What is the consequence of it? Well, the first consequences seem to be all evil. You might look on the surface of life, and when you read superficially the narrative of this chapter in St. John, it looks as if mischief and evil came of the strange delay of God and of His Christ. Look at the effect upon the disciples. Now here there is not enough told to justify me in putting more positively to you the picture of their inner hearts, but I am going to present—I dread that I may be guilty of a want of charity, at all events of disproportion—but as I read this chapter, and try to think myself into it, this is the conception I have: Had these men known that Lazarus was very sick, they would not have wished their Master to go back to try and save him. They were selfish enough to have been rather glad that He was at a distance, to wish that He should not know. When the message did come I think they were puzzled and perplexed. Selfishly, they were rather pleased that He did not set off to go. But, on the other hand—for, mind you, a selfish man understands the dictates of love—they said to themselves, "It is not quite like Him. Well, it is wise, it is prudent not to go, but it is a little cowardly. Does He love Lazarus so much as we used to think?" Oh, if I am right, what a painful thing, all these bad, poor, selfish thoughts of the Divine heart in Jesus! all created, mark you, because Jesus suffered the man whom He loved to be sick, and at last to die, and did not go and check death, and drive the dark King of Terrors back. Then Jesus says to them that He has resolved to go and visit Lazarus. It is here I get the ground on which I stand in forecasting that selfishness in them. Then they thought He was wrong. They did venture to blurt out what was a censure: "He will go; He ought not to do it. What are we to do who see with clearer eyes the pathway of prudence? To let Him go and die? It was a total blunder, a mistake, but all the same we cannot let Him go and die alone. Let us go and die with Him." Oh, what a dearth of understanding of their Master, His love, His power, His real character, created by the enigma of Christ's conduct, that He had held His hand, that He had suffered His friend to be sick, that He had permitted him to die!