The twin sisters--musing on the terrible past, gazing through their tears on the vacant seat at their home-hearth--had been every now and then breaking the gloomy silence of the deserted chamber by exclaiming, "If _He_ had been here, this never would have happened! This is the bitterest drop in our cup, that all might have been different! These hot tears might never have dimmed our eyes; our loved Lazarus might have been a living and loving brother still! Oh! that the Lord had delayed for a brief week that untoward journey, or anticipated by four days his longed-for return; or would that we had despatched our messenger earlier for Him. It is now too late. Though He _has_ at last come, His advent can be of little avail. The fell destroyer has been at our cottage door before Him. He may soothe our grief, but the blow cannot be averted. _His_ friend and _our_ brother is locked in sleep too deep to be disturbed." Ah! is it not the same unkind surmise which is still often heard in the hour of bereavement and in the home of death?--a guilty, unholy brooding over _second causes_. "If such and such had been done, my child had still lived. If that mean, or that remedy, or that judicious caution had been employed, this terrible overthrow of my earthly hopes would never have occurred; that loved one would have been still walking at my side; that chaplet of sorrows would not now have been girding my brows; the Bethany sepulchre would have been unopened--'This my brother had not died!'" Hush! hush! these guilty insinuations--that dethroning of God from the Providential Sovereignty of His own world--that hasty and inconsiderate verdict on His divine procedure.