Ah, that great, grand vindication of God, and interpretation of this world's enigma was made clear that day when Christ called Lazarus back, and gave him alive to his sisters in the sight of His doubting disciples, in the sight of those sneering enemies. And what I like to think as best of all and most comforting of all is this, that Christ did that deed of love and goodness to hearts that so misunderstood Him, were so ignorant of His glory, denied and disbelieved so much of His claims, were then and there so despairing, so hopeless, that perhaps it was only in one heart, the heart of Mary, there was hope or faith like a grain of mustard-seed. Yet He did it. Why? He whom He loved died, and they whom He loved mourned. It was not that they loved Him; it was that He loved them. Ah, when I read sneers at the simple Evangelical Gospel that says, "Put away all thoughts of earning heaven; your good works are rags"—true enough, true enough—the sneers are mistaken. It is a very grand Gospel that, for what it says is this, "There is hope, salvation from sin, life eternal, for you and for me, not for anything in us, nor for anything we can do, even if we did the best we could. We hold the hope and confidence of redemption, resurrection, in our hearts, because the God that made us loves us;" and so—as I read lately in a recently published book, amid much that I think is foolish, what yet struck me as singularly tender and true—"When in the hour of death we cry, 'Good Lord, deliver us,' we might stop and leave out the 'deliver us.' It is quite enough if we are dying in the arms of a God that is good." III. _THE STORY OF DORCAS._ ACTS ix. 36-43.