Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/119

Rh feebleness. A Man of Sorrow and acquainted with grief—surely in that lies our greatest comfort,—who felt more keenly than all others and had more often to suffer the bitterness of desertion.

"Couldst thou not watch with Me one hour?" and the bursting soul, thirsting for human sympathy, not for the sake of comfort—for none but the Divine could comfort Him,—yearning for loving converse and companionship; longing to win souls to God; turned for refreshment to a family who, if still ignorant, desired to learn the truth. Little wonder if, in that time of superstition and disbelief among a priest-ridden populace, a family that sought to understand, and welcomed the Saviour of mankind, should find favour in the eyes of God and be honoured with the greatest miracle the world has ever known. Little wonder, too, that if they shared the privilege of His friendship, the participation of His mysteries, the comfort of His divine assurances, the manifestation of His power, they should also, later, share His humiliations, His scorn—nay, the threats of death, the persecutions that He had undergone. For when our Lord should have died and risen; when the thirst of vengeance of the priests and Pharisees should still remain unsatisfied, whetted, rather, by the lingerings of belief in the breasts of the Jews, who than Lazarus could be better fitted to carry on the witness of tradition; who be a better buffet for the faults of others; who more feared or more detested by the lovers of power than he who, by his very presence and his experience of death, could transmit to the world living proof of the power of the crucified Messiah?