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presence; and this tarrying was rather a part of the severe yet faithful discipline of divine love; he would let the need come to the highest before he interfered. We have frequent instances of the like. He comes in with mighty help, but not till every other help has failed, till even his promise has seemed to the weak faith of men to have failed and come utterly to nothing.

But now, when all things are ready for him, he will return to Judea again. The wondering and trembling disciples remonstrate; it was but now that he escaped instant death at the hands of his Jewish foes; it was the necessity of withdrawing from their active malice which brought him here, and will he now affront that danger anew? In these their remonstrances with their Lord, their entreaties that he should not thus return to the scene of his former perils, there spake out indeed truest love to him; but with it were mingled apprehensions for their own safety, as is revealed in ver. 16, where Thomas takes it for granted that to return with him is to die with him. We must keep this in mind, if we would understand our Lord's answer to their remonstrance," Are there not twelve hours in the day?" or, rather, "Are not the hours of the day twelve?"-in other words, "Is there not a time which is not cut short or abridged by premature darkness, but consists of twelve full hours*, during any part of which a man may walk and work without stumbling, being enlightened by the light of this world, by the natural sun in the heavens? Such an unconcluded day there is now for me, a day during any part of which I can safely accomplish the work given me by my Father, whose light

• Maldonatus: Certum esse atque statum spatium Dei, quod minui non possit; duodecim enim constare horis; intra id spatium si quis ambulat, sine periculo ambulare. Calvin: Vocatio Dei instar lucis diurnæ est, quæ nos errare vel impingere non patitur. Quisquis ergo Dei verbo obtemperat, nec quidquam aggreditur nisi ejus jussu, illum quoque habere cœlo ducem et directorem, et hâc fiducià securè et intrepidè viam arripere potest. Cf. Ps. xc. 11. Grotius: Quantò ergo magis tutò ambulo, qui prælucentem mihi habeo lucem supracœlestem, ac divinam cognitionem Paterni propositi?

I, in like manner, behold. So long as the day, the time appointed by my Father for my earthly walk, endures, so long as there is any work for me yet to do, I am safe, and you are safe in my company." The passage which yields the most helps to fix its meaning, is the very similar one spoken under similar circumstances of danger, John ix. 4. And then, at ver. 10, leaving all allusion to himself and contemplating his disciples alone, he links another thought to this, and warns them that they never walk otherwise than as seeing him who is the Light of men,-they never walk as in the night,they undertake no task, they affront no danger, unless looking to him, unless they can say, The Lord is my Light; for so to do were to involve themselves in sure peril and temptation. The final words which explain why such a walker in the night should stumble, "because there is no light in him,” are a forsaking of the figure, which would have required something of this kind, "there is no light above him;" but in the spiritual world it is one and the same thing not to see the light above us, and not to have it in us: for the having it here is only the reflex and the consequence of seeing it there. (Cf. 1 John ii. 8—11.)

We are not to suppose that the Lord receives new and later tidings from the house of sickness, announcing that it is now the house of death, and by this supposition to explain the new communication which he makes to his disciples. But by the inner power of his Spirit he knows how it has fared with his friend; "Lazarus is dead," or, as Christ first expresses it, speaking in the heavenly tongue, "sleepeth;" "but I go," he adds, "that I may awake him out of sleep." Thus simply does he speak of the mighty work which he is about to accomplish; so does he use concerning it a language which shall rather extenuate than exalt its greatness: it is but as a sleep and an awaking. The disciples, however, misunderstood his words, and thought that he spake of natural sleep, an indication often of a favourable crisis in a disorder, and which they assume to be such here; “Lord, if

he sleep, he shall do well*." What need then, they would imply, that their beloved Lord should expose himself and them to peril, when his presence was not required, when all was going favourably forward without him? Hereupon the Lord explained to them that he spake of another sleep, even the sleep of death, from which he was going to awaken Lazarus. The image of death as a sleep is so common, belongs so to the natural symbolism of all nations, that it was no difficulty in the image itself which occasioned the misunderstanding upon their part; but while it was equally possible for them to take his words in a figurative or in a literal sense, they erroneously took them in the latter+. They make an exactly similar mistake, though one involving a greater lack of spiritual insight, Matt. xvi. 5—12. "Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead;" anticipating at the same time a difficulty which might have risen up in their minds, namely, why he was not there to save him. Through his absence there should be an higher revelation of the glory of God than could have been from his earlier presence; one that should lead them, and in them all the Church, to higher stages of faith, to a

So Chrysostom, and Grotius: Discipuli omnimodò quærunt Dominum ab isto itinere avocare. Ideo omnibus utuntur argumentis.

The use of the term Koala in this sense is abundantly frequent in the Old Testament, and not less in the New, as Matth. xxvii. 52; Acts vii. 60; xiii. 36; 1 Cor. vii. 39; xi. 30; xv. 6, 18, 20, 51; 1 Thess. iv. 13, 14, 15; 2 Pet. iii. 4. So we have Koiunois for the sleep of death, Sirac. XLVI. 19. There is but one example of a use of ¿¿uπiew, similar to the present, namely, in the remarkable passage, Job xiv. 12: "Aveρwπos dè Kolμηθεὶς οὐ μὴν ἀναστῇ ἕως ἂν ὁ οὐρανὸς οὐ μὴ συῤῥαφῇ, καὶ οὐκ ἐξυπνισθήσονται ἐξ ὕπνου αὐτῶν. The nearest motive to this image may probably have been the likeness of a dead body to one sleeping. Yet there may well lie in it a deeper thought, of the state of the dead being that of a sleepnot indeed a dreamless sleep; but the separation of the soul from the body as the appointed and indeed necessary organ of its activity, may and must bring about, not a suspension, but a depression, of the consciousness. Wherefore the state of the soul apart from the body is never considered in the Scripture as itself desirable, nor as other than a state of transition, the Scripture acknowledging no true immortality apart from the resurrection of the body. (See OLSHAUSEN, in loc.)

deeper recognition of himself, as the Lord of life and of death: "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent that you may believe." He is glad that he was not there, for had he been upon the spot he could not have suffered the distress of those that were so dear to him to reach the highest point, but must have interfered at an earlier

moment.

When he proposes to go to him now, it is plain that in the mind of one of the disciples at least the anticipation of death, as the certain consequence of going, is not overcome. In the words of Thomas to his fellow-disciples *, when he finds the perilous journey determined on, "Let us also go, that we may die with him," there is a remarkable mixture of faith and unfaithfulness,-faith, since he counted it better to die with his Lord, than to live forsaking him,-unfaithfulness, since he conceived it possible that so long as his Lord had a work to accomplish, he or those in his company could. be overtaken by any peril which should require them to die together. Thomas was, most probably, of a melancholic, desponding character; most true to his Master, yet ever inclined to look at things on their darkest side, finding it most hard to raise himself to the standing point of faith,—to believe other and more than what he saw, (John xiv. 5; xx. 25,)-to anticipate higher and more favourable issues than those which the earthly probabilities of an event promised +. Men of all temperaments and all characters were within that first and

Evμualnτns is used but this once in the New Testament. Grotius makes μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ, with Lazarus; but ἀποθάνωμεν μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ, as Maldonatus well brings out, indicates fellowship not merely in death, but in dying, which was impossible in the case of Lazarus, who was already dead. I know no other interpreter who shares this view.

+ Maldonatus: Theodor. Mopsuest. Chrys. et Euthymius rectè fortasse indicant hæc verba, quamvis magnam audacia speciem præ se ferant, non audacis sed timidi esse hominis, amantis tamen Christum, à quo eum certum mortis, ut putabat, periculum avellere non posset. Bengel: Erat quasi medius inter hanc vitam et mortem, sine tristitiâ et sine lætitiâ paratus ad moriendum; non tamen sine fide.

nearest circle of disciples, that they might be the representatives and helpers of all that hereafter, through one difficulty and another, should attain at last to the full assurance of faith. Very beautifully Chrysostom* says of this disciple, that he who now would hardly venture to go with Jesus as far as to the neighbouring Bethany, afterwards without him travelled to the ends of the world, to the furthest India, daring all the perils of remote and hostile nations.

Martha and Mary had not, probably, ventured to send to the Lord for help, till the sickness of their brother had assumed a most alarming character, and he had most likely died upon the same day that the messenger announcing his illness had reached the Lord, else he would scarcely have been four days in his grave when Jesus came. The day of the messenger's arrival on this calculation would be one day; two our Lord abode in Peraa after he had dismissed him, and one more he would have consumed in the journey from thence to Bethany; for it was not more than the journey of a single day from the one place to the other. Dying upon that day, he had, according to the custom of the Jews, which made the burial immediately to follow on the death, been buried upon the same day, as a comparison of this verse with ver. 39 clearly shews. (Cf. Acts v. 6—10.)

But before the arrival of him, the true Comforter, other comforters, some formal, all weak, had arrived. It was part

In Joh., Hom. 62.

This was speedier than with the Greeks, among whom a speedy burial was counted as an honour done to the dead; (see BECKER'S Charikles, v. 2, pp. 178, 179;) yet it did not take place generally till the second or third day after death. (See the Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Funus.)

St. John's mention of the nearness of Bethany to Jerusalem (not above two of our miles,) is to account for the fact that so many of the Jews from thence should have been assembled round Martha and Mary. 'Aɩ wepi Μάρθαν καὶ Μαρίαν, to signify Martha and Mary themselves and no other, is a Grecism of the finer sort, which is familiar to all. Olshausen, not denying this, is yet inclined to think that here the phrase may indicate that

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