Memories of Bethany

Mess

age? It is a brief, but a beautiful one. "

er of Bethany. Four mystic words invest his name with a sacred loveliness. By one stroke of his pen the Apostle unfold

aken them? Is it not more likely the message of the sisters was this:-"Go a

they further felt assured that "loving him at the beginning, He would love him even to the end." Their love to Lazarus (tender, unspeakably tender as it was one of the loveliest types of hu

es are all "Yea, and amen." They never fail. His name is "a strong tower," running into which the righteous are safe. That tower is garrisoned and bulwarked by the attributes of His own everlasting

ove is like the passing meteor with its fitful gleam. His like the fixed stars, shi

be written on our hearts in life? Were we to die, could i

no happier. The archangels-the chieftains among principalities and

he heavenly economy. God, the central sun of light, and joy, and glory, keeping by

d, yet "believing" in that love, he "rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory." His sisters, as they stood in sorrowing emotion by his dying couch, and thought of that hallowed fraternal bond whi

n that lowly Bethany home,

eritage but poverty, no home but cottage walls, or who, stretched on a bed of protracted sickness, is heard saying in the morning, "Would God it were e

h the notice of His pitying eye! Nay, thou poor desponding one, He does cherish, He does remember thee!-"Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick." Let this motto-verse be inscribed on thy Bethany chamber. The Lord loves His sick ones, and He often chastens them with sickness, just because He loves them. If these pages be now traced by some dim eyes that have been for long most familiar with the sickly glow of the night-lamp-the weary vigils of pain and

loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." "When He had heard therefore that he was sick,"-what did He do? "Fled on wings of love to the succour of His loved friend; hurried in eager haste by the shortest route from Bethabara?" We expect to hear so, as the natural deduction from John's premises. How we might think could love give a more truthful exponent of its reality than hastening instantaneously to the relief of one so dear to Him? But not so! "When He had heard therefore that he was sick, He abode two days still in the same place where He was!" Yes, th

to have the regard and esteem of the great and good on earth, what is it to share the fellowship an

cloudy and dark day are at hand; but the hour is coming (it may come soon, it must come at some time) when your Bethany-home will be clouded with deepening death-shadows-when, like Lazarus, you will be laid on a dying couch, and what will avail you then? Oh, nothing, nothing! if bereft of that

the day of brightness; and then, when the hour of sorrow and trial unexpectedly arises, you wil

re He was"-if He linger among the mountain-glens of distant Gilead, instead of, as we would expect, hastening to the cry and succour of cherished friendship, and to ward off the dart of the inexorable foe-be assured there must be a reason for this strange procrastination-there must be an unrevealed cause which the f

if you "wait for it" the gracious assurance will be fulfilled in your experience-"The Lord is good to them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him." The fountain of love pent up in His heart will in due time gush forth-the apparently unacknowledged prayer will be crowned with a gracious answer. In His own good time sweet tones of celestial music will be wafted to your ear-"It is the voice of the Beloved!-lo, He cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!" If you are indeed the child of God, as Lazarus was, remember this for your comfort in your dying hour