Page:Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle.djvu/63



HE morning after Lazarus's death, Jerusalem's streets were thronged with people hurrying to and fro. Groups of Pharisees, looking joyous and triumphant, formed themselves in the market place and outside the Temple and the principal buildings, and occasionally a Sadducee would stop and make some derisive observation, to which the others would respond with shouts of laughter.

Nor were the higher authorities less preoccupied; now and then, pressing his horse forward till it pranced almost on to the heads of the crowd, rode a centurion with a message from Pontius Pilate or from Caiaphas, summoning a chief ruler or a leading priest, as the case might be. Occasionally some great rabbi would arrest his course to ask news of him; and the soldier would either shake his head, or laughingly make some such answer as the following: "His own friend hath done for him. Lazarus is dead; if the Nazarene could have saved any one He would have saved His beloved Lazarus. But Lazarus is dead, and though the two women, Martha and Mary, sent to Him many times, He would not go."

"I hear," said another, "that He even said to their messengers that Lazarus would not die: 'This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God,