteen hundred years ago--_Judas_ spared to be a _traitor to his Lord_, while--_Lazarus is dead_!
But let us be still! The Saviour, indeed, does not now lead us forth, amid the scene of our trial, as He did the bereft sisters, to unravel the mysteries of His providence, and to shew glory to God, redounding from the darkest of His dispensations. To _us_ the grand sequel is reserved for eternity. The grand development of the divine plan will not be fully accomplished till _then_; faith must meanwhile rest satisfied with what is baffling to sight and sense. This whole narrative is designed to teach the lesson that there is an undeveloped future in all God's dealings. There is an unseen "why and wherefore" which cannot be answered here. Our befitting attitude and language _now_ is that of simple confidingness--"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"--Listening to one of these Bethany sayings (we shall by and by consider), whose meaning will be interpreted in a brighter world by Him who uttered it in the days of His flesh--"Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest _believe_ thou shouldest _see_ the glory of God?"
"O thou who mournest on thy way, With longings for the close of day, He walks with thee, that Angel kind, And gently whispers--'Be resign'd; Bear up--bear on--the end shall tell, The dear Lord ordereth all things well.'"
Our duty, meanwhile, is that of children, simply to trust the faithfulness of a God whose footsteps of love we often fail to trace. All will be seen at last to have been not only _for_ the best, but really _the best_. Dark clouds will be fringed with mercy. What we call now "baffling dispensations," will be seen to be wondrous parts of a great connected whole,--the wheel within wheel of that complex machinery, by which "all things" (yes, ALL things) are now working together for good.
"Lazarus is dead!" The choicest tree in the earthly Eden has succumbed to the blast. The choicest cup has been dashed to the ground. Some great lights in the moral firmament have been extinguished. But God can do without human agency. His Church can be preserved, though no Moses be spared to conduct Israel over Jordan, and no Lazarus to tell the story of his Saviour's grace and love, when other disciples have forsaken Him and fled.
We may be calling, in our blind unbelief, as we point to some ruined fabric of earthly bliss--some tomb which has become the grave of our fondest affections and dearest hopes--"Shall the dust praise thee, shall _it_ declare thy truth?" _Believe! believe!_ God will not give us back our dead as He did to the Bethany sisters; but He will not deprive us of aught we have, or suffer one garnered treasure to be removed, except for His own glory and our good. _Now_ it is our province to _believe_ it--in _Heaven_ we shall _see_ it. Before the sapphire throne we shall _see_ that not one redundant thorn has been suffered to pierce our feet, or one needless sorrow to visit our dwelling, or tear to dim our eye. Then our acknowledgment will be, "We have _known_ and _believed_ the love which God hath to us."
"Oh, weep not though the beautiful decay, Thy heart must have its autumn--its pale skies Leading mayhap to winter's cold dismay. Yet doubt not. Beauty doth not pass away; His form departs not, though his body dies. Secure beneath the earth the snowdrop lies, Waiting the spring's young resurrection-day."[9]
Be it ours to have Jesus _with_ us, and Jesus _for_ us, in all our afflictions. If we wish to insure these mighty solaces, we must not suffer the hour of sorrow and bereavement to overtake us with a Saviour till _then_ a stranger and unknown. St Luke tells us the secret of Mary's faith and composure at her loved one's grave:--_She had, long before her day of trial, learned to sit at her Redeemer's feet. It was when in health Jesus was first resorted to and loved_.
In prosperity may our homes and hearts be gladdened with His footstep; and when prosperity is withdrawn, and is succeeded by the dark and cloudy day, may we know, like Martha and Mary, where to rush in our seasons of bitter sorrow; listening from His glorified lips on the throne to those same exalted themes of consolation which, for eighteen hundred years, have to myriad, myriad mourners been like oil thrown on the troubled sea. Jesus is with us! The Master is come! His presence will extract sorrow from the bitterest cup, and make, as He did at Bethany, a very home of bereavement and a burial scene to be "hallowed ground!"
IV.
THE MESSENGER.
Is the absent Saviour not to be sought? Martha and Mary knew the direction He had taken. The last time He had visited their home was at the Feast of Dedication, during the season of winter, when the palm-trees were bared of their leaves, and the voice of the turtle was silent. Jesus, on that occasion, had to escape the vengeance of the Jews in Jerusalem by a temporary retirement to the place where John first baptized, near Enon, on the wooded banks of the Jordan. It must have been to Him a spot and season of calm and grateful repose; a pleasing transition from the rude hatred and heartless formalism which met Him in the degenerate "City of Solemnities." The savour of the Baptist's name and spirit seemed to linger around this sequestered region. John had evidently prepared, by his faithful ministry, the way for a mightier Preacher, for we read, as the result of the Saviour's present sojourn, that "many believed on him there."