V.

THE MESSAGE.

The messenger has reached--what is his message? It is a brief, but a beautiful one. "_Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is sick._"

No laboured eulogium--no lengthened panegyric could have described more significantly the character of the dying villager of Bethany. Four mystic words invest his name with a sacred loveliness. By one stroke of his pen the Apostle unfolds a heart-history; so that we desiderate no more--more would almost spoil the touching simplicity--"_He whom Thou lovest!_"

We might think at first the words are inverted. Can the messenger have mistaken them? Is it not more likely the message of the sisters was this:--"Go and tell Him, 'Lord, he whom _we_ love,' or else, 'he who loveth _Thee_ is sick?'"

Nay, it is a loftier argument by which they would stir the infinite depths of the Fountain of love! They had "known and believed the love" which the Great Redeemer bore to their brother, and they further felt assured that "loving him at the beginning, He would love him even to the end." Their love to Lazarus (tender, unspeakably tender as it was one of the loveliest types of human affection)--was at best an _earthly love_--finite--imperfect--fitful--changing--perishable. But the love they invoked was undying and everlasting, superior to all vacillation--enduring as eternity.

It is ours "to take encouragement in prayer from God only;"--to plead nothing of our own--our poor devotedness, or our unworthy services; they are rather arguments for our condemnation;--but _His_ promises are all "Yea, and amen." They never fail. His name is "a strong tower," running into which the righteous are safe. That tower is garrisoned and bulwarked by the attributes of His own everlasting nature. Among these attributes not the least glorious is His _Love_--_that_ unfathomable love which dwelt in His bosom from all eternity, and which is immutably pledged never to be taken from His people!

Man's love to his God is like the changing sand--_His_ is like the solid rock. Man's love is like the passing meteor with its fitful gleam. _His_ like the fixed stars, shining far above, clear and serene, from age to age, in their own changeless firmament.

Do we know anything of the words of this message? Could it be written on our hearts in life? Were we to die, could it be inscribed on our tombs, "This is one whom _Jesus loved_?"

Happy assurance! The pure spirits who bend before the throne know no happier. The archangels--the chieftains among principalities and powers, can claim no higher privilege, no loftier badge of glory!

Love is the atmosphere they breathe. It is the grand moral law of gravitation in the heavenly economy. God, the central sun of light, and joy, and glory, keeping by this great motive principle every spiritual planet in its orbit, "for _God is love_."

That love is not confined to heaven. It may be foretasted here. The sick man of Bethany knew of it, and exulted in it. Though in the moment of dissolution he had to mourn the personal absence of his Lord, yet "believing" in that love, he "rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory." His sisters, as they stood in sorrowing emotion by his dying couch, and thought of that hallowed fraternal bond which was about so soon to be dissolved, could triumph in the thought of an affection nobler and better which knit him and them to the Brother of brothers--and which, unlike any earthly tie, was indissoluble.

And what was experienced in that lowly Bethany home, may be experienced by us.

That love in its wondrous manifestation is confined to no limits, no age, no peculiar circumstances. Many a Lazarus, pining in want, who can claim no heritage but poverty, no home but cottage walls, or who, stretched on a bed of protracted sickness, is heard saying in the morning, "Would God it were evening! and in the evening, Would God it were morning!" if he have that love reigning in his heart, he has a possession outweighing the wealth of worlds!

What a message, too, of consolation is here to the _sick_! How often are those chained down year after year to some aching pillow, worn, weary, shattered in body, depressed in spirit,--how apt are they to indulge in the sorrowful thought, "Surely God cannot care for _me_!" What! Jesus think of this wasted frame--these throbbing temples--these powerless limbs--this decaying mind! I feel like a wreck on the desert shore--beyond the reach of His glance--beneath the notice of His pitying eye! Nay, thou poor desponding one, He _does_ cherish, He _does_ remember thee!--"Lord, _he whom Thou lovest_ is sick." Let this motto-verse be inscribed on thy Bethany chamber. The Lord _loves_ His sick ones, and He often chastens them with sickness, just _because_ He loves them. If these pages be now traced by some dim eyes that have been for long most familiar with the sickly glow of the night-lamp--the weary vigils of pain and languor and disease--an exile from a busy world, or a still more unwilling alien from the holy services of the sanctuary--oh! think of Him who _loves_ thee, who loved thee _into_ this sickness, and will love thee _through_ it, till thou standest in that unsuffering, unsorrowing world, where sickness is unknown! Think of Lazarus in _his_ chamber, and the plea of the sisters in behalf of their prostrate brother, "Lord, come to the sick one, _whom Thou lovest_."

Believe it, the very continuance of this sickness is a pledge of His love. You may be often tempted to say with Gideon, "If the Lord be with me, why has _all_ this befallen me?" Surely if my Lord loved me, He would long ere this have hastened to my relief, rebuked this sore disease, and raised me up from this bed of languishing? Did you ever note, in the 6th verse of this Bethany chapter, the strangely beautiful connexion of the word THEREFORE? The Evangelist had, in the preceding verse, recorded the affection Jesus bore for that honoured family. "Now Jesus _loved_ Martha and her sister and Lazarus." "When He had heard THEREFORE that he was sick,"--what did He do? "Fled on wings of love to the succour of His loved friend; hurried in eager haste by the shortest route from Bethabara?" We expect to hear so, as the natural deduction from John's premises. How we might think could love give a more truthful exponent of its reality than hastening instantaneously to the relief of one so dear to Him? But not so! "When He had heard THEREFORE that he was sick, _He abode two days still in the same place where He was_!" Yes, there is _tarrying_ love as well as _succouring_ love. He _sent_ that sickness because He loves thee; He _continues_ it because He loves thee. He heaps fresh fuel on the furnace-fires till the gold is refined. He appoints, not one, but "many days where neither sun nor stars appear, and no small tempest lies on us," that the ship may be lightened, and faith exercised; our bark hastened by these rough blasts nearer shore, and the Lord glorified, who rules the raging of the sea. "We expect," says Evans, "the blessing or relief in _our_ way; He chooses to bestow it in _His_."

Reader! let this ever be your highest ambition, to love and to be loved of Jesus. If we are covetous to have the regard and esteem of the great and good on earth, what is it to share the fellowship and kindness of Him, in comparison with whose love the purest earthly affection is but a passing shadow!

Ah! to be without that love, is to be a little world ungladdened by its central sun, wandering on in its devious pathway of darkness and gloom. Earthly things may do well enough when the world is all bright and shining--when prosperity sheds its bewitching gleam around you, and no symptoms of the cloudy and dark day are at hand; but the hour is coming (it may come soon, it _must_ come at some time) when your Bethany-home will be clouded with deepening death-shadows--when, like Lazarus, you will be laid on a dying couch, and what will avail you then? Oh, nothing, _nothing_! if bereft of that love whose smile is heaven. If you are left in the agony of desolation to utter importunate pleadings to an _Unknown Saviour_, a _Stranger God_--if the dark valley be entered uncheered by the thought of a loving Redeemer dispelling its gloom, and waiting on the Canaan side to shew you the path of life!

Let the home of your hearts be often open, as was the home of Lazarus, to the visits of Jesus in the day of brightness; and _then_, when the hour of sorrow and trial unexpectedly arises, you will know where to find your Lord--where to send your prayer-message for Him to come to your relief.

Yes! He _will_ come! It will be in His own way, but His joyous footfall _will_ be heard! He is not like Baal, "slumbering and sleeping, or taking a journey" when the voice of importunate prayer ascends from the depths of yearning hearts! If, instead of at once hastening back to Bethany, He "abides still for two days where He was"--if He linger among the mountain-glens of distant Gilead, instead of, as we would expect, hastening to the cry and succour of cherished friendship, and to ward off the dart of the inexorable foe--be assured there must be a reason for this strange procrastination--there must be an unrevealed cause which the future will in due time disclose and unravel. All the recollections of the past forbid one unrighteous surmise on His tried faithfulness. "_Now, Jesus loved Lazarus_," is a soft pillow on which to repose;--raising the sorrowing spirit above the unkind insinuation, "My Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me."

If He linger, it is to try and test the faith of His people. If He let loose the storm, and suffer it to sweep with a vengeance apparently uncontrolled, it is that these living trees may strike their roots firmer and deeper in Himself--the Rock of eternal ages. Trust Him where you cannot trace Him. Not one promise of His can come to nought. The channel may have continued long dry--the streams of Lebanon may have failed--the cloud has been laden, but no shower descends--the barren waste is unwatered--the windows of heaven seem hopelessly closed. Nay, nay! Though "the vision tarry," yet if you "wait for it" the gracious assurance will be fulfilled in your experience--"The Lord is good to them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him." The fountain of love pent up in His heart will in due time gush forth--the apparently unacknowledged prayer will be crowned with a gracious answer. In His own good time sweet tones of celestial music will be wafted to your ear--"It is the voice of the Beloved!--lo, He cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!" If you are indeed the child of God, as Lazarus was, remember this for your comfort in your dying hour, that whether the prayers of sorrowing friends for your recovery be answered or no, the Lord of love has at least _heard_ them--the messenger has not been mocked--the prayer-message has not been spurned or forgotten! I repeat it, He _will_ answer, but it will be _in His own way_! If the Bethany-home be ungladdened by Lazarus restored, it will exult through tears in the thought of Lazarus glorified. And the Marthas and Marys, as they go often unto the grave to weep there, will read, as they weep, in the holy memories of the departed, that which will turn tears into joy--"_Jesus loved him._"