191

XX. CLOSING HOURS 211

XXI. THE LAST VISIT 221

XXII. ANGELIC COMFORTERS 240

XXIII. THE DISCIPLES' RETURN 257

MEMORIES OF BETHANY

I.

OPENING THOUGHTS.

Places associated with great minds are always interesting. What a halo
of moral grandeur must ever be thrown around that spot which was
hallowed above all others by the Lord of glory as the scene of His most
cherished earthly friendship! However holy be the memories which
encircle other localities trodden by Him in the days of His
flesh,--Bethlehem, with its manger cradle, its mystic star, and
adoring cherubim--Nazareth, the nurturing home of His youthful
affections--Tiberias, whose shores so often echoed to His footfall, or
whose waters in stillness or in storm bore Him on their bosom--the
crested heights where He uttered His beatitudes--the midnight mountains
where He prayed--the garden where He suffered--the hill where He
died,--there is no one single resort in His divine pilgrimage on which
sanctified thought loves so fondly to dwell as on the home and village
of BETHANY.

Its hours of sacred converse have long ago fled. Its honoured family
have slumbered for ages in their tomb. Bethany's Lord has been for
centuries enthroned amid the glories of a brighter home. But though its
Memories are all that remain, the place is still fragrant with His
presence. The echoes of His voice--words of unearthly sweetness--still
linger around it; and have for eighteen hundred years served to cheer
and encourage many a fainting pilgrim in his upward ascent to the true
Bethany above!

There, the Redeemer of the world proclaimed a brief but impressive
Gospel. Heaven and earth seemed then to touch one another. We have the
tender tones of a _Man_ blended with the ineffable majesty of _God_.
Hopes "full of immortality" shine with their celestial rainbow-hues
amid a shower of holy tears. The cancelling from our Bibles of the 11th
chapter of St John would be like the blotting out of the brightest
planet from the spiritual firmament. Each of its magnificent utterances
has proved like a ministering-angel--a seraph-messenger bearing its
live-coal of comfort to the broken, bleeding heart from the holiest
altar which SYMPATHY (divine and human) ever upreared in a trial-world!
Many has been the weary footstep and tearful eye that has hastened in
thought to BET