rt in your dying hour, that whether the
prayers of sorrowing friends for your recovery be answered or no, the
Lord of love has at least _heard_ them--the messenger has not been
mocked--the prayer-message has not been spurned or forgotten! I repeat
it, He _will_ answer, but it will be _in His own way_! If the
Bethany-home be ungladdened by Lazarus restored, it will exult through
tears in the thought of Lazarus glorified. And the Marthas and Marys, as
they go often unto the grave to weep there, will read, as they weep, in
the holy memories of the departed, that which will turn tears into
joy--"_Jesus loved him._"

VI.

THE SLEEPER.

"_Our friend Lazarus sleepeth._"--The hopes and fears which alternately
rose and fell in the bosoms of the sisters, like the surges of the
ocean, are now at rest. Oft and again, we may well believe, had they
gone, like the mother of Sisera, to the lattice to watch the return of
the messenger, or, what was better, to hail their expected Lord. Gazing
on the pale face at their side, and remembering that ere now the tidings
of his illness must have reached Bethabara, they may have even expected
to witness the power of a distant _word_;--to behold the hues of
returning health displacing the ghastly symptoms of dissolution. But in
vain! The curtain has fallen! Their season of aching anxiety is at an
end. Their worst fears are realised.--"Lazarus sleepeth."

How calm, how tranquil that departure! Never did sun sink so gently in
its crimson couch--never did child, nestling in its mother's bosom,
close its eyes more sweetly!

"His summon'd breath went forth as peacefully
As folds the spent rose when the day is done."

Befitting close to a calm and noiseless existence! It would seem as if
the guardian angels who had been hovering round his death-pillow had
well-nigh reached the gates of glory ere the sorrowing survivors
discovered that the clay tabernacle was all that was left of a "brother
beloved!"

From the abrupt manner in which, in the course of the narrative, our
Lord makes the announcement to His disciples,[10] we are almost led to
surmise that He did so at the very moment of the spirit's dismissal--the
Redeemer speaks while the eyelids are just closing, and the emancipated
soul is winging its arrowy flight up to the spirit-land!

_Death_ a SLEEP!--How beautiful the image! Beautifully true, and _only_
true regarding the Christian. It is here where the true and the
fals