OPENING THOUGHTS
Places associated with great minds are always
interesting. What a halo of moral grandeur must ever be thrown around that
spot which was hallowed above all others by the Lord of glory as the
scene of His most cherished earthly friendship! However holy be the
memories which encircle other localities trodden by Him in the days of His
flesh—Bethlehem, with its manger cradle, its mystic star, and adoring
cherubim—Nazareth, the nurturing home of His youthful affections—Tiberias,
whose shores so often echoed to His footfall, or whose waters in stillness
or in storm bore Him on their bosom—the crested heights where He uttered His
beatitudes—the midnight mountains where He prayed—the garden where He
suffered—the hill where He died—there is no one single resort in His divine
pilgrimage on which sanctified thought loves so fondly to dwell as on the
home and village of BETHANY.
Its hours of sacred converse have long ago fled. Its
honored family have slumbered for ages in their tomb. Bethany's Lord has
been for centuries enthroned amid the glories of a brighter home. But though
its Memories are all that remain, the place is still fragrant with His
presence. The echoes of His voice—words of unearthly sweetness—still linger
around it; and have for eighteen hundred years served to cheer and
encourage many a fainting pilgrim in his upward ascent to the true Bethany
above!
There, the Redeemer of the world proclaimed a brief but
impressive Gospel. Heaven and earth seemed then to touch one another. We
have the tender tones of a Man blended with the ineffable majesty of
God. Hopes "full of immortality" shine with their celestial
rainbow-hues amid a shower of holy tears. The canceling from our Bibles of
the 11th chapter of John would be like the blotting out of the brightest
planet from the spiritual firmament. Each of its magnificent utterances has
proved like a ministering-angel—a seraph-messenger bearing its live coal of
comfort to the broken, bleeding heart, from the holiest altar which SYMPATHY
(divine and human) ever upreared in a trial-world! Many has been the weary
footstep and tearful eye that has hastened in thought to BETHANY—"gone to
the grave of Lazarus, to weep there."
While "the town of Mary and her sister Martha" furnishes
us, thus, with a garnered treasury of Christian solaces, it exhibits
also one of the loveliest of the Bible's domestic portraits. If the
story of Joseph and his brethren is in the Old Testament invested with
surpassing interest, here a Gospel home-scene in the New, of still deeper
and tenderer pathos—a picture in which the true Joseph appears as the
central figure, without any estrangements to mar its beauty. Often at other
times a drapery of woe hangs over the pathway of the Man of Sorrows. But
Bethany is bathed in sunshine—a sweet oasis in His toil-worn pilgrimage.
At this quiet abode of congenial spirits He seems to have
had His main "sips at the fountain of human joy," and to have obtained a
temporary respite from unwearied labor and unmerited enmity. The "Lily among
thorns" raised His drooping head in this Eden-home. There we can follow Him
from the courts of the Temple—the busy crowd—the lengthened journey—the
miracles of mercy—the hours of vain and ineffectual pleading with obdurate
hearts. We can picture Him as the guest of a peaceful family, spirit
blending with spirit in sanctified communion. We can mark the tenderness
of His holy humanity. We can see how He loved, and sympathized, and
wept, and rejoiced!
As the tremendous events which signalized the close of
His pilgrimage drew on, still it is Bethany with which they are mainly
associated. It was at Bethany the fearful visions of His cross and passion
cast their shadow on His path. From its quiet palm-trees He issued forth on
His last day's journey across Mount Olivet. It was with Bethany in view He
ascended to heaven. Its soil was the last He trod—its homes were the last on
which His eye rested when the cloud received Him up into glory. The beams of
the Sun of Righteousness seemed as if they loved to linger on this
consecrated height.
We cannot doubt that many incidents regarding His often
sojournings there are left unrecorded. We have more than once, indeed,
merely the simple announcement in the inspired narrative that He retired
from Jerusalem all night to the village where His friend Lazarus resided. We
dare not withdraw more of the veil than the Word of God permits. Let us be
grateful for what we have of the gracious unfoldings here vouchsafed of His
inner life—the comprehensive intermingling of doctrine, consolation,
comfort, and instruction in righteousness. His Bethany sayings
are for all time—they have "gone through all the earth"—His Bethany words
"to the end of the world!" Like its own alabaster box of precious ointment,
"wherever the Gospel is preached," these will be held in grateful memorial.
John, of all the Evangelists, was best qualified to do
justice to this matchless picture. Baptized himself with the spirit of love,
his inspired pencil could best portray the lights and shadows
in this lovely and loving household. Preeminently like his Lord, he could
best delineate the scene of all others where the tenderness of that tender
Savior shone most conspicuous. He was the disciple who had leaned on His
bosom—who had been admitted by Him to nearest and most confiding fellowship.
He would have the Church, to the last period of time, to enjoy the same. He
interrupts, therefore, the course of his narrative that he may lift the veil
which enshrouds the private life of Jesus, and exhibit Him in all
ages in the endearing attitude and relation of a Human Friend.
Immanuel is transfigured on this Mount of Love before His suffering and
glory! The Bethany scene, with its tints of soft and mellowed sunlight,
forms a pleasing background to the sadder and more awful events which crowd
the Gospel's closing chapters.