THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.

LAZARUS, with whom our blessed Lord appears to have been upon terms of great intimacy, being stricken with a mortal distemper, his sisters, Mary and Martha, sent to Christ to request that he would come and heal him. The Saviour, anxious upon this occasion to manifest God's glory, as well as his own divine power and mission by a greater miracle than a simple cure, delayed going to Bethany until Lazarus was dead. He then went forward with his disciples. When he arrived at the dwelling, his late friend, Lazarus, had been already dead four days. He found with the bereaved sisters a number of friends from Jerusalem, who had come to condole with them on their brother's decease. Upon hearing of our Lord's arrival, Mary and Martha, accompanied by their friends, went out to meet him, and renewing their lamentations fell at his feet, expressing their sorrow that he had not arrived sooner, as then he might have saved their brother from death. The compassionate Jesus was so affected by their grief that he groaned within himself and desired to know where the body was buried. They led the way to the grave, and he followed weeping, with his disciples. When they had reached the place where the body had been inhumed, which "was a cave, and a stone lay upon it," he ordered the stone to be removed. But Martha thinking that, after a lapse of four days in a hot climate, the process of decomposition must at that moment be actively going on, and therefore that her deceased brother could not be restored to life, expressed her incredulity by alluding to the state of the body, thus implying how hopeless she felt of a resuscitation. But the stone having been withdrawn, Jesus, after a short address of adoration and thanksgiving to his heavenly Father, “cried with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said unto them, Loose him, and let him go. Then many of the Jews, which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him."

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS.

LAZARUS, with whom our blessed Lord appears to have been upon terms of great intimacy, being stricken with a mortal distemper, his sisters, Mary and Martha, sent to Christ to request that he would come and heal him. The Saviour, anxious upon this occasion to manifest God's glory, as well as his own divine power and mission by a greater miracle than a simple cure, delayed going to Bethany until Lazarus was dead. He then went forward with his disciples. When he arrived at the dwelling, his late friend, Lazarus, had been already dead four days. He found with the bereaved sisters a number of friends from Jerusalem, who had come to condole with them on their brother's decease. Upon hearing of our Lord's arrival, Mary and Martha, accompanied by their friends, went out to meet him, and renewing their lamentations fell at his feet, expressing their sorrow that he had not arrived sooner, as then he might have saved their brother from death. The compassionate Jesus was so affected by their grief that he groaned within himself and desired to know where the body was buried. They led the way to the grave, and he followed weeping, with his disciples. When they had reached the place where the body had been inhumed, which " was a cave, and a stone lay upon it," he ordered the stone to be removed. But Martha thinking that, after a lapse of four days in a hot climate, the process of decomposition must at that moment be actively going on, and therefore that her deceased brother could not be restored to life, expressed her incredulity by alluding to the state of the body, thus implying how hopeless she felt of a resuscitation. But the stone having been withdrawn, Jesus, after a short address of adoration and thanksgiving to his heavenly Father, "cried with a loud voice, Lazarus come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus said unto them, Loose him, and let him go. Then many of the Jews, which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed on him."