d over
again the exclamation, "If Jesus had been here, this our brother had not
died!" "Hath He forgotten to be gracious?" "Surely our way is hid from
the Lord, our judgment is passed over from our God."

Ah! the experience of His people is often still the same. What are many
of God's dispensations?--a baffling enigma--all strangeness--all mystery
to the eye of sense. _Useless_ lives prolonged, _useful_ ones taken! The
honoured minister of God struck down, the unfaithful watchman spared!
The philanthropic and benevolent have an arrest put on their manifold
deeds of kindness and generosity; the grasping, the avaricious, the
mean-souled--those who neither fear God nor do good to man, are suffered
to live on from day to day! What is it but the picture here presented
eighteen hundred years ago--_Judas_ spared to be a _traitor to his
Lord_, while--_Lazarus is dead_!

But let us be still! The Saviour, indeed, does not now lead us forth,
amid the scene of our trial, as He did the bereft sisters, to unravel
the mysteries of His providence, and to shew glory to God, redounding
from the darkest of His dispensations. To _us_ the grand sequel is
reserved for eternity. The grand development of the divine plan will not
be fully accomplished till _then_; faith must meanwhile rest satisfied
with what is baffling to sight and sense. This whole narrative is
designed to teach the lesson that there is an undeveloped future in all
God's dealings. There is an unseen "why and wherefore" which cannot be
answered here. Our befitting attitude and language _now_ is that of
simple confidingness--"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do
right?"--Listening to one of these Bethany sayings (we shall by and by
consider), whose meaning will be interpreted in a brighter world by Him
who uttered it in the days of His flesh--"Said I not unto thee, that if
thou wouldest _believe_ thou shouldest _see_ the glory of God?"

"O thou who mournest on thy way,
With longings for the close of day,
He walks with thee, that Angel kind,
And gently whispers--'Be resign'd;
Bear up--bear on--the end shall tell,
The dear Lord ordereth all things well.'"

Our duty, meanwhile, is that of children, simply to trust the
faithfulness of a God whose footsteps of love we often fail to trace.
All will be seen at last to have been not only _for_ the best, but
really _the best_. Dark clouds will be fringed with mercy. What we call
now "baffling dispe