What need of this parenthesis in His mighty work? Why this summoning in any feeble human agency when His own independent fiat could have effected the whole? Would it not have been a more startling manifestation of Omnipotence, by a mandate similar to that which chained the tempests of Tiberias, or the demoniac of Gadara, to have hurled the incumbent stone into fragments? Might not He who has "the keys of the grave and of death" have Himself unlocked the portals preparatory to the vaster prodigy that was to follow? Nay, there was a mighty lesson to be read in thus delegating human hands to remove the intervening barrier. The Church of the living God may, in every age, gather from it instruction! What, then, does the Saviour here figuratively, but significantly, teach His people? Is it not the important truth that, though dependent on Him for all they are, and all they have, they are not thereby released and exempted from the use of _means_? He alone can bring back Lazarus from his death-sleep. Martha and Mary may weep an ocean of tears, but they cannot weep him back. They may linger for days and nights in that lonely graveyard, making it resound with their bitter dirges, but their impassioned entreaties will be mocked with impressive silence. Too well do they know _that_ spirit is fled beyond their recall--the spark of life extinguished beyond any earthly rekindling! But though the word of Omnipotence can alone bring back the dead, human hands and human efforts can roll away the interjacent stone, and prepare for the performance of the miracle; and after the miracle _is_ performed, human hands may again be called in to tear off the cerements of the tomb, to ungird the bandages from the restored captive, to "loose him and let him go!" This simple incident in the Bethany narrative admits of manifold practical applications. Let us look to it with reference to the mightier moral miracle of the Resurrection of the soul "dead in trespasses and sins." Jesus, and Jesus alone, can awake that soul from the deep slumber of its spiritual death, and invest it with the glories of a new resurrection-life. In vain can it awake of itself; no human skill can put animation into the moral skeleton. No power of human eloquence, no "excellency of man's wisdom," can open these rayless eyes, and pour life, and light, and hope into the dull caverns of the spiritual sepulchre. "Prophesy to the dry bones!"--We may prophesy for ever--we may wake the valley of vision by ceaseless invocations, but the dead will hear not. No bone of the spiritual skeleton will stir, for it is "not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts."