Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/27

Rh Presently, Martha, wearied with the task of gathering her maidens together and of hastily preparing what seemed fitting for such a guest, returned; and, finding Mary sitting in silent worship at His feet, cried almost querulously: "Lord, dost Thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me."

Oh, how the sensitive Mary winced at her sister's words; to speak thus to Jesus, the Christ! How all Martha's want of spirituality, of enthusiasm, of religious fire, echoed in those words! The world, the world and its silly self-imposed routine, its futile, paltry laws built up by the narrow brains of men to appease their limited demands; the self-seeking satisfactions required by man, who deems himself the ruler of this world, whose little span of life seems to himself a nation's. To those who believed, as Lazarus and Mary now did, what mattered wine or garment or surroundings? One thing only was needful, the Bread of Life such as fell from the lips of Jesus; and to Jesus, what must Martha's words have seemed? To Him, to whom worlds and time and space and life and death were as nothing to the "I am" of Eternity!

How must her words have sounded to such an One? Yet the Christ, in His deep sympathy, pitied the fretfulness her cry disclosed. This woman's eyes were not yet opened. How then could she fathom the depth and length and breadth the majesty of the personality that stood before her? But He saw in all its fulness what we fail to see, the weary anxiety of the woman, the doubting of His justice, if He could see one woman toil thus while