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 sepulcher. Death had long left the residents with an unbroken circle. Can it be that the unwelcome intruder is so near at hand? that their now joyous dwelling is so soon to echo to the wail of lamentation? We imagine it was but lately visited by Jesus. In a little while the arrow has 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 tested Abraham." After what things? After a season of rich blessings, gilding a future with bright hopes! Would that, amid our happy homes, and sunshine hours, and seasons of holy and joyous communion between friend and friend, we would more habitually bear in mind "This is not to last!"

In one brief and unsuspected moment, our Lazarus may be taken away in death. 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 always, 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 orphan-hood—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 tenants may pillow their heads night after night in the confident assurance of immunity from trial, it must surely be that loved resort—that "Arbor in His Hill of

Difficulty," where the God-man delighted often 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 gotten a glimpse of their Lord and Savior, 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 climate. But one in the vigor 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 allow one of its pillars so prematurely to fall!

And yet it is even so! The mysterious summons has come!—the most honored home on earth has been crudely 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 cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell, and perished
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 above all, are 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!" "Has He forgotten to be gracious?" "Surely our way is hidden 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 honored 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 allowed 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 Savior, 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 show 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 until 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 in this present world. 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 you, that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God?"

"O you who mourns on your way,
With longings for the close of day,
He walks with you, that Angel kind,
And gently whispers—'Be resigned;
Bear up—bear on—the end shall tell,
The dear Lord orders 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 Savior'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 you, shall it declare your 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 anything we have, or allow one garnered treasure to be removed, except for His own glory and our good. Now it is our privilege to believe it—in Heaven we shall see it. Before the sapphire throne we shall see that not one unnecessary 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 has to us."

"Oh, weep not though the beautiful decay,
Your heart must have its autumn—its pale skies
Leading perhaps to winter's cold dismay.
Yet doubt not. Beauty does 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."

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 Savior until then a stranger and unknown. 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 a hallowed ground!




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