Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/267

Rh of remorse—the remembrance of happy intervals in the midst of pains, than which the poet tells us there is no greater grief—to those peaceful days before Lazarus had died. Oh that it could have remained thus! But the merciless generation was pressing them on to unsought destinies. They were like people forced into pathways they wished not to pursue, with separation, persecution, insult, death before them; and to support them through all these, having only that staff of faith, and a vague hope, whose brightness would be dimmed when the One who had implanted it should have vanished from their sight.

Then Judas Iscariot, who was a half-brother of Lazarus, and had always hated his father's children and been jealous of the Lord's intimacy with them, glad of an opportunity of wounding them or of holding them up to blame in the eyes of Jesus, exclaimed: "What waste is here! Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?"

Before the Lord could answer, Martha cried hotly, mindful of what Lazarus had disclosed to them: "Thou traitor, much thou carest for the poor. Wouldst put it in the bag with thy thirty pieces of silver?"

Iscariot's face blanched to the grey whiteness of an iceberg from which the sun had fled.

Was then his secret known? His eyes sought those of Jesus shiftingly; while Lazarus raised his hand in disapproval of Martha's hasty speech. But the Messiah's gentle voice made answer pleadingly: "Let her alone; against the day of My burying hath