The one grand lesson which it teaches us is, _never, in our darkest hour, to lose confidence in the love of Christ towards us_, as if He had forgotten to be gracious, and either could not or would not help us. Banish the sinful thought! "Beware lest there should be in any of you _the evil heart_ of unbelief." For such unbelief is the greatest calamity which can befall us. It is, verily, "sorrow's crown of sorrow," Let us rather "hold fast our confidence, which hath a great reward." Like the family in Bethany, you too, I shall suppose, are visited with a sudden and "mysterious" bereavement. Like them you may pray to Christ, and ask a specific blessing; and like them you may think He has not heard your prayer, nor ever will answer it, because He does not do this at the time or in the manner you wished or anticipated. His thoughts and ways with reference to you may thus be utterly dark--darker than blackest night. Yet the servant of the Lord, "though he walks in darkness, and has no light," must "trust in the Lord, and stay himself upon his God." For the ways of Christ to His suffering friends in Bethany, when absent from them beyond the Jordan, are a revelation of His ways to us now, when He is in glory beyond the tomb. Now, as then, He never forgets us, never overlooks the least circumstance in our history, and never ceases for one moment to have that interest in us which is possible only for such a Brother or Saviour to possess. But now, as then, He has _manifold interests to consider_; ten thousand times ten thousand complex and crossing consequences to weigh. While we, perhaps, have our thoughts wholly occupied with but one desire, our own individual comfort, our own deliverance from this or that trial, the wise and all-loving Jesus has to provide for much more than this. Our own good and growth in grace--the good of those in sickness--the good of children, relations, friends, yea, it may be of generations yet unborn, who may be affected at this crisis in our family history by what Jesus does or does not,--all this must be considered by Him who loves all, and seeks the good of all, and who alone can trace out the marvellous and endless network of influence by which man is bound to man from place to place and from age to age. No one, therefore, but the Lord of all can decide what is best to be done in the circumstances of each case, in order that most good may be done, and that God may be glorified thereby. He alone knows how this link of "sickness unto death" is connected with other links in the mysterious chain of human history. And if so, then surely it becomes us, poor, ignorant, blind, selfish creatures, to bow before His throne with holy reverence; to yield ourselves and all our concerns meekly and lovingly into His hands, in the full assurance of faith that our interests are there in best and safest keeping; to feel that it is our first duty and noblest privilege to trust Him when we