Where wert thou, brother, those four days? There lives no record of reply, Which, telling what it is to die, Had surely added praise to praise. The resurrection of Lazarus does tell us what it is for His redeemed to die. It tells that it is but a sleep for the body, till He come to awaken it,--that those who thus sleep are not beyond His power, and that a glorious resurrection shall soon "add praise to praise" indeed. But do not these blessed words give us a hint, at least, of the answer to that most perplexing of all questions, Why was evil ever permitted to disturb the harmony and mar the beauty of God's primal creation, defile heaven itself, fill earth with corruption and violence, and still exist even in eternity? Ah, we tread on ground here where we need to be completely self-distrustful, and to cleave with absolute confidence and dependence to the revelation of Himself! The works of God must be manifested; and He is Light and Love, and nothing but Light and Love. Every work of His, then, must speak the source whence it comes, and be an expression of Light or Love; and the end, when He shall again--finding everything very good--rest from His work to enjoy that eternal sabbath, never to be broken, shall shew forth absolutely in heaven, in earth, and in hell, that He is Light and Love, and nothing but that. Light and Love!--blending, harmonizing, in perfect equal manifestation, in the cross of the Lord Jesus, and--Light now approving Love's activity--in the righteous eternal redemption of all who believe on Him; banishing from the new creation every trace of sin, and its companion, sorrow; whilst the Lake of Fire itself shall prove the necessity of its own existence to display that same nature of God, and naught else--Love then approving the activity of Light, as we may say. As Isaiah shows, in the millennial earth, in those "Scenes surpassing fable, and yet true-- Scenes of accomplished bliss"-- there is still sorrowful necessity for an everlasting memorial of His righteousness in "the carcases of those men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and (mark well the _sympathies_ of that scene) they shall be an abhorring to all flesh." Love rejected, mercy neglected, truth despised, or held in unrighteousness, grace slighted,--nothing is left whereby the finally impenitent can justify their creation except in being everlasting testimonies to that side of God's nature, "Light," whilst "Love," and all who are in harmony therewith, unfeignedly _approve_. All shall be right. None shall then be perplexed because "there be just men, unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous." All shall be absolutely right. No whisper shall be heard, even in hell itself, of the charges that men so boldly and blasphemously cast at His holy name now.