by face to face vision of all that
we can only hope and believe, and had yet been restored to earth. The
opportunity of contrasting the paltriness of earth with the sublimity
and reality of the unseen was too great to be resisted. The opportunity
of flouting our professed faith by exhibiting the difference between it
and a real assurance, by showing the utter want of sympathy between one
who had seen and all others on earth who had only believed,--this
opportunity was too inviting to leave room for a poet to ask whether
there was a basis in fact for this contrast; whether it was likely that
in point of fact Lazarus did conduct himself, when restored to earth, as
one who had been plunged into the full light and thronging life of the
unseen world. And, when we consider the actual requirements of the case,
it seems most unlikely that Lazarus can have been recalled from a clear
consciousness and full knowledge of the heavenly life--unlikely that he
should be summoned to live on earth with a mind too large for the uses
of earth, overcharged with knowledge he could not use, as a poor man
suddenly enriched beyond his ability to spend, and thereby only confused
and stupefied. Apparently the idea of the other poet is the wiser when
he says:--

"'Where wert thou, brother, those four days?'
There lives no record of reply,
Which, telling what it is to die,
Had surely added praise to praise.

"From every house the neighbours met,
The streets were fill'd with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness even crown'd
The purple brows of Olivet.

"Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unrevealed;
He told it not; or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist."

The probability is, he had nothing to reveal. As Jesus said, He came "to
awake him out of sleep." Had he learned anything of the spirit world, it
must have oozed out. The burden of a secret which all men craved to
know, and which the scribes and lawyers from Jerusalem would do all in
their power to elicit from him, would have damaged his mind and
oppressed his life. His rising would be as the awaking of a man from
deep sleep, scarcely knowing what he was doing, tripping and stumbling
in the grave-clothes and wondering at the crowd. What Mary and Martha
would prize would be the unchanged love that shone in his face as he
recognized them, the same familiar tones and endearments,--all that
showed how little cha