sorrow.
But what will the heart not do to meet such a Comforter? What will
Martha be unprepared to encounter if the intelligence brought her be
indeed confirmed? One glance is enough. "_It is the Lord!_" In a moment
she is a suppliant at His feet. Doubt and faith and prayer mingle in the
exclamation, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not
died!"[12]

That she had faith and assured confidence in the love and tenderness of
Jesus we cannot question. But a momentary feeling of unbelief (shall we
say, of reproach and upbraiding?) mingled with better emotions. "Why,
Lord," seemed to be the expression of her inner thoughts, "wert Thou
absent? It was unlike Thy kind heart. Thou hast often gladdened our home
in our season of joy--why this forgetfulness in the night of our bitter
agony? Death has torn from us a loved brother--the blow would have been
spared--these hearts would have been unbroken--these burning tears
unshed, if _Thou hadst_ been here!"

Such was the bold--the _unkind_ reasoning of the mourner. It was the
reasoning of a finite creature. Ah! if she could but have looked into
the workings of that infinite Heart she was ungenerously upbraiding, how
differently would she have broached her tearful suit!

_Her_ exclamation is--"Why this _unkind_ absence?"

_His_ comment on that _same_ absence to His disciples is _this_--"I was
_glad_ for your sakes that I was _not_ there!"

How often are _God_ and _man_ thus in strange antagonism, with regard to
earthly dispensations! Man, as he arraigns the rectitude of the Divine
procedure, exclaiming--"How unaccountable this dealing! How baffling
this mystery! Where is now my God?" This sickness--why prolonged? This
thorn in the flesh--why still buffeting? This family blank--why
permitted? Why the most treasured and useful life taken--the blow aimed
where it cut most severely and levelled lowest?

Hush the secret atheism! This trial, whatever it be, has this grand
motto written upon it in characters of living light;--we can read it on
anguished pillows--aching hearts--ay, on the very portals of the
tomb--"_This_ is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be
glorified thereby!"

At the very moment we are mourning what are called "_dark_
providences"--"untoward calamities"--"strokes of
misfortune"--"unmitigated evils"--Jesus has a different verdict;--"I am
_glad_ for your sakes."

The absence at Jordan--the still more unaccountable lingering for two
days in