m in life: that
duty God has already measured, to each man his twelve hours; and only by
following duty into all hazards and confusion can you live out your full
term; if, on the other hand, you try to extend your term, you find that
the sun of duty has set for you, and you have no power to bring light on
your path. A man may preserve his life on earth for a year or two more
by declining dangerous duty, but his _day_ is done, he is henceforth
only stumbling about on earth in the outer cold and darkness, and had
far better have gone home to God and been quietly asleep, far better
have acknowledged that his day was done and his night come, and not have
striven to wake and work on. If through fear of danger, of straitened
circumstances, of serious inconvenience, you refuse to go where
God--_i.e._, where duty--calls you, you make a terrible mistake; instead
of thereby preserving your life you lose it, instead of prolonging your
day of usefulness and of brightness and comfort, you lose the very light
of life, and stumble on henceforward through life without a guide,
making innumerable false steps as the result of that first false step in
which you turned in the wrong direction; not dead indeed, but living as
"the very ghost of your former self" on this side of the
grave--miserable, profitless, _benighted_.

John apparently had two reasons for recording this miracle; firstly,
because it exhibited Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life; secondly,
because it more distinctly separated the whole body of the Jews into
believers and unbelievers. But there are two minor points which may be
looked at before we turn to these main themes.

First, we read that when Jesus saw Mary weeping, and the Jews also
weeping which came with her, He _groaned in spirit_ and was troubled,
and then wept. But why did He show such emotion? The Jews who saw Him
weep supposed that His tears were prompted, as their own were, by sorrow
for their loss and sympathy with the sisters. To see a woman like Mary
casting herself at His feet, breaking into a passion of tears, and
crying with intense regret, if not with a tinge of reproach, "Lord, if
Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," was enough to bring
tears to the eyes of harder natures than our Lord's. But the care with
which John describes the disturbance of His spirit, the emphasis he lays
upon His groaning, the notice he takes of the account the Jews give of
His tears,--all seem to indicate that