age.
Lazarus, the head of the house, is laid on a bed of sickness. We need
no details to enable all who have watched the progress of disease in
the beloved member of a family--and who has been exempted from this
anxiety?--to realise how the symptoms of illness, treated at first
perhaps lightly, would become more serious, then alarming, until
foreboding thoughts of death pained every tender affection; and we can
understand how advice would be asked from kind neighbours, and every
possible remedy applied. But in vain! The sufferer gets worse, and
the signs of approaching dissolution rapidly succeed in delirium,
prostration of strength, or altered features, until the chill of
hopelessness creeps over the hearts of the sisters, and hot tears fill
their watching eyes, and prayers tremble upon their pale lips, as in
silence they wait for the dread hour of death to their dear one! We
see it all!

But ere this last moment was reached by Martha and Mary, they are
full of hope that it may be averted, for they have a secret source of
relief in a Physician of body and soul. So long as they have Jesus
with them, they cannot despair. He is not, however, in Bethany, but at
Bethabara beyond the Jordan, a day's journey off. Yet they can send
for Him; and they accordingly do so, with this simple message,
"Lazarus, whom thou lovest, is sick." It is enough. There is not a
word of their love, or of the love of Lazarus to Him. The appeal is to
His own heart. No request is proffered. Everything is left to Himself.

Did they not, however, feel assured that Jesus would manifest His love
to them in the way which seemed to _them_ the best way,--nay, the one
way only by which they could receive comfort, and be relieved from
their anxiety and sorrow,--and that was by delivering Lazarus from
sickness and death? For they could not but recall at that moment the
many instances in which Jesus had displayed His power and love during
the three years He had lived amidst the sorrowing and suffering in
Judea; how unwearied His goodness had ever been; how "multitudes" had
come to Him, and "He healed them all;" how health had flowed from His
hands and His lips, and from His _very_ garments; how He had showered
down His blessings upon Gentile as well as Jew, upon those who were
aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and were accounted as "dogs;"
how He had healed by merely speaking a word at a distance, and even
anticipated prayer, by restoring a dead son t