sentence of theirs was followed by some word of sympathy and comfort or by the wail of the mourners. Everything was done according to a prearranged system; in Phariseeism there was no liberty, even in the hour of grief. 20 Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat _still_ in the house. 21 Then said Martha unto Jesus. Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. 22 But I know, that even now, whatsoever[435] thou wilt ask of God, God will give _it_ thee. [435] ch. 9:31. =20-22. Then Martha * * * went and met him.= Jesus did not enter into the village, but stopped without and sent some one to let the sisters know that he had come. Geikie supposes that he thus remained without from fear of the Jews; but Christ never stopped in the performance of a duty from considerations of fear; his reply to the remonstrances of his disciples (vers. 8-10) should have prevented this prosaic interpretation of Christ’s action. To him the conventional mourning customs of Oriental society were exceedingly distasteful. He who put all the noisy mourners out of the room in which the daughter of Jairus lay dead (Mark 5:40), and who so gently rebuked the noisy and ostentatious lamentations of the women of Jerusalem at the time of his own crucifixion (Luke 23:27-31), might naturally be expected to decline to enter into the circle of formal mourners, with the alternative of either violating the precedents and rules of good society, or of submitting himself in such an hour to the bondage which they imposed.--=But Mary sat still in the house.= It would appear from verse 29, that she did not know that Jesus had come; yet the contrast between the two sisters, the one of whom with bustling activity waited upon her Lord, the other of whom, in the quieter offices of love, sat at his feet to listen to his words, or anoint those feet with precious ointment (Luke 10:38-42; John 12:1-8), reappears here. Martha, who was probably the head of the household, was naturally the first to hear of Christ’s coming, and even in her grief found comfort in activity; to Mary, in the solitude of her sorrow, no one at first reported Christ’s approach.--=Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.= This is the language both of reproach and of lamentation, though the reproach is implied rather than asserted. Her language expresses the very essence of soul torture at such times. We are slow to believe that our sorrow is “for the glory of God that the Son of God may be glorified thereby,” and in our affliction continually echo Martha’s “if,” saying to ourselves, if we had not done this, or if we had not done that, if it had not been for our blunder or that of our friends or our physician, our beloved would not have died. Chance is the God of Atheism, and is a comfortless God in the time of our trouble.--=But I know that even now whatsoever thou shouldst ask of God, God will