re, rather than
immortality Christ speaks of; a present, not a future, good; an
expansion of the nature now, and which necessarily carries with it the
idea of permanence. Eternal life He defines, not as a future continuance
to be measured by ages, but as a present life, to be measured by its
depth. It is the quality, not the length, of life He looks at. Life
prolonged without being deepened by union with the living God were no
boon. Life with God, and in God, must be immortal; life without God He
does not call life at all.

In evidence of this present continued life Lazarus was called back, and
shown to be still alive. In him the truth of Christ's words was
exemplified: "He that believeth in Me, though he were dead yet shall he
live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." He will
doubtless, like all men, undergo that change which we call death; he
will become disconnected from this present earthly scene, but his life
in Christ will suffer no interruption. Dissolution may pass on his
body, but not on his life. His life is hid with Christ in God. It is
united to the unfailing source of all existence.

(2) Such life, now abundant and evermore abiding, Christ affords to all
who believe in Him. To Martha He intimates that He has power to raise
the dead, and that this power is so much His own that He needs no
instrument or means to apply it; that He Himself, as He stood before
her, contained all that was needful for resurrection and life. He
intimates all this, but He intimates much more than this. That He had
the power to raise the dead it would, no doubt, revive the heart of
Martha to hear, but what guarantee, what hope, was there that He would
exercise that power? And so Christ does not say, I have the power, but,
I am. Is any one, is Lazarus, joined to Me? has he attached himself
confidingly to My Person: then whatever I am finds exercise in him. It
is not only that I have this power to exercise on whom I may; but I am
this power, so that if he be one with Me I cannot withhold the exercise
of that power from him.

They who have learned to obey Christ's voice in life will most quickly
hear it, and recognise its authority, when they sleep in death. They who
have known its power to raise them out of spiritual death will not doubt
its power to raise them from bodily death to a more abundant life than
this world affords. They once felt as if nothing could deliver them;
they were dead--deaf to Christ's co