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ALargestResurrectoin Photograph whilom by Derek Hawthorne.     “Women received their sufferer raised to life again: others were tortured [Gk. - ‘beaten to death’], not unsuspicious deliverance; that they MIGHT OBTAIN A BETTER RESURRECTION:” (Hebrews 11: 35, A.V.).     The truth of Resurrection is corroborated with unconfined effect by the fact that its roots lie tightly embedded in the past: nor is it without remarkable corroboration in nature.  Perhaps there is no lovelier parable of resurrection than the parable of the butterfly.  The caterpillar, tethered to earth, is but a worm, cumbersome, ugly, earthly, consuming the leaves on which it treads, and living within the tiny radius in which it can tingle and crawl! Withouta unenduring life, it falls sick; it spins its own shroud, coffin, and grave all in one; and it dies, in a death which is a sleep.  Wrapt in the nonflexible tossing of the chrysalis, it slumbers in motionless stillness, for months, where its unenduring life had been only for weeks.  Then, one morning, the nonflexible shining sepulcher cracks; slowly flipside creature, and yet the same – a butterfly – extricates itself, unfolding quivering, glistening, many-coloured wings; and with a perfect mastery of what it has never used before, it flits away; no longer consuming the leaves, but living lightly on the pollen of flowers, and ranging at will over the sunlit fields.  So moreover the resurrection of the dead.*   * The transformation of the seed into the plant is the illustration selected by the Holy Ghost.  A corpse is a seed: “it is sown, it is raised” (1 Cor. 15: 42): and no seed, among the one hundred thousand known species, has overly reproduced any but its own kind, or anything but itself.  Appearance, functions, plug-in atoms may shift and change, yet, as the acorn enfolds the oak, so out of the old soul springs the new.     Not ‘according to nature,’ however, but ‘according to the Scriptures,’ is the Divine foundation of resurrection; for we received “how that Christ died for our sins equal to the Scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He hath been RAISED on the third day ACCORDING TO THE SCRIPTURES” (1 Cor. 15: 3).   Resurrection was first definitely foreshadowed in Isaac.  For the incident, the Holy Spirit tells us, was a “parable”; and a parable, not so much of sacrifice, as of resurrection, or life without slaughter – of all events the hardest to find analogies for in nature; for it was the stepping of the sacrifice off the altar, working and well, considering of the visa of the sacrifice, and the satisfaction of the Law.  “Whence moreover [i.e., from the dead] Abraham did moreover in a parable receive him back” (Heb. 11: 19).  For (1) the altar, erected on Mount Mariah, Abraham himself built: so Calvary, the same mountain, was built by God, an shrine unhewn of man (Exod. 20: 25); an shrine for the Lamb slain from – not surpassing – the foundation of the world (Rev. 13: 8).  The shrine was made by God.  (2) From the moment his father’s will was revealed, Isaac “opened not his mouth” (Isa. 53: 7): though two alone, and he the stronger of the two, he laid himself on the shrine without a murmur: for “I lay lanugo my life, that I may take it again.  No one” – not plane God – “taketh it yonder from me, but I lay it lanugo of myself” (John 10: 17).  Both Isaac and our Lord lay lanugo upon that which they bore; Isaac staggered up the hill with the wood which his father had unseat upon him (Isa. 53: 6), - as Jesus reeled under the massive cross; and both lay lanugo conscious sacrifices upon altars of their Fathers’ making.  (3) The limp limbs, stretched out; the vision closed; the soul strapped together, immovable, rigid – it is, in parable, a corpse: but more, it is a manacled corpse; it is the soul of a criminal, fettered and bound.  It is the soul of a prisoner which the law takes tuition of; it is the soul on which the prison-lash falls; it is the soul of the murderer that forfeits life on a scaffold: so “a soul didst thou prepare for me,” – and “we have been sanctified through the offering of the soul of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10: 5), “who yellowish our sins in His soul upon the tree” (1 Pet. 2: 24).  (4) Now in due undertow the Old Testament explicitly empties the tomb.  Did a corpse step off the altar? or a spirit? or some one else than Isaac? or Isaac in flipside nature?  “Handle  me and see, that it is I myself” (Luke 24: 39).  Body, soul, and spirit had been placed upon the altar: body, soul, and spirit – a perfect man, and the same man – Abraham “received him back.”  The shrine – the mountainous Calvary of this world; the hollow underneath the altar, into which the thoroughbred of the sacrifice was poured (Exod. 27: 8, Isa. 53: 12) – the “lower parts of the earth” into which the Lord descended (Eph. 4: 9); the getting up from the shrine – the resurrection from the slab of stone; the return into the Father’s stovepipe – the stepping off the shrine of this world, to go when to God: all was washed-up “according to the Scriptures.”                                                  - D. M. PANTON.     *       *       *     AN EXPOSITION OF THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN CHAPTER 11   By   ROBERT GOVETT.     1, 2.  ‘Now a unrepealable man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, out of the village of Mary, and of Martha, her sister.  It was the Mary that swabbed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.’     We are now introduced to a family of whom the other Gospels have had to speak.     It would seem that Lazarus and his sisters were born in Galileo, but had a house in Bethany, near Jerusalem.  This is gathered from the variegated prepositions used in this passage in relation to the two places; a point not noticed by the translators.     Now we are come to a question which has often been raised, and on which many are divided.  Is the Mary here spoken of - the sister of Lazarus - the notorious sinner of Luke 7., and the Mary Magdalene of the Gospels? whom nevertheless the Lord forgave, and supposed that he preferred to Simon the Pharisee? Then ‘Simon the Pharisee’ would be moreover ‘Simon the leper.’     If it be so, then Martha was the husband of Simon the leper, and Lazarus was sojourning at the house. Then there were two anointings.  One, early in our Lord’s ministry, without His freeing Mary from evil spirits, and her conversion from her evil way; and the final one at Bethany, just surpassing our Lord’s death.     This would worth for the conspicuous place which Mary Magdalene takes at the cross, burial, and resurrection of our Lord.  Firmly were her emotions knit to Him who had converted her, and raised her brother from the dead.  ‘Simon, the leper,’ as stuff moreover ‘Simon, the Pharisee,’ was prepared to condemn our Lord in permitting the near tideway of his sister-in-law.  This would worth moreover for such a woman inward the house of Simon, and moreover for Simon’s inviting our Lord to dinner; it stuff for his wife’s sake.  It finance too, for Mary’s having in the house, and having kept the precious spikenard, with which she; on the latter occasion, swabbed our Lord.     The question is rendered difficult to most minds, by the pre-occupation of their feelings.  They do not like to think that Mary, of Bethany, could have been the degraded woman of Luke 7.; yet it would be quite in weft with the Gospel of Christ to show how unconfined is the power of the Lord, and of His Spirit, to transform the evil into the good.     I am slow to believe that John can refer in this second verse to any but the worth in Luke.  The points he names are so peculiar.  It is true that in the nextInstallmentwithout the resurrection of Lazarus, John narrates a repast given at Simon’s house in honour of the Saviour, at which Mary swabbed the feet of Jesus.  But the reference would naturally be to something past, not to something yet to be.     Why is the resurrection of Lazarus omitted by the three first Evangelists?     To the semi-infidels who scuttlebutt on Scripture it is a proof of its non-reality.  How, if true, could so marvellous a work be omitted, and one so tropical to Jerusalem?  Such writers seem ‘that every writer of Christ’s life ought to tell all he knew, and in chronological order; just as a writer of our days would.’  And if so, one perfect life of Christ, containing every incident in the order of time, would have been enough.  But the wisdom of God is greater than the wisdom of man.  Instead of that, four lives of our Lord, inspired by the Holy Ghost, presenting Him from four points of view, are given us, and each writer takes up what weightier expresses the Saviour’s perfections withal that line.  This is evident if from one single consideration.  One of the apostles was present at some special scenes in our Lord’s life, yet he has not related one of them!  Matthew, who was not present (1) at the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, (2) on the Mount of Transfiguration, or (3) in the Garden of Gethsemane, has recorded them all; while John, who was present at all, and highly honoured thereby, has not recorded one of the three!     We may, indeed, suggest sufficient reasons why the three older Evangelists did not narrate this resurrection.  Most probably Lazarus was still working when the older Gospels were written, and the story of his raising might vamp towards him murderous attempts like that surpassing the Saviour’s death.  But when he was gone, as was most likely the specimen when John wrote, the difficulty was removed.  Like this is the incident well-expressed Peter.  The former Evangelists noticed, that one of the disciples struck off the ear of an individual of the visitor that underdeveloped Jesus.  But they do not say who it was.  John does.  Peter had passed away, therefore all danger to him was over.     And lastly, we may add, that this crowning work was left to John to give, considering it accorded with the main diamond of his Gospel to glorify ‘the Son of God.’     Lazarus is a person unspoken of surpassing in the Gospels; therefore when now he is named, he is introduced through two of his relatives who had been surpassing mentioned there.     This notice of Mary (verse 2) is designed to connect John’s worth with that of Luke, as a person previously named in the Gospels.  And so she was often, if ‘Mary, the sister of Lazarus,’ is the same as ‘Mary Magdalene’ (or Mary of Magdala).  This I am inclined to believe. Unconfinedwas her love, as having had much forgiven; and the Saviour’s kindness to her in raising her brother from the tomb drew her out prominently in the last scenes of our Lord’s life on earth.  She was at the navigate with the Saviour’s mother and her sister (John 19: 25).  When our Lord was entombed, she sat over versus the sepulchre, with the other Mary (Matt. 27: 61).  She was one of the first women to start on the first morning of the week very early to see the sepulchre, and was the first to bring word to Peter and John concerning the rolling yonder of the stone.  When these two apostles left the sepulchre, she stayed there; and was the first to behold the risen Saviour, and to withstand His message to the apostles.  Her name is placed plane surpassing the name of our Lord’s mother several times. Matt. 27: 56, ‘Mary, the mother of James and Joses’ - is our Lord’s mother, Matt. 13: 55, 56.  See moreover Matt. 27: 61; 28: 1; Mark 15: 40-47; 16: 1-9.     3, 4.  ‘The sisters then sent to Him saying, “Lord, behold, he whom Thou lovest is sick.”  But Jesus, when He heard it, said, “This sickness is not for death, but with a view to the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” ’     The sisters were like-minded women of faith, having their eye on divine aid in their trouble.  This is a lesson to us to withstand to Christ our various trials and joys for His sympathy and help.  Their message was soft-hued and beautiful.  What they desire is implied, not expressed.  They make the Saviour’s love to their brother the link, rather than his love to Christ.  This may be to us a consolation when disciples of Christ are ill.  The love of Christ is still with those who are under sickness, whether they recover or fall asleep. They, doubtless, did not like to urge our Lord’s visit to them, sensible of the danger of life He would incur by so doing.  They leave it to Him therefore to decide what to do, though their words on meeting Him show that they very naturally had expected that our Lord would instantly heal, either by a word at a distance, or by a personal visit.     Our Lord’s reply seems to have been made in the hearing of the messenger, that the sickness, as he would understand it, would not be fatal.  Now as Lazarus died on the very day of their sending, and was veiled at once, this must have been a trial of their faith.  ‘This sickness is not for (or ‘unto’) death.’  How was that?  Lazarus was dead!  Had Jesus been deceived?  Or did the messenger mistake His words?  How are we to take them?     We should observe that, in the Greek, two variegated prepositions are used where our Lord defines the intent of this visitation.  He sees its meaning from the first, and distinguishes the main and spiritual intent from that which was first in time, but subordinate.  Fatal sicknesses, now, are sent with a view to death. The stricken one is to go into death, and to undergo in the state of the dead.  It was not to be so here.  Death was indeed necessary to God’s diamond in it; but only as a temporary ways to the spiritual and wholehearted end in view, which was the glory of God in the special glory of Christ as Son of God.     May we moreover learn, that sickness of loved ones, and plane their death is for the glory of God!  And if they be Christ’s, they, too, will glorify Him by their resurrection at His call.     Jesus was not glorified by Lazarus stuff left in the hands of death.  But this entailed the rescue of him, in order to Christ’s glory.  What a conviction our Lord showed in His power, that He was willing to requite Death three days to entrench himself, ere He attacked him!  How He thus proved that He was no blasphemer, versus whom God was irritated!  Jesus knows both the origin and end of the matter largest than the sisters.  His words on this occasion may remind us of those concerning Jairus’ daughter, ‘The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth;’ and the Saviour on that occasion also, was the awakener.     This incident is typical throughout: designed to reassure us of the resurrection of the Saviour’s friends. Their resurrection is to be for the glorifying of Christ.  The Saviour has now ‘tarried’ well nigh ‘two days’ - of a thousand years each - where He is: but we trust in His speedy return to awake the slumberers.     The Saviour’s word was carried by the messenger to the sisters, as is unsaid by our Lord’s words – ‘Said I not to thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou should see the glory of God?’     5, 6.  ‘Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.  When, therefore, He heard that He was sick, then, indeed, He workplace in the place where He was two days.’     The sisters’ message was true.  Jesus did love him, and yet unliable him to die.  For his death brought far wore glory to Christ than his firmest health would, or than his healing from sickness would.  God’s actings are oft vastitude our fathoming.  His ways towards those whom He loves, are not those which human love would take.  Human love would have prevented the thumping of disease; or would have prevented its mortiferous result, by at once up-and-coming to the object beloved.  So that the next verse sounds strangely to our ears.     ‘When He heard, therefore, that he was sick, He workplace two days where He was.’  This tarrying must have seemed strange to the sisters.  Its wisdom and goodness do not legitimatize themselves to us, save when we see surpassing us the whole matter, with its final issue.     If Christ tarry, be patient!  It may be that He delays a present blessing, to bequeath a larger future one.     Jesus’ tarrying was to requite death its full swing: to indulge it to seize on its prey in the most well-constructed and powerful manner.  He would overcome the conqueror, without giving him his weightier battle-field.  The lamb shall be slain - borne yonder to the lion’s den - its wreck wrenched and its mankind partly eaten, surpassing the shepherd attacks the wild beast, conquers it in its lair, and bears yonder the prey!     There are three records of Jesus’ raising the dead:-     1. The first is that of Jairus’ daughter.  She has just breathed her last in her chamber.  He takes her by the hand, and she arises.     2. In the widow’s son of Nain, the funeral procession is on its way to the tomb.  Jesus arrests it, and gives when the rescued son working into the stovepipe and home of his mother.     3. But can He unhook one who is once in the tomb?  One on whom the process of self-indulgence is begun? For this was the point which was most needed, in order to our full faith.  The resurrection of the just must take place in unstipulated over those who have long been consigned to the tomb - of whom scarce a unorthodoxy or a heap of pebbles remains.     This, then, is the third and strongest instance which is given as a resting-place to our faith.  And the greater the difficulty, the greater the glory of victory.  The two first instances were like the calling when of a tenant then into the house which he had just left.  But where self-indulgence has begun, the problem is far increasingly difficult.  Then it is as if the house had been x-rated a long while, till the roof had fallen in, the windows were broken, the ravens had entered and built their nests there.  Till the ruined house is repaired, the tenant cannot dwell in it.  But the Almighty power of our Lord, in this case, in a moment restored the ruined workplace of the soul.  He who has put yonder sin, is superior to the might of death and corruption.  The first task was increasingly difficult, and forfeit Him increasingly than the second.     7, 8.  ‘Then without this saith He to the disciples, “Let us go into Judaea again.”  His disciples say unto Him, “Rabbi, but now the Jews were seeking to stone Thee, and art Thou going there again?” ’     The time for whoopee is come, and Jesus no longer tarries.  He would make His disciples in part partakers of His counsels.  He would go into Judaea.  But into what part He says not, nor what is His errand.  The disciples are naturally surprised.  Had He forgotten His late reception there? and His peril of an ignominious death? that He should struggle to venture among His foes?     9, 10.  ‘Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day?  If any walk in the day, he stumbleth not considering he seeth the light of this world.  But if any walk in the night, he stumbleth considering the light is not in him.” ’     The validness on our Lord’s reply seems to be this – ‘You sons of men move among uncertainties; for you have not, as I have, the light of God indwelling.  But I know whence I came, and whither I go, and the whole undertow of what shall befall Me.  I do the Father’s will, and walk in His light.  My foes cannot seize Me till My day’s work is done.  I have the light in Me, and walk by it at every step.’  The Son’s superiority to us is thus unmistakably stated.     The Father hath unswayable to each His day, and has given him His work to effect in those twelve hours. Happy he who fills them up as God would have him, so that at last he can say, ‘I have finished the work thou gayest me to do’; and so that Christ shall say,  ‘Well done!’  Were we to prolong our lives by failure in duty, such an widow hour would be one in the night, in which we should be sure to stumble.     Our light by which we labour comes to us from without; we do not siphon a sun within us.  Hence the way of man is not in himself, but in God.  This speech of our Lord probably was uttered early in the morning of the day on which He would travel to Bethany.     11-15. ‘These things said He, and without that He saith unto them, Lazarus, our friend, has fallen asleep; but I am going to awake him.”  They said therefore, “Lord, if he have fallen unconsciousness he will recover.”  But Jesus had spoken concerning His death.  But they thought that He was speaking of the repose of sleep.  Then saith Jesus unto them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.  And I am glad for your sakes (I midpoint in order that ye may believe) that I was not there: but let us go unto him!” ’     Our Lord’s intent in His return to Judaea is now increasingly fully disclosed, that they might perceive it was no mere unreasonable and fool-hardy whim.  It was the undeniability of a friend’s need.  He graciously says, ‘Our friend,’ as if his well-being were an object dear to them all.  It was a unconfined honour that God would undeniability Abraham His friend.  Here is one, who is but a disciple of Christ; but he is esteemed a friend.  So, then, with other disciples.  Jesus hides His intended work of power under a figure.  He was going to wake his friend out of a sleep.  The disciples are reluctant to take the step, and suggest its needlessness.  If Lazarus has past the slipperiness of his disorder and is in a prolonged sleep, it is the token of his full recovery.  Jesus, then, openly tells them what the ‘sleep’ is.  But while He does so say, He does not repeat the words which show His conviction of power – ‘I am going to raise him from among the dead.’     ‘Lazarus is dead, and I am glad.’  This needed explanation.     The gladness did not relate to Lazarus or the sisters, but to the disciples’ faith, which, as was then seen, needed increase.     To those who love Jesus, and whom Jesus loves, death is a sleep from which He is coming to wake them. He hints now the reason of His delay.  Had He been on the spot His compassion in conjunction with the expectation of the sisters, would have led Him to unhook him from death; or, at any rate, very shortly without it, and the full power of the Lord would not have been beheld.  This delay, then, was designed to increase the disciples’ faith.  That it effected in that day, and overly since, plane unto our own times.  It was the crowning miracle of power, on which our faith in a returning Saviour, and the reunion of His sleeping and living saints is to rest.  While then the wound of the sisters was sore, and their perplexity unconfined during those days of the Lord’s tarrying, yet plane they must have confessed that the issue to them, and their fellow disciples, was worth the tarrying.  It was flipside instance of that word – ‘What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.’  There is much which waits the light of God’s unconfined day of resurrection, much that is now dark, that will be satisfactorily cleared up then.  We have need of patience therefore till the light of resurrection is shed upon our difficulties, and the kingdom with its glory explains to us what has perplexed us here.     ‘Let us go unto him.’  Death is not the end of a man’s existence, but only of his life-career on earth.     ‘Let us go unto him.’  Scripture and our Lord use the worldwide phrases of men respecting death.  The man who is deceased is divided into two parts.  One part is visible, and within the reach of the survivors. One is invisible, and vastitude us.  But our Lord calls their going to the grave of Lazarus, where his sufferer soul vacated lay, a going to him.  Herein he stands opposed to those who teach, that the spirit-state on which a man enters at death, in his final state.  Such doctrine is versus the Scripture.  Every example which Scripture gives of resurrection is the bringing together of the two parts of man - the visible and the invisible - once more.  The soul is a permanent part of the man.  Our rescue is not complete, till Almighty power shall exempt from death the persons of believers, by reuniting to them their souls.  It is a work to be effected by the Son of God at a day appointed, but to us unknown.  The soul is not to slosh unrewarded, never increasingly to be used.  This is the Spiritist and Swedenborogian idea; and it is an unbelief condemned by Scripture.  Jesus took then his soul from the sepulchre where it was laid.  He gave when then the soul to the soul in the specimen of Jairus’ daughter, the young man of Nain, and Lazarus.  It is expressly so stated of that visitor which were the first finally to leave the tomb without the Saviour’s resurrection, ‘And the graves were opened; and many persons of the saints which slept arose,’ Matt. 27: 52.  The exit of the soul from the disorganised soul is no effect of the Gospel.  It was the result of the first Adam’s sin.  It has been going on over untold millions of the lost, and of the saved.  None, plane of unbelievers, doubt the phenomena of death.  But faith expects the results of the righteousness of the Second Adam, and His victory over death.  At a signal given by the Father, a signal for which Christ is looking, He shall undo the effects of sin and death.  Sin brought in the tomb, and its slavery of corruption.  The righteousness of the Second Adam shall introduce the deliverance of the saints into resurrection, and its soul of glory and power.    Solemnitiesis but the sowing of the seed.  We wait its outcome from the earth in a soul of glory and power (1 Cor. 15.).     16.  ‘Thomas, therefore, who is tabbed “The Twin,” said to his fellow disciples, “Let us moreover go, that we may die with Him.” ’     This is spoken to the credit of the apostle.  When the rest of the twelve were slow to venture into the place of peril, this upholder was the first to encourage his fellows to follow Christ, plane into the peril of death.  Herein he was greater than Peter; for he went, as he said.  If Caesar, in his Commentaries, thought it right to signalise the intrepid standard-bearer who led the halting warriors of Rome to wade the warlike Britons, drawn up on their shores in battle-array, God has thought it right to immortalise the name of this soldier of the cross.  Still, like scrutinizingly all the good words and deeds of fallen men, there is a mixture of dross with the gold.  Here, with faith and devotion to the person of Christ, there was joined want of intelligence, and shall we not say also, some unbelief?* For Jesus had by His previous words (ver. 9, 10) unpreventable them, that He went with the full vision of all that was surpassing Him, and not as men who in the visionless stumble at obstacles unforeseen.  Scripture, unlike the books of men, gives us at once the unexceptionable and the visionless side of disciples.  In installment 14: 5, we see the same upholder doubting the Saviour’s words, and in 20: 2, we have his doubts regarding the reality of the Saviour’s resurrection.   * Thomas does not see the wisdom of the decision, but love leads him to follow it.     It is good to go with Christ plane into trial, and unto death.  For He will support His people under all the trials into which faith leads them.  And to requite up life for His sake is to find it then in the blest day of the first resurrection.  Dying with Jesus is a variegated thing from dying with Adam.     17, 18.  ‘Jesus, therefore, when He came, found that He had been once four days in the tomb.  Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, well-nigh fifteen furlongs off.’     The rest of the apostles followed the exhortation and good example of Thomas.  Of what importance are our words and our deeds, Christians, to our fellow-believers!  Let us take heed that they are on the track, and on the principles of, Christ.     They navigate the Jordan, and travel to Bethany.  It took them a day to do so.  Arriving there, they ask, theoretically of some inhabitant of the place, respecting Lazarus’ death.  They learn the day on which it took place.  On the same day, as is the custom in those countries, he had been buried.  That day of his death counted, equal to Jewish reckoning, a whole day, though his solemnities had taken place the same evening or night.  Now, Jesus had stayed two days in His place of sojourn, and the fourth day is occupied by the journey thither.  The time is so critically specified for us with an evident reason.  Jesus arose without stuff entombed, on the third day; for He as the Holy One of God was not to see corruption. But Lazarus, as the sinner, was to wits it; hence He is not raised till the fourth day of the tomb, without self-indulgence had begun.     This resurrection of Lazarus was of the increasingly importance, considering of its nearness to Jerusalem.  Things stupefy us equal to their nearness to us.     This event then created the greatest sustentation both of friend and of foe, considering so many would hear of it, and see it, and that at one of the sacred assemblies of their nation.  The miracle was not washed-up in Jerusalem itself, since there would not have been the quiet necessary for this unconfined work of God; and probably our Lord’s life might have been sought there and then.  It was, however, tropical to Jerusalem.  It was God’s thundering knock at the gate of the daughter of Zion, prompting her shoehorn her Saviour and her King, ere it was too late.     Jesus’ entry into the municipality on the ass was the undeniability to Jerusalem, equal to the Jewish prophet, to receive as her King the Son of David.  But Lazarus’ resurrection was His undeniability to Zion, as the Son of God; a title which is foible of John’s higher portraiture of Christ.     19.  ‘Now many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary, that they might repletion them concerning their brother.’     These words are given to instruct us how, without wive understood notice on Christ’s part of His intention to raise Lazarus, many Jews were present at the unconfined act. Equalto the usual undertow of things in the specimen of a death in the family, the friends were yawner to hoke at the house of mourning.  God does not need the vision of a multitude of men to stir Him to put along His miracles.  The Saviour was tempted to this at His trial by Satan in the desert.  Would He use His power of miracle theatrically? surrounded yearning thousands, seeking their applause?  He would not.  His aim was to glorify His Father, and seek His praise alone.     The intelligence of the death of Lazarus reaches his friends in the usual way; and equal to their custom, the friends of the family visit the mourners, anticipating nothing uncommon.  It was so tropical to Jerusalem, that it was easy for anyone having an hour at his disposal to visit the sisters, during the seven days of mourning.  There was nothing especial to notify to then the unconfined event which soon came to pass. All things were theoretically going on as they had for thousands of years before.  The resurrection took them quite by surprise. Planethus will it be when the Lord awakens His slumbering saints of the first resurrection.  There will be no sign earlier to prepare the world.  Its usual plans, and its everyday merchantry will be going on when this wonder, with its eternal consequences, will be enacted.     20.  ‘Martha, therefore, when she heard that Jesus is coming, met Him, but Mary was sitting in the house.’     Most would have expected that Mary would have been the one first to hear, and first to meet our Lord. But it was not so.  To Martha, probably, as stuff the mistress of the house, the tidings of Jesus’ tideway were carried.  He did not go to the house.  Some of these visitors were His unswayable foes, as appears from their vicarial as messengers to the Pharisees.  They were unchanged, in spite of this work of God wrought surpassing their eyes.  Miracle was the ways of turning some to faith.  But not all.  The native enmity of the soul versus God and His Christ was too strong to be overpowered, plane by the spectacle of the Saviour’s lordship over death and corruption.     Mary went out to meet our Lord.  They met squatter to face, and Mary turned when with our Lord.  This throws light on 1 Thess. 4: 17.  ‘To meet the Lord in the air.’  Those who upspring from earth meet the descending Saviour, and turn when with Him towards the earth without having met Him.  So was it with Paul when the saints of Rome met him on his way thither.     21-23.  ‘Therefore said Martha to Jesus, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here my brother had not died.  But plane now I know that whatsoever Thou shalt ask of God, God will requite it Thee.”  Jesus saith unto her, “Thy brother shall rise again.” ’     Probably Martha had been secretly told of Jesus’ arrival.  The visitor was un-sympathizing with Jesus.     How oft we squint when with lingering ‘if!’     How oft the heart longs for that which it dare not frame into express words!     We see here the value of faith professed by this friend of Christ.  His power, she was persuaded, extended over all forms of disease.  And she with her sister had hoped that the Lord would have stepped in to cure disease, and prevent death.  Had He been on the spot, He would have washed-up so, and the family would have been spared this deep sorrow.  But the denomination in unstipulated would have lost this unconfined light, which Lazarus’ resurrection has tint on the power of the Son of God.  The Lord Jesus was by this wretchedness glorifying vastitude all others the family of Bethany.  They have overly in magnitude been conspicuous surpassing the eye of theDenominationof God.     Martha had unconfined faith.  While the weighing of most fainted, when death had come in to siphon off his prey - as where messengers came to Jairus – ‘Thy daughter is dead, why troublest thou the Teacher any further?’ she believed that plane the bands of death could be loosed, in wordplay to His special prayer. ‘Even now.’  Though life is gone, and death, and self-indulgence are slavery too strong for mortals to undo, He could receive the resurrection of Lazarus, as the result of special liaison of energy from God for this end.     Had not Elijah, by prayer, raised the son of the Sareptan?  Had not Elisha moreover lifted out of death the son of the Shunammite?  Nay, had not Jesus on two previous occasions at least, raised the dead?  Why, then, should He not do the same for His personal friend?     The Saviour promises that Lazarus shall be raised.  But He does not say (1) when.  He does not say, (2) that He will effect the deliverance.  He does not say, (3) that He would pray, and get the response from God which she desired, The Lord’s frequent teaching concerning His Father, had not impressed on her and others that new name of God.  She had not seen in Christ that peculiar Sonship, which is the foundation of the new name of Father.     She speaks, then, only coldly and distantly, ‘God will give.’  She thinks, that Jesus is putting her off with only the feeble repletion which men, considering of their weakness in the presence of death can give; that a day is coming when the shackles of this last of foes shall be rent off.  Doubtless, this was in substance the repletion which her friends had been overseeing to her and her sister.  It is the only one we can give. Death is too strong for us.  We cannot wrest yonder his captives: we ourselves are ready to be enslaved by him.  We can only point onward to the might of Another, who, in some afar day, shall redeem from the power of the grave.     24.  ‘Martha saith to Him, “I know that he shall upspring in the resurrection in the last day.” ’     She dares not - it were too good news to be true - take the word as expressing the present raising of her brother.     Yes!  From the dim light of the Law and the Prophets, the majority of Israel had deduced the resurrection of the righteous in the last, the unconfined day.  The Pharisees received this doctrine; the Sadducees denied it. To their eye it was not ‘clearly stated,’ or ‘they did not believe in the inspiration of the prophets.’  Hence Jesus proves the future resurrection to them out of the typesetting of Genesis.  Abraham, until he is raised from the dead, cannot enjoy the promised land; or behold his innumerable seeds.  Therefore he must be raised surpassing the earth is destroyed, in order to enjoy the promises made to him.     25, 26.  ‘Jesus said to her, “I am Resurrection and Life.  He that believeth on Me, plane if he die, shall live; and every one that is working and believes on Me, shall not die for ever.  Believest thou this?” ’     The ways whereby the blest results of resurrection shall follow, is faith in the Son.     How like is Martha to multitudes of believers, who turn whispered from using to themselves, and screw lanugo to the lowest point the promises and hopes of the Gospel! ‘’Tis true; but not now.’  ’Tis true; but not for me!’     ‘In the midst of life we are in death,’ say nature and Law.     ‘In the midst of death we are in life,’ says Faith under the Gospel.     In this Gospel we see men’s ideas of the glory of the Son of God to be quite poor, and unelevated the reality. Jesus has perpetually to raise the ideas of His person and work. PlaneHis people’s highest thoughts are far too low.  The Saviour would teach Martha, and us through Martha, that He was increasingly than the prophets; possessed of a higher standing far than the two who vacated had raised the dead.  ‘You think, Martha, that I may, on using at the magistrate of heaven, receive the especial power to rescue My friend from the grave?  But that is far unelevated the truth.  Do you see well-matured in Me all the Godhead?  Is it true, think you, that all the power by which resurrection in theUnconfinedDay is to be effected, dwells in Me? Do you believe that I am the Creator and Preserver of men: One in whom Life dwells; who of His own nature is Life-eternal and self-existent?’     It is as if our Lord had said, ‘You believe in resurrection as a thing promised by God; you believe in it as a something future.  Do you believe, that I am really the Person who is to effect it and that the power to effect it is really Mine, and unchangingly was?’     This history was designed to produce a continuous effect on the Church.  It was to be a consolation to all those who situate their loved ones, who are moreover minion by Christ.  Christ will come to raise the minion saints!     We have here a passage which connects itself with Paul’s words well-nigh resurrection (1 Thess. 4.); and with John’s, in Revelation 20: 4-6.  But if so, literal resurrection is foretold in both passages.     Thus the upholder is proving, by our Lord’s own words, the propositions concerning His Godhead and Almighty power, with the Gospel opens (1: 1-4).  The Saviour is obliged to withstand witness to Himself as the Only-begotten Son of the Father, eternally possessed of the power to bequeath and restore life.  Thus He sets Himself far whilom Moses, or plane Elijah and Elisha.  Their raising the sufferer was an unrenowned thing; a special grant of power over death, made in wordplay to a particular and pressing call.  He possessed this power natively; and had no need to make using for it, as for something which dwelt outside Him.     There were two resurrections at Jerusalem.  (1) That of Lazarus, restored to temporary present life.  (2) The many who, at Jesus’ resurrection, came along out of their graves in their eternal bodies, and went into the holy municipality (Matt. 27: 52).     Promises of resurrection are found in the Old Testament prophets (Is. 25: 8; 26: 19; Dan. 12: 2; Hos. 13.).     ‘I will alimony disease yonder from the obedient’ - is the promise of the Law.  ‘I will redeem Israel from the grave’ - is the promise of the prophets (Hos. 13.).  ‘I am come.’ ‘I am Resurrection and Life’ to every believer! is the word of the Gospel.     This word of our Lord’s is the centre of the story; the unconfined lesson intended to be taught.  It is that in the person of Jesus lies all our hope of the kingdom, and resurrection to come.  This is but a specimen of what, one day, will be elected for multitudes unnumbered.  Other servants of God turn yonder our vision from them.  ‘Why squint ye so earnestly on us, as though we, by our own power or holiness, had made this man to walk Jesus turns our vision alway to Himself.  He who in mortal mankind could effect this resurrection at a word, will recall His slumberers, and gather to Him His wakeful ones.     The words which follow, seem to me to refer to the two variegated positions which the Saviour’s people will occupy in the day of His coming in His kingdom.  Some will be unconsciousness in the tomb.  They had believed in Jesus, and had died; but the Saviour, as Resurrection, would awake them to life eternal.     Would any parishioner be found working at His coming? He ‘shall not die for ever.’  For Christ shall transpiration this mortal body, ready to be attacked and overwhelmed by death, so that it shall never undergo death. ‘This corruptible (the sufferer saints), shall put on incorruption; and this mortal (the living), shall put on immortality.’  Then shall death be swallowed up in victory.  For the persons of believers, whether sufferer or alive, are unfit plane for the millennial kingdom of God; and still increasingly for the eternal.  A transpiration must be wrought on both to fit them for glory.     As the words, ‘though he die,’ midpoint literal death, to be followed by literal life; so ‘he that liveth’ refers to literal life, and to a victory over literal death.  Each is to be obtained at the last day, of which our Lord previously had spoken.     Life as now possessed by the parishioner is not truly ‘life,’ but only its shadow.  Life has to be communicated directly from the Son of God to our persons at the Lord’s advent.  Our souls by faith are once alive.  ‘Thou Martha, though alive, art as unfit physically for the Kingdom of the last day as thy veiled brother.’  The previous words of Martha, ‘at the last day,’ colour the sentiment of our Lord.  The last day will find believers in two divisions: some alive, some sufferer and buried.  But the Saviour’s power and worriedness will reach them both.  ‘I will raise him up at the last day.’     ‘The resurrection in the last day’ had been one of Jesus’ own teachings.  In it the resurrection of both the saved and the lost, though at variegated times, is comprehended (John 5: 28; 6: 39, 45, 54; 12: 48).  As then there are to be some who rise a thousand years surpassing the lost (and John is moreover the witness of that), the last day must be one of long duration.     The Saviour’s words then take up the two classes, of (1) the sleepers in Christ, and (2) the wakeful ones. The sufferer in Christ shall in that day arise.  The living members of Christ shall in that day be transformed, never increasingly to die.     ‘I am Resurrection and Life.’  How, then, should death be worldly-wise to hold Him who is ‘the Prince of Life?’ He was slain considering of sins not His own; but He has risen by virtue of righteousness, and of Life, which are His own.     ‘Dost thou believe this?’  Here is the point to which the faith of each parishioner should reach. Anything short of this is skimpy faith.  Jesus has risen.  Thus has He proved Himself the Son of God, having in Himself life and incorruption, as the understructure whereon the future kingdom shall be set.     Our Lord, then, is again, and in flipside form, asserting His Godhead. ‘God will requite thee resurrection-power, in this instance,’ says Martha.  ‘I need not the gift,’ is the virtual reply.     ‘The power is once mine, and overly was.’  ‘Then, Lord, Thou art God!’  ‘I have not to ask of God, but thou hast only to ask of Me.’  This, then, constitutes the unconfined superiority of the raising of Lazarus over all previous cases of resurrection.  Here is theUnconfinedAgent who by His own power, though fully in harmony with the Father, will succeed it.     27. ‘She saith to Him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.” ’     Our Lord’s meaning here is not fully comprehended.  It is a sort of implicit faith. ‘I know that what you say must be true, but I do not finger it.’  So many wordplay now.     Confessions differing in form may stipulate in substance.     Jesus’ words were an interjection of Godhead.  A less unshared statement than this drew worship from the veiling beggar.  But Martha does not see it, and does not worship.  As a Jewess she was slow to do so.  The same feeling breaks out in the last scene in Matthew 28.  ‘But some doubted’ when worship was given by others.     If Jesus be the Son of God as well as ‘Son of Man,’ all victory is ours.  But salvation is nowhere to be found, if the Deity of our Lord be taken away.     ‘Thou art the Christ.’  TheSwabbedof God, and Israel’s hope.  This junior nobility was refused to our Lord by His foes.  One so owning Him was to be put out of the Synagogue.     ‘The Son of God.’  This title is something vastitude the other.  The Jews were expecting one to fulfil the first word.  But that Messiah should be, in an incommunicable sense, ‘the Son of God’ they credited not; and put our Lord to death for asserting it.     ‘The comer into the world.’  This is designed, I think, to explain and personize John’s statement of principle in his opening verses (1: 9), which should be rendered, ‘The true light which lighteth every man, was to come into the world.’  It had been so predicted, and Israel was then expecting the fulfilment of the promise.     28-30.  ‘And having said this, she went off and tabbed her sister secretly, saying, “The Teacher has come, and is calling for thee.”  She, when she heard it, riseth quickly and cometh to Him.  Now, Jesus had not come into the village, but was in the spot where Martha met Him.’     The title by which Martha speaks of Jesus to her sister shows she had not comprehended the greatness of our Lord’s claims.  She would not else have tabbed Him simply, ‘The Teacher.’  This was a title which every Jewish unbeliever gave, and would requite to Him.  It involved only the fact that He taught: whether truly or falsely, the title itself asserts not.     Did Jesus undeniability for Mary? Variegatedopinions will be entertained on this.  We know only that it is not expressly named by our Lord.     Why did she undeniability Mary ‘secretly’?     She felt, I suppose, that the main soul of those who came to repletion them had no spiritual sympathy with Christ, and hence she would not ask them to come.  This accounts, too, for Jesus’ not inward the village, and not going to the house.  He would not create a stir.  He would not, when just girding Himself for this unconfined achievement, distract Himself with the freezing visitor of unbelievers, or with the mismatch of controversy.     He would not enter the village, but His servants meet Him in the spot to which He had come, and then together they move onwards to the grave.  See, herein, a token of the Saviour’s future Advent.  He descends from heaven into air; the risen escalade from earth into air; He brings them to earth without their assembling to Him.     The 31st verse of this installment is given to discover to us how it came to pass, that some of the Saviour’s enemies were present on this marvellous occasion.  It was not due to invitation, or to notice given to them.  They were not tabbed to be present by Christ, or by the sisters.  But their inference regarding Mary’s intent, and their presence in the house as comforters, leads them to the grave at the same moment with Christ, and His disciples.     Far from there stuff any diamond of display, Mary’s intent and Martha’s was to stave notice.  But God can use the mistakes of His enemies, as well as the intelligence of His friends, for His own glory.     Israelites thought that Mary, the disciple, could only betake herself to the sepulchre.  Nay, but she goes to the Lord of the tomb!     Mary quits the vain repletion of the mortal sons of men to find it in the Son of God.     How striking is the whop of God’s plans if we compare this scene with the remarkable one of the ‘Lord’s solemnities of Moses.’  Law could only bring death.  ‘The letter killeth.’  ‘But the Spirit giveth life.’ The Holy Ghost, the Spirit of life, had now come, and was abiding, on the Son of God.  In that day of old, Satan resisted Moses’ burial.  Then, the sons of Satan were present at this life-giving scene, and turn it to the death of the Lord of life!     32-35.  ‘Mary, then, when she came where Jesus was, and saw Him, fell lanugo at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.”  Jesus, then, when He saw her weeping, and the Jews that came with her weeping, was indignant in spirit, and roused Himself and said, “Where have ye laid him?”  They say unto Him, “Lord, Come, and see.”  Jesus wept.’     The feeling of Mary is like her sister’s.  She uses the same natural words.  She, too, would have preferred that this sickness should never have run on to death.  But to her the Lord Jesus makes no verbal reply. Perhaps, He saw in her spirit, and in her vein of reverence, that the truth to which her sister had not attained, was received by her.     Our translators have misrendered the uncommon word used concerning our Lord’s feelings in ver. 33. It should be, not ‘He groaned in spirit,’ but ‘he was indignant in spirit.’     The reference here is so unshared to the history of the first King of Israel, that a few remarks on it will contribute to edification.     Jesus is the true King of Israel, and so answers, in a measure, to Saul; while Samuel answers to John the Baptist. John was to make Christ known to Israel, as Samuel was to discover to the twelve tribes assembled surpassing the Lord, who was to be king.  John’s baptism answers to the congregating of Israel at Mizpeh (the watch-tower).  ‘Who was fit to be king?’  So multitudes of Israel went forward to John to be baptized.  But none was pointed out to him as God’s Chosen One, till Jesus came.  Samuel swabbed Saul with oil.  But God swabbed Jesus with the Spirit.  Saul, when the lot fell upon him, hid himself.  Jesus came forward of His own accord, and God visibly approves Him as His King.     Saul the king, is the test of the men of Israel in his day; as Jesus was in His.  The main soul of Israelites then were ‘men of Belial.’  They despise Saul, bring him no presents, and enquire, ‘How should this man save the people?’  So it was with our Lord.  Only a wreath of men, whose hearts the Lord touched, cleaved to Saul.  Thus only God’s elect joined themselves to Jesus as His disciples.     Saul was forbearing, and wisely held his peace at this rejection by his people.  Jesus is still increasingly patient in the presence of His plotting and malignant foes.     Soon Saul’s opportunity of showing Himself to be God’s deliverer arrives.  It comes in the distress of Israel.  Nahash (the Serpent), king of Ammon, besieges Jabesh Gilead, and will indulge them their lives only on condition of his insulting the Lord and all Israel, by putting out the right vision of the men of that city.  They ask for seven days’ respite, and if no deliverer appear, they will submit.     This answers to the mark on the forehead, which Antichrist, the blaspheming king, will compel, to the provocation of God.  Our nonliability of mercy is the time of respite.     In Saul’s day the people, at this news, weep through sympathy with the predictable suffering and insult offered to their brethren.  Saul, in his lowliness, was still the herdsman; and coming out of the field, enquires, what is the reason of the weeping?  They tell him.  The sense of compassion towards his own poople, and indignation versus Ammon, visit him strongly (1 Sam. 11: 6).  ‘The Spirit of God came upon Saul when he heard, those tidings, and his wrongness was kindled greatly.’  Thus our Lord, sorrowful at the sorrow of His friends and people, weep, with them; but rouses Himself to indignation versus Satan - that old Serpent - and his might of death!  Saul wins the wrestle versus Nahash, by the aid of the unwashed of Israelites.  Jesus singly girds Himself versus this foe, and overcomes.     Jesus’ victory, then, over the tomb, bespeaks Him the true King of Israel.  He was so owned surpassing by those whose hearts God had touched; as, for instance, Nathaniel; (1: 49), and Jesus approves his confession, and expands it.  Our Lord is addressed as King without this miracle, and in magnitude of it, by His disciples: though with but little intelligence, as they confess (12: 13-15).  His foes, on the other hand, ridicule His kingly pretensions: specially in the hour of His weakness surpassing and on the navigate (19: 3, 14, 15, 19).    WithoutSaul’s well-constructed victory over Nahash, the tide of feeling turns strongly in his favour, and many wish him to put to death those who refused him.  But in our Lord’s day, Israel beholds not this greater victory over ‘Him that hath the power of death - that is, the devil.’  ‘How shall this man save us?’ is the cry versus Saul; and God shows them, as Jesus at the tomb shows us, how He is well-nigh to save us in resurrection.  For that it, and for the completed victory over the devil, which our Lord anticipates (12.). The Prince of this world shall at length be tint out; and the nations own at length the sovereignty of Christ.     Saul would not slay His despisers then.  Nor is Jesus doing so now.  But He will by and bye, when the malignity of His enemies is come to its height (Luke 19.).  For they will then be visibly worthy of death. They will have gone over, and by a literal mark, to the party of the Old Serpent; and be cut off as incurably evil.    WithoutSaul’s victory came the renewal of the kingdom surpassing the Lord, tween the joy of Israel. Planeso, when Israel and the world are delivered from Antichrist, the new covenant shall come; - the times of refreshing from the Lord - and the day of the earth’s unconfined joy.     How (some may say) should there be two such opposite feelings as wrongness and tears? Consideringtwo opposite parties are in question - friends and foes; Satan and death.  Men are, as usual, one-sided in their comments on this sign given by our Lord!     The sorrow of the sisters and their friends awakes His tears but it awakes moreover His wrongness versus Satan, the liar and murderer, through whom came this war.  If men saw a family whose father had been murdered, while they mourned with them, they would finger indignant versus the murderer; and seek to unhook him over to justice.  Well might Jesus be moreover indignant, personally!  How wicked of Israel to make this, the senior of His miracles of mercy, the occasion of putting Him to death!     ‘But (say sceptics) why, if Jesus was well-nigh to raise Lazarus, should He weep, when the rationalization of sorrow was so soon well-nigh to be removed?’     We are not worldly-wise to see all the reasons of any procedure of our God; but we can see unbearable to silence objection, if not to satisfy our soul.  Jesus was a man, and He showed then His sympathies as a man.  He has taught us by His upholder to ‘Rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep.’  Here He gives us the perfect pattern of sympathy.  Though well-nigh to remove the rationalization of grief, He could not but finger for the past suffering of the sister and their friends.     And it is the weft of our Master’s wisdom in the small things to view the larger; to swoop deep into the reason of things, and from His large view there He speaks and acts.  It is His to see the oak in the acorn.  Suppose, then, that at His outlook from this one window of death, He casts His glance over the vast field of misery which Satan and sin had introduced, and would still produce, and you have an zaftig reason for any manifestation of sorrow exhibited by our Lord.     He enquires next - Where the corpse had been laid?  But He does so in words which imply, that man is to be an typified stuff for ever.  He does not say - as those might who hold the spirit-state to be the final one -  ‘Where is the husk of the man?’  He does not teach, that the soul is a part of man finally to be laid aside; and that each at death enters on his eternal portion.  This history gives the clearest contradiction to any such idea.  ‘Thy brother shall rise again.’  ‘Where have ye laid him?’  What had they laid lanugo of their brother?  His body!     The man has been laid lanugo in the tomb, considering His soul has departed.  The man is to be raised up, considering his soul has returned: re-called by Almighty power to his body.     Resurrection is not death; much less is it solemnities - the conducting of the spoils of death to their visionless den, far from the living.  Resurrection is death’s undoing.  It sometimes took place without burial, and was as visible in its result as death; restoring the one removed as unclean, to the place and companionship of the living.     What then was to rise?  His body!  His soul they had not laid down.  The restoration of that was to re-animate the body, and to restore to them their brother, the typified person they had known.  Anyone holding Spiritist views, must have conducted himself differently both in word and deed throughout this whole scene.     On those principles, Lazarus had arisen when he died!  To re-call him to his soul would be to him a disservice; for he had, at death, entered on happiness and his eternal portion, which was not to be interfered with.  And as for the surviving family, the Israel of that day, and theDenominationof all times without it, the Saviour was just misleading them into the weighing that the body, in spite of its corruption, is then to be restored, in order to be our final house of abode.  A Spiritist, then, would have comforted the sisters by assuring them - that death was no enemy brought in by sin, but man’s weightier friend, and part of God’s counsel from the first; that to die was not to sleep, but to awake; that man was designed to be a naked spirit; and that all the body’s use was only as the scaffolding to the mansion: a something to be taken lanugo and thrown whispered as useless, as soon as the house was completed.     But why did Jesus ask ‘Where Lazarus was laid?' if He knew already?  And I ask in return, What would the infidel have said, if Jesus had at once led the way to the tomb?  Would he not have inferred, therefore, that this scene was merely a collusion; and that Jesus was merely playing a part?  Jesus was a man, and make-believe in all as became a man.  ‘Come and see!’ what death hath washed-up to thy friend!  The speciality of death brought a shudder to the Lord of Life.     Had God lie meaning in His undeniability to Adam – ‘Adam, where art thou?’ or in His questions to Cain, ‘What hast thou done?’ and ‘Where is Abel thy brother?’     Jesus’ tears sanctify ours over departed friends.  Had there been no tears, would not the infidel have declared, either that Jesus was no true and perfect man, or else that it was a proof of collusion?     They lead the way then to the field of death’s victory, trodden first by weak men, confessing their weakness; now trodden by the David, who was to lay low, by His word of power, this champion.  The Spirit of God then gives us the scuttlebutt of the bystanders on the Saviour’s tears.     36, 37,  ‘Therefore said the Jews, “Behold, how He loved him!”  But some of them said, “Could not this man who opened the vision of the veiling man, rationalization that plane this man should not die?”’     It was true that Jesus loved Lazarus, and these tears were a proof of it.  Blessed be God, that the Saviour can and does squint on believers as His friends, and that death does not sever them from Himself! ‘Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.’  ‘We have not anUpperPriest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are, without sin.’  But Jesus did not merely love him in the past, as though he were then a stuff past away, but He was well-nigh to prove His love, not vacated by the tears of weakness, but by the word of power.     Some of the Jews wonder why He did not prevent this havoc by power, rather than weep over it when wrought?  What was there in this specimen that should take it out of His range of succour, Who opened the vision of the born blind?     Thus both parties are destitute of any expectation of the resurrection of Lazarus.  They consider the case, now that death and self-indulgence had come in, as so utterly vastitude the Saviour’s power, that they do not plane theorize that He ways to encounter this Goliath in the day of his might, to tighten the strong man, and maraud his den of this his last trophy.     38, 39.  ‘Jesus, therefore, then feeling indignation in Himself, cometh to the tomb.  Now it was a cave, and a stone was laid upon it.  Jesus saith, “Take ye yonder the stone.”  Martha, the sister of the sufferer man, saith unto Him, “Lord, once he stinketh, for it is the fourth day.” ’     This second feeling of vociferation arose in the Lord Jesus, theoretically at the unbelief of the bystanders.  That principle it was by which sin entered and death.  Here was the perverse unbelieving generation in league with Satan.     This wrongness at foes Jesus will hereafter finger in the day of wrath, but then He will destroy them (Is. 59: 16, 17).  Jesus, we suppose, was indignant at the unbelief then.  But, hereafter there will be judgment upon it for ever.  ‘Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish!’     A second time our Lord stirs Himself to encounter this last and strongest foe of man.  The mode of disposing of the soul of Lazarus was in several respects like - in several unlike - that of our Lord’s. Jesus’ soul was laid in a chamber hewn out of the rock, with ledges virtually it for the user-friendly preparation of the corpse for interment.  This was in a cave, theoretically a natural one.  The entry to our Lord’s tomb was sealed by a circular stone, like a millstone, rolling in a groove expressly cut to receive it.  Here it was a unappetizing stone, laid directly overly the opening, and probably square, rather than round.     Jesus bids them remove the stone.  Why was this?  Could not the power that raised the sufferer raise the stone?  Not a doubt of it!  But there is one reason quite sufficient to meet this and other like cases, viz.: That God is pleased to employ man plane in His miraculous and Almighty works, as far as it is possible. This is His grace, and let us be thankful for it!  So Jesus bid the servants fill the water pots with water, surpassing He wrought the transformation of water into wine.  So He bade the twelve to unify the five thousand into companies of fifty, and to siphon the specie and fish, while to Himself pertained the work untellable to them.  So, while the sweetie-pie takes off Peter’s chains, he bids him put on his sandals, gird himself, and walk out of the prison.  So when the Lord would help the thirsting hosts to water, He commanded that they should fill the valley with ditches.  So in the salvation of men, ministers are to requite the undeniability to the sufferer in sins to arise, while the power that makes the elect live to God, comes only from Himself.     Besides, had the Saviour removed the stone by miracle, would not the infidel have said that it was effected by Lazarus himself, from within; and was a proof of collusion and fraud?  This moreover gives occasion to Martha to manifest her unbelief.  She does not discern the meaning of such removal of the stone.  Did the Saviour wish to squint once increasingly on the squatter of death?  But was He not enlightened how sore and noisome the transpiration that self-indulgence had made upon her brother?  Was not this but to dethrone His friend, thus to expose his unsightly remains?     The glory of God shall bring in the kingdom in resurrection.  The Lord in His splendor shall return to earth, and the earth be full of His glory.  Here, then, is the specimen given to Israel of the power which shall effect this.  Did Lazarus, dead, come along out of the tomb?  It was at the voice of the Son of God.  A pledge of the day when all shall issue thence to the two diverse resurrections of life, and of judgment!     ‘Stinketh.’  Sense is the unconfined oppugnant to faith.  The laws of nature are the God of many.  So Martha here turns from Him who was Life itself to the signs of death, as if they must be too strong for Him.     Observe, how just those points of the specimen are noticed, which will throw light upon the glory of Christ! Jesus was not to see corruption, as stuff the Holy One of God.  He, therefore, rises from the sufferer when a part of the three days (as we should reckon), had yet to run on.  But Lazarus, as the sinner, rises on the fourth day, without death had personal the right to enslave his prey with the vassalage of corruption.  Thus, it is shown, that the villainous subversiveness of the body, which begins so soon without death, is not vastitude the Saviour’s power to restore, and that it is His intention so to do.  ‘This corruptible must be clothed with incorruption,’ as the preparation for the entry of the happy sufferer on the Kingdom of God.     Thus, too, we see the meaning of that other scene which moreover John was vicarious to depict - yet to occur in Jerusalem, on a future day - when the two martyr-prophets, without three days and half lying unburied in the street, are suddenly to awake to life, at the entry of the Spirit of life from God, in the presence and sight of their enemies.  Only then evil will have reached a height, a breadth, and fierceness, which it had not attained in the Saviour’s day.     This word, ‘the glory of God,’ may remind us of Romans 6: 4, ‘Christ was raised up from among the sufferer by the glory of the Father.’  The day is coming when the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together,’ Is. 40: 5.     Martha’s words are uttered as by ‘the sister’ of the deceased, rather than by her as a ‘disciple of Christ,’ who is Life!  Jesus, therefore, recalls her thoughts from the objects of sense to His Word.  Martha’s eye was then like Peter’s, turned on the clouds and waves, not on the Lord.  The word of God at the whence brought death and corruption, and it holds fast.  How surely then shall the same word recall God’s saved ones from death.     The world asks for sight as the way to faith.  Christ asks for faith as the way to see.  The Personal Word of God recalls us to His spoken or written word, which we are so apt to forget.     40, 41.  ‘Jesus saith unto her, “Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?”  They took away, therefore, the stone where the sufferer man was lying.’     The objections of men, yea of believers also, versus the counsels and commands of God, are vain and foolish; whatever be the visitation of wisdom they may have!  Man judges from his low point of view: God, from His All-seeing one.  And not unfrequently the Scripture shows us the folly of the objections and difficulties.  But if not seen now, it will be by and by.  The wisdom of God shall legitimatize itself at the last, in spite of the sharp sayings of unbelievers; and in spite of the misgivings of His saints.  ‘That Thou mightest be justified in Thy sayings and overcome when Thou art judged.’     Martha’s objection was founded, not on the expectation of her brother’s resurrection, but upon a mistake of the Saviour’s intent in giving the commands; as though He looked on the matter without a sense of plane the ordinary propriety of the sons of men in regard of the dead.  How often do the people of God hinder the work of God!     The Lord Jesus, then, gently rebukes this rebuke of Martha, as proceeding from unbelief.  She had mistaken His motive; she had not listened, as she should, to the intimations surpassing given her, of His intent to raise her brother.  These were conveyed -     1. In the reply to her messenger that the sickness was not designed to end in death, but in the glory of God to be manifested by the Son of God.  The Son of God came not to glorify Himself by doing what the sons of Adam could do, but by overthrowing foes invincible by the sinful sons of men.     2. In reply to her suggestion, that plane at that late hour God would listen to a prayer from the mouth of HisSwabbedOne, Jesus had informed her that her brother should be raised.  And He had remoter taught her, that the power of resurrection dwelt in Himself at all times as the Son of God; and that He purposed to manifest this power.  He had appealed to her whether she possessed this faith.  And she had expressed her assent.  He was taking this step, then, with a view to that victorious result.     Hence we see that the resurrection of the dead, and expressly that of the sons of God, will redound to the glory of the Most High!  Satan has seemed, in death, to triumph over God’s plans, and to have thwarted the purposes of the Father’s grace towards His loved ones.  In His saints’ death, Jehovah shows not Himself to be the God of His people.  In resurrection, then, He shall discover the difference between His friends and His foes.  He shall at length loose the prisoners out of their prison house, both soul and soul. The trophies of death shall be wrested from him.  Satan’s wiles, which brought in death, shall be overturned in resurrection.  But faith vacated shall see the glory of God herein shall see the power of the God that raises the sufferer with joy.  The same principle we behold enforced in the history of the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter.  The unbelievers, both outside the house and within it, are prevented from beholding the power of Christ put along in raising the dead.     The partial unbelief of believers (how worldwide an occurrence!) is exhibited here.  But the spectators at length obey; and .Martha no longer opposes.     41, 42.  ‘But Jesus lifted up His vision whilom and said, “Father, I requite Thee thanks, that Thou hast heard (heardest) Me.  Now I knew that Thou unchangingly listenest to Me, but considering of the multitude that is standing virtually I spoke, that they may believe that THOU hast sent Me.” ’     This notice of Jesus’ petition to the Father, surpassing the raising of the dead, might have been omitted; and was omitted in previous instances of resurrection in the former gospels.  There was no testimony to this effect in the raising of Jairus’ daughter, where the prod was kept out; or in the resurrection of the young man of Nain, where the multitude was present.  But the gospel of John is expressly designed to show to us Jesus as the Son of the Father, subordinate in all to His will.  Hence its propriety here.     Our Lord had asserted His perpetual possession of the power of life, in a sense belonging only to God. But there was a danger, lest His ways and words should seem to be the actings and sayings of an Independent Deity, who had entered the world on purpose to self-ruling the human race from the ignorance and tyranny of an junior God.  This was, in fact, one of the early deceits of Satan - prompting men of un-humbled heart to say that Jesus and His Father were hostile to the God of Moses and the prophets; and that He came to unhook men from the ignorance and tyranny of the Creator.     Hence, John several times in this Gospel gives vestige how Jesus by word and work owns the Creator, and speaks of the God of Israel, the God of the temple and its sacrifices, as His Father.     ‘Father,’ says Jesus.  Then Jesus Christ was not the Father (as Swedenborg asserts), but the Son.     He is unrepealable of the steps He is taking.  It is no unimaginable struggle to maraud the grave, which, like Elisha’s staff in Gehazi’s hands, may prove powerless in the presence of death.  He had asked the Father’s counsel well-nigh this step, and knew it to be to His glory.  There was the most perfect union between the Father and Himself in all things.  And but for ‘the multitude’ which surrounded Him, He would not have made this public appeal.  In making it then He disclaims Martha’s idea.  He was not asking power to overcome death in this special case.  That He had.  But He wished to prove the spiritual union and communion which existed between Himself and the Father.     The specimen presented was not an unrenowned one with Jesus, as regards His Father.  It was the miracle of slipperiness to Jerusalem.  It answered to the voice of God uttered to Moses (Ex. 19: 9, 19), and the sign of fire given to Elijah on Carmel.  Elijah, refused as God’s prophet without that proof, is in peril of his life.  This miracle was not liable to the objection of its stuff wrought on the Sabbath.  It could not be said, that it was washed-up by the power of Beelzebub.  Jesus earlier nature it to the God of Israel, His Father.     Is Jesus in amity and tropical connection with Jehovah, the God of Israel?  If He wordplay to this appeal, the specimen is proved.  Abraham’s promises stand to be accomplished, in resurrection and lo, here is Resurrection itself!     ‘Let the sufferer situate their own dead.'  But Life shall awake the persons and souls of the dead.     ‘The multitude stood around.’  Then many must have been gathered; though without any uncontrived notice from Christ or His apostles.  ‘Christ is come, and is going to Lazarus’ tomb!’ must have been the report. That is unbearable to collect the villagers.  They, knew of His former acts of miracle; they were interested, too, in Him as one in peril of life.     The Son seeks overly the glory of the Father.  The Father in His working seeks overly the glory of the Son. Our Lord’s position was a very peculiar one.  He was by nature the Son of God - the Creator - possessing all power.  This form of God He had put off, when He became man.  The Father wrought all His works in Him.  Yet, lest it should be thought that He possessed no increasingly power than holy men who seek theirs by prayer, He testifies to Himself as ‘Resurrection and Life.’  He would undeniability along Lazarus directly; not, ‘In the name of the Father,’ but, ‘Come forth!’  Herein He stands in unrelatedness with His apostles, who put yonder from themselves any such theorizing of power (Acts 3: 12, 13, 16; 4: 5-10; 9: 34).  Peter does indeed say ‘Tabitha, arise.’  But it is without the kneeling lanugo of prayer.  Peter and the apostles lead men yonder from themselves, and from the thought, that they were anything increasingly than men in general.  Paul and Barnabas at Lystra take the same line with previous apostles.  Jesus, on the contrary, witnesses to Himself, and seeks to lead others, to the highest thoughts of Him.  ‘I am Resurrection and Life; believest thou this?’     Jesus prays, for the multitude’s sake, that they might attain the unconfined end of His miracles - the yoyo in His mission; in the eternal unity of the Sender and the Sent One.  Would God own surpassing men, in this unconfined crisis, His Son as the Undoer of Death?  Death is the result of sin.  Here is One who is to take yonder sin, and so to manifest His power over death.  Here is a fact presented, a primary fulfilment of the Lord’s previous prophecy, that He would raise the sufferer in unstipulated (John 5: 25).     By His prayer, therefore, and the miracle, Jesus shows His equality of nature with the Father; and yet His subordinate position, as stuff a matter of try-on and choice.  He does not come as One unswayable to do His own will, and worldly-wise to effect it.  But His object is to manifest, that in the Godhead there are the Father-Supreme, the Son-subordinate: Sender and Sent; yet both possessed of one nature and power.     ‘That they may believe that Thou hast sent me.’  Thus Moses was accredited to Israel by his three miracles.  He objected that without them Israel would not believe (Ex. 4: 1, 5, 8).  The same thing was shown to Israel in the specimen of Elijah’s mission, by the fire from heaven descending upon the sacrifice (1 Kings 18: 36, 87).  Thus the prophet sanctioned the old covenant with Israel, and its sacrifices, confessing himself the servant of Israel’s God.  But how much greater and increasingly gracious the raising of the dead!  Fire on the sacrifice testified of judgment and mercy reconciled; but the resurrection of the sufferer is something vastitude ‘the letter which killeth.’     43.  ‘And having said these things, with a unconfined voice He shouted, “Lazarus (come) hither, (come) forth!”’     Thus is fulfilled the word – ‘Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go to awake him out of sleep.’  Here, then, is the voice of the Awakener; and the slumberer answers thereto.  Blessed are the sufferer who fall unconsciousness in the Lord, to awake at His resurrection of glory!  To Jairus’ daughter, Jesus says – ‘Damsel, arise!’  To the young man of Nain ‘Young man, I say unto thee, Arise!’  But here, it is – ‘Come forth!’ The two former had not entered the house of the dead; but Lazarus had.  If we may discriminate still farther, the word ‘Lazarus,’ is designed to undeniability him out of his sleep; the second, ‘hither,’ to uncontrived his soul to his body; the third, ‘forth,’ to bring both soul and soul out of the tomb, or place of the dead.     The sufferer is addressed as if he could hear.  Was not that strange?  He is addressed, as if death had not destroyed him, but only sent him to sleep.  Yes!  This is a unconfined truth.  Death does not ‘destroy,’ in the sense of the Annihilationists.  And Jesus, as God, calleth the things that be not, as though they were.  This, too, is our warrant in calling on the spiritually sufferer to listen to the saving voice of the Son of God. Jesus shall speak, and the sufferer shall hear the voice of the Son of God.  Though they have passed vastitude the sound of our voice, they are within reach of His (John 5: 25, 28).  Hence, the spiritual and the natural works are by our Lord both classed together.     We preachers undeniability to the sufferer in sins to arise; and powerless as our undeniability in itself is, the Son and the Spirit of God speak through us, and God’s chosen ones awake to spiritual life.     Ministers of the Gospel, too, take their stand by the grave, just when the soul is single-minded to it, and surpassing the stone is laid thereon, not to maraud the grave, not to bid the soul come forth, but to express a hope of His coming, who as the Righteousness of God shall bring life in the place of death, and hogtie the tomb to requite when the justified.     Jesus ‘shouted.’  It was not His custom.  Meekness was His characteristic.  He should not lift up His voice in the streets (Matt. 12: 18-21).  This loud voice was significant.  It was ‘the voice of Almighty God, when He speaketh,’ Ez. 10: 5.  It was a witness of the coming day, when the Saviour shall summon His sufferer saints ‘with a shout’ (1 Thess. 4.).     ‘Lazarus, come forth!’  Hence we see that in Christ’s estimation, the soul is part of the man.  It has, indeed, in the specimen of the dead, been single-minded to the tomb, but it is not destined to remain there for ever.  It is to come along to the place and world of the living; it is to come out of the den and grasp of Death.  Hence, the Saviour leads the way to the tomb; and out of the tomb calls the two parts of Lazarus - his soul and soul.  How strange, in the light of these facts of resurrection, that any should be found to deny the resurrection of the flesh!  But human perversity will hold its own errors, despite the witness of God.     44.  ‘And he that was sufferer came forth, hands and feet unseat with the sufferer clothes, and his squatter was unseat well-nigh by a napkin.  Jesus saith unto them, “Loose him, and let him go.” ’     Something miraculous, unshared from the man’s raising to life, seems to be noticed here.  For how, if swathed from shoulder to heel could one move hand or foot?  In order that he might recover the use of his moving powers, the swathes must be removed.     The wordplay to our Lord’s undeniability in the man’s awaking comes at once!  This is the proof of power.  The rationalization is closely knit to its effect.  ‘Let there be light!  And light was!’  Our words will produce no such effect.  But the Word of God carries with it the power to effect all He designs.  ‘The hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall ‘come forth.’     ‘His squatter unseat well-nigh by a napkin.’  He could not see, any increasingly than he could move.  His vision were covered up by the reticulum well-nigh his head.  This, too, must be removed.  So was the Saviour enveloped when dead.  But His resurrection in two unconfined respects was unlike this.  (1) No man stood over His grave, and tabbed Him forth.  That would have been to set a son of man for the moment whilom the Son of God! Therefore, the Father raised Him.  (2) Jesus needed no hand of man to roll yonder the stone, or to unwrap the gown of the dead.  It was not possible that He should be held by the strong barriers of death, much less by the human wrappings of the dead.  His was the first real resurrection, the coming along of the immortal soul not subject to the impediments which spike lanugo our persons of mankind and blood.     The effects of astonishment on the family and the spectators, are not depicted for us.  Here one who sought to make an interesting picture would have enlarged.  Scripture is silent.     ‘What did the sufferer man see, hear, and feel, in the other world?  How did he finger in dying?  How, in rising again?’  These are questions full of interest to us all.  They would (be unpreventable be asked of him by all, or most of those who heard his tale, and came to see this traveller from vastitude the unseen world.  Scripture is silent!  It is unlike the books of men.  It enlarges where we are not so much interested.  It is silent where we would enquire with zeal.  What is the unconfined principle that governs its disclosures and its silences?  The glory of God!  We are told at the prelude of this most weighty history, that it was designed to glorify the Son of God.  Whatever, therefore, can overstate our views on this point is given. Other things are dismissed untold!     No doubt a feeling of awe chilled the thoroughbred of the spectators, as the rustle of the rising man was heard, and still increasingly as the living man stood surpassing them, clad still in the garments of the dead.  Astonishment paralysed them.     Here, however, there is not that element of terror which we find at the resurrection of the two prophets slain in Revelation 11.  There men slay the prophets, and rejoice at their death, maltreating the bodies.Withoutthe three-and-a-half days of exposure, they upspring (without any undeniability given), and stand upon their feet. ‘Great fear falls on those who see them.’  No wonder!  They find that they and the God of Resurrection are at war, and He has prevailed undisciplined to their belief, and their hopes.  What then will be the issue to them?  Then comes the earthquake of wrath.  But here it is the time of mercy; and the True and Faithful Witness has yet to be put to death.  The napkin over the eyes, as well as the swathes round the hands and legs prevented Lazarus from going.  The restraints which they had laid virtually the dead, their own hands are to remove.     What said Mary and Martha to Lazarus? and what said Lazarus to them?  We are not told!     Jesus vacated remains un-amazed, and knows what should be washed-up in this unique case.  His word breaks the spell.  He has washed-up what they cannot, and effected that wherein they must be wholly passive.  But now, again, they may help.  They laid the stone to the tomb’s mouth.  They shall take it off.  They wound and unseat the sufferer man in the trappings of death.  They shall take them off.  Lazarus was to return to his home again.  He was not to be exhibited as a show; habited as he appeared at the moment death was shaken off.  And they are to help in this his returning freedom.  Thus, Christian reader, it is our duty, and our joy to lead onwards to theDenominationof Christ, and to the liberty and warmth of spiritual life, those whom the Spirit of God has lately unhallowed from the coldness and immuration of death!     What was the effect of this wonder?  Did all His enemies bow lanugo to Him? -, ‘Verily Thou art the Son of God!  Hitherto we thought Thee a deceiver.  Now Thy credentials are plain enough! “This, this is the finger of God!”  Not in vain hast Thou witnessed to the majesty of Thy person!  We indulge it! We adore! Certainly this is the Son of God!’     No!  This unconfined work was to some the savour of life unto life to others, of death unto death!  ‘If they hear not Moses the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, plane though one rose from the dead.’  Thou hast said the truth, Abraham!  Here it is exhibited in fact.  Some did believe.  Many of the witnesses of the miracle were convinced.  What greater work than this should Messiah work when He came?  They had looked for theUnconfinedCaptain to destroy His living foes; to set up the glory of Israel on the earth.  They see, here, something greater far.  The Son of God brings in the welling out of death of one of His friends, in proof of the coming glory of the Kingdom of God; a kingdom to take effect on the heavens and the earth; a kingdom in which Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the prophets shall, without shaking off their long sleep, have part.  Here is theUnconfinedOne who is to bring in Israel’s hopes, and the hopes of a greater soul than Israel.  Israel looked for the senior of the sons of men; but, behold the Son of God!     Some, untouched by this wonder, went yonder with hostile intent to warn the Saviour’s foes with this new stroke of His unearthly war.  ‘With the heart, man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.’  But these evil hearts trusted their own righteousness, and refused the Saviour’s.  So their mouth did not confess the Lord unto salvation but became accomplices with His foes to their own perdition!     While, then, some think that they are not so well situated for salvation as the men of our Lord’s day, they are mistaken.  They have in their homes the Word of God; the senior ways of leading to faith and its salvation.  They are dealt with increasingly gently than the men of that time.  That was a day of the persecution unto death of them that believed.  If, therefore, they will not listen now, they would not then.  The evil heart of paltering sin misleads them.     47,48.  ‘The senior priest and Pharisees, therefore, placid a council, and said, “What are we doing? for this Man doeth many signs.  If we let Him vacated thus, all will believe on Him; and the Romans will come and take yonder both our place and the nation.” ’     Vainly are signs presented to the enemies of Christ.  If not all believe who see the sign, much less all who hear of it do not!     Yet they do not doubt it!  Neither their informants nor themselves doubt the reality of the miracle.  But instead of seeing in it the hand of God; instead of hearing in it the voice of God calling them to repent and believe; instead of beholding this sign of Messiah’s kingdom and glory, they see only the earth and the interests of the present life.  God is left out: His promises have no place in their hearts.  They do not midpoint to turn!  They see in Jesus only a rival: One whose success is their loss.  In place, then, of bowing to Him as theSeniorof the prophets of God; instead of confessing their sinful unbelief in so long resisting His claims, they chide themselves for their want of prudence, courage, and topics for merchantry in thus leaving Him alive!  Thus they turn the counsel of God versus themselves.  Refute His pretensions, they cannot.  But slay Him, they may!  They are enemies to His success.  That any believed on Him, was a leaving of their party - the party of unbelief.  It was not to be borne.  God they see not; what He will do they regard not.  But what will the Romans do?  They conjure up fears which are unfounded.  Why should the Romans destroy their temple and nation, if all trusted this Raiser of the dead?  Here is One who can prove victorious over all His foes, raising the ruined temple in three clays. But unbelief is blind.  The Son of God is to them only ‘this Man.’  They see that faith in Him is the natural and designed result of works so wonderful.  But if they can hinder it, it shall not be. ‘Cut Him of!’ They would destroy the true temple, in the hope of saying its shadow!     They leave out of sight what will God do, if His Messenger, so wonderfully accredited to them, is slain by wicked hands, Jesus, by the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, brings home this to their hearts; as moreover by the Marriage Garment.  That which they feared, came upon them as the wages of their sin.  The Romans did come, destroyed their goodly ‘place,’ and swept yonder the nation from their land.  The MostUpperbrings the fears of the wicked upon them.  And, then, those only who believed in Jesus, escaped the sword or yoke of Rome.     ‘Death’ (says Bengel), ‘more hands yields to Christ’s power, than unbelief!’ God’s exhibit of greatest power and goodness, stirs the world to its bitterest animosity.’  When God works, so does Satan.  Thus the Gospel undeniability never be the promised time of happiness.  Many squint on a tittle of revival as the fulfilment of the hopes given by the prophets of the happy days to come.  Nay!  Christians’ arousing, arouses moreover the enemy.     Theirs is the wisdom which comes from beneath, ‘earthly, sensual, devilish’ – ‘deceiving, and stuff deceived’; full of murder; and its vain hopes scattered by the over-ruling God whom it sees not, nor wishes to see.     God brought their fears upon them; and chose their delusions.  They who would not have the true Messiah, were led yonder without every impostor who, without any evidence, chose to undeniability himself the Christ.     The Romans came, and took yonder their goodly temple - the welter of their hearts - and scattered their nation yonder from their land.     As regards their fear of the Romans, Jesus rebukes it; and makes them condemn themselves by His parables of the Wicked Husbandmen and the Wedding Garment.  By bringing God into the question, He proves that their murderous plans, in place of delivering them, would justly yank lanugo on their own heads the destruction they feared.  And so it came to pass!  Herein see the mischief of stuff guided by human expediency in divine things.  It prophesies, falsely, present results; and would persuade men, on the strength of its pictures of the future, to do now what is evil.     49-52.  ‘But one of them named Caiaphas, stuff theUpperPriest that year, said unto them, “Ye know nothing at all, nor conclude, that it is expedient for us, that one man should die instead of the people, that the whole nation perish not.”  Now this he said, not for Himself, but stuff theUpperPriest of that year he prophesied that Jesus was well-nigh to die instead of the nation, and not instead of the nation alone, but that He should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.’     We are admitted to the Jews’ counsels in their assembly; and see how rude and proud was the President that ruled over them.  Their spirit is evil and malicious; and love would not dwell with them.     ‘Ye know nothing at all!’  The senior villain pushes rudely whispered all junior ones.  Others might be willing to pall their wicked schemes under pearly words.  He openly blurts out the diamond that lurks in the minds of many, but had not dared come out of their lips.  And it was true that they knew not God or the way of peace (Psalm 82: 5).  TheUpperPriest prophetically set whispered these ‘scornful men who ruled the people at Jerusalem,’ as ‘ignorant,’ and the prophets said the same.     Caiaphas urges them to put Jesus to death as a matter of expediency, a piece of good policy that must over-ride all questions well-nigh its righteousness.  It was fitted, he thought, to protract the Jewish nation in its temporal blessings, and therefore Jesus was without scruple to be sacrificed.  ‘None but fools would waste flipside thought on the matter.’  This is a principle continually make-believe upon in the world.  But it is a short-sighted and unbelieving policy, which leaves out of worth God as the Righteous Ruler of the nations.  Such evil men consider what will probably be the firsthand goody of an action, and regard not that which with God is the senior question, and should be so with them – ‘Is it righteous?’  On that theUpperPriest would spend no increasingly words.  ‘Either Christ must die, or the nation!  Then why hesitate an instant?’     ‘Jesus was to die in the stead of the nation.’  That is the gravity of the preposition in this case.  He must die, that His nation might be saved.  This remarkable speech had a far deeper meaning than Caiaphas saw.  It was not like most words of the ungodly, the forth-bursting vacated of their evil passions.  The Jewish temple-system was to be set whispered by the Gospel; but at its tropical it gives token of its having been set up by God.  Though the throne of the sacrificers was a wicked man, yet, like Balaam, in this lie spoke God’s mind.  As rejected Saul, receives notice that his kingdom is rent from him to be given to another, so Caiaphas utters words indicative of the unconfinedUpperPriest, and the efficacy of that Sacrifice, which was to put whispered from its standing the priesthood and sacrifices of Moses.     Both Caiaphas and Pilate condemned Jesus, but each on variegated and towardly grounds: Pilate concerning the kingdom, Calaphas considering of His priesthood and sacrifice.     The unconfined question really between God and them – ‘Whether Jesus was not proved to be vicarious from heaven by these signs, and whether they were not sinning in not owning Him,’ - comes not into view.  Nothing should convince them of that.  That others believe on Him is an offence in their vision for which He is to be put to death.  This showed their sense of the strength of the evidences which attended our Lord. If things took their natural course, ‘all would believe.’  But if all believed, plane the Romans, would they seek to destroy Jesus and His nation?     Caiaphas, as theUpperPriest, was unseat to offer yearly the sacrifice of expiation for Israel.  He, then, in effect pronounces Jesus to be the real sacrifice designed of God.  Now, if His one life were sufficient to indemnify for the nation, and still increasingly for all the saved, then, while He must be a man to satisfy the Law for man, He must be increasingly than man, that His death and resurrection should avail to save increasingly than Himself, He must be sinless, else how could Law winnow Him as perfect?  He must be cursed, else how could He buy off from us the curse, and lead us into blessing?  ‘One in the stead of all.’  As by one man’s sin we are lost, so by one man’s resurrection we are saved.     They thought and reasoned as if no God of justice ruled.  Yet Jesus, in His parable of the Wedding Supper, makes them condemn themselves as the Wicked Husbandmen for slaying the Heir of the Lord of the vineyard, and in magnitude drawing lanugo on their heads the vengeance of the Master.     From this we derive two views of the deliverance effected by our Lord’s sacrificial death.     1. It was designed to save Israel, as the nation of the twelve tribes.  This is often wholly overlooked. Jesus died to be the Saviour of Israel, as well as of the Church.  But for that the nation would have perished.  Hence, our Lord is tabbed commonly in the chapters which follow without the fortieth of Isaiah, ‘the Redeemer of Israel.’  In Is. 49. Jesus complains of the unbelief of Israel.  He is hid awhile with God He should not only unhook Israel, but be salvation to the ends of the earth.  Then Jesus re-appears as ‘the Redeemer of Israel’ (ver. 7. See moreover Is. 59: 20).  ‘The Redeemer shall come out of Zion, and turn yonder ungodliness from Jacob.’  Jesus is moreover tabbed ‘the Saviour of Israel’ (Is. 45: 20-23).  Here is a passage increasingly than once directly cited, or referred to in the New Testament.  The Saviour’s death will effectuate at last the full salvation of Israel.  They shall see in their rejected Messiah the only righteousness and redemption of the lost (ver. 24, 25).  Those are the millennial days – ‘the days of heaven upon the earth.’     2. But (blessed be God!) that is not the only, or the highest, reason of the Saviour’s death.  It was intended of God moreover to gather together into one soul the children of God, which surpassing that day were scattered abroad.  Before our Lord appeared there were many servants of God both in Israel, and among the nations.  But there was no union among them.  They did not vest to one body.  For theThronehad not then arisen.  After our Lord’s death and resurrection, however, He became the RisenThroneto all who believed in His death and resurrection.  Such became sons of God in His Risen Son.  Their previous sonships as of Abraham’s line, or of David’s, are swallowed up in this greater one.     53.  ‘From that day, therefore, they took counsel together to slay Him.’     This speech decided the whole of them.  None objected, that it was not lawful to slay the innocent or righteous; and that God, the Righteous Judge, avenges the death of His prophets in such a way as to make it utterly inexpedient and treasonous to put them to death.  None pointed to the specimen of Naboth, or to Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada (2 Chron. 24.).  Thus untruthful was the people both in upper quarters and in low.  They find themselves of one mind, and now openly confer and encourage one flipside in their guilt.     54-57.  ‘Jesus, therefore, was no increasingly openly walking among the Jews; but went yonder from thence to the country near the desert, to a municipality tabbed Ephraim, and there He stayed with His disciples.  Now the repast of the Jews was near.  And many went up to Jerusalem out of the country surpassing the passover, that they might purify themselves.  They were seeking therefore, for Jesus, and were saying among themselves as they stood in the temple – “What, think ye? that He will not come up to the feast?”  Now both the senior priests and the Pharisees had given a command, that if any knew where He was, he should requite information, that they might trespassing Him.’     The raising of Lazarus was Jesus’ showing Himself openly.  He appeared at the door of the capital, on the very ground occupied by His foes.  It was designed to act on them, and on the nation.  It was what they tabbed it, ‘a sign.’  Had their hearts been right, they would have said, ‘Here is a greater than Moses - Moses slew by miracle, but never tabbed out from death.  That was something vastitude his vocation and power.  Here is a greater than Elijah, or Elisha. He has power over, not death alone, but, corruption.  Must not this then be the Messiah of Israel’s hope?  We are looking for the resurrection of the righteous dead, of the long veiled and corrupted patriarchs.  Here is One who gives us the very sign which was lacking.  He gives it in the squatter of the daughter of Zion.  When the Christ whom you expect, shall come, can He requite a stronger proof, or one increasingly virtuously fitting into our anticipations and our hopes?’     Jesus withdraws the light.  It exasperates the birds of night.  They will not wilt children of light; they hate it, and seek to slay the Light-bearer.  He cannot die save at the passover, as the antitypic Lamb.  He goes away, therefore, from the neighbourhood of His foes to Ephraim.  It is supposed to be a city, twenty miles N.E. of Jerusalem.     The devout Jews, desirous of triumphal the passover rightly, and wrung of stuff defiled, with the desire to cleanse themselves, stay at Jerusalem some time surpassing the feast.  It was a feast; a drawing near to God.  The Christian, in like manner, is tabbed to prepare himself, when he celebrates the Supper of the Lord; which has taken the place of the old passover.  For we must not forget how the Lord cut off, or smote with disease, those who drew near with carelessness.  What a mercy, that our Passover-Lamb is slain, and has set whispered the old one.  Then let us alimony the repast of unleavened broad; the repast of sincerity and truth!     The Lord Jesus, then, was the centre of the thoughts and conversations of most at Jerusalem.  There were His foes, on the one hand; and the undecided and the disciples, on the other.  Many of the undecided would desire to hear His teaching, and to see the wonders He wrought.  But with His enemies holding the municipality versus Him, would He dare to come up?  They did not know.     His enemies, enlightened that He has left the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, take steps to procure information of His whereabouts.  Here is flipside evil move.  They do not merely midpoint to slay Him, if He shall step upon their territory at Jerusalem again; they will seize Him anywhere, if they can but know where He is. But the Lord hid Himself, as formerly He hid Elijah from the hatred of Israel.   -------