XXXVI.

AFTER A DEATH.

And his disciples came and took the body, and buried it, and came and told Jesus.--_Matt._ xiv. 12.

Poor disciples! They had lost their master. Life lay a blank before them; all its meaning gone, all its purpose changed. The support on which they had leaned was taken away--what was to become of them?

Poor disciples indeed--yet happy too. For the hand that dealt the blow held the remedy. It led them to Jesus. What does that mean but that all they had lost was made up to them a thousandfold?

They took the body, and buried it, _and came and told Jesus_. We can see Him receiving the forlorn little band. We can hear His words of tender pity and comfort as He drew them out and got from them all their troubled tale. We can feel the relief it was to tell Him all; feel the peace that stole into their hearts as He spoke to them of their master, and gently won them from their grief, and drew them to Himself. They yielded to the divine attraction of that Eye and that Voice, to the irresistible sympathy of that Heart, to the grace that spoke to their own hearts. And thus that bitter loss proved the crowning grace of their lives, the cause of their eternal joy--because they let it lead them to the feet of Christ--because _they came and told Jesus_.

O Master! I too come to Your feet to tell You all. I have buried my dead. I have lost what can never be restored to me in this world. I have come from the grave with half myself buried there. I have come back to a life with all its meaning gone from it--a life without joy, interest, anything to which my soul responds--a dreary waste stretching before me that I must cross alone. Where shall I turn for courage and for strength? Where but to You to Whom the disciples of John turned in their desolation? Open to me Your arms and Your Heart. Listen tenderly to me whilst I tell You all my trouble. Speak to my soul and calm it and strengthen it. Make up to me for what You have taken away. And if You ask what compensation I desire, I answer: “None other than Thyself, O Lord”.

Let us both be gainers by this bitter loss--You by the fuller surrender into Your hands of all that I have and am; I by the fuller gift of Yourself to my soul--a fulness satisfying its every craving with the love of Him, from Whom neither life nor death, nor things present nor things to come, have power to part me.