This is the practical use we are to make of such stories of Scripture as Dorcas's restoration from death. It is a marvel—what, precisely, we know not. But, for this woman God did a splendid and wonderful act of love, that dispelled the eclipse of death in a sunshine of endless security. What happened to her happens not to us. But God's heart is unchanged. If you be like her, such another, the Divine regard round you in life and in death is as tender and strong as it was about her. In the important seaport town of Joppa there were gathered together some believers in Jesus. Among them was a woman named Tabitha (Heb.), or Dorcas (Gr.). The name signifies Gazelle, or Fawn. It was one of those pet names given to woman, a name of beauty, though the bearer of it may have been plain enough. Not much is told about her, but what is told is of such a kind that we may conjecture more. Little things have a significance in combination. Thus we can fill in the meagre outline that is given us, till the picture grows into completeness. Dorcas was a lone woman. Of husband or of children we hear nothing. Unlike those others with whom she is linked in Bible story as fellow-sharers in the miracle of restoration to life—unlike Lazarus, unlike the daughter of Jairus or the widow's son at Nain—we read in her case of no loving relatives who soothed her dying bed and wept when she was gone. She stands alone in the world—one of those women of whom we speak as of persons to be pitied, unhappy; with a woman's natural hopes and occupations, in which she finds rest for her instincts, denied or blighted. Dorcas is a forlorn figure, stricken by grief and woe. We feel inclined to turn away from such. The bleak, cold winds that blow across the lonely spaces where they find their planting seem to chill our joy. We forget that it is not thorns alone which grow in spots that we deem waste; not seldom God's fairest flowers and fruits spring up on what we count barren and forsaken ground. In Dorcas, we may well believe, there was nothing woe-begone or repellent; it is as pleasant, amiable, and beloved that we think of her. The tree of her life had been stricken by the lightning; its own leaves and branches stripped; but it did not remain a bare and unsightly stump, naked and alone. Lichens and clinging plants had gathered at its roots, and twined about its stem, and clothed it with a new verdure and beauty.