We must not forget that all this bears reference to the primary subject of the discourse. He had been working on the Sabbath-day. That work He justifies as His Father's work, because it was a work of love, done to fulfil that mind of the Father which He knew, with which He was in sympathy. Now He goes on, '_And He will shew Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel_.' The work of healing was His Father's work. In quickening the sick man beside the Pool of Bethesda, He had manifested a part of His will and power towards His creatures. There would be a more august display of that will and power; '_For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom He will_.' Since the whole passage refers to one of the signs which Jesus did, it is surely most natural to take this also as referring to another of those signs. Jesus would not only cure a sick man, He would raise a dead man. As the cure of the sick man was an exhibition in a single instance of all the restoring, health-giving, life-giving influences which were at work through the universe; as its intent was to lead men to trace all these, not to chance, not to a dead law, not to their own merits, but to a Father who directs the operations which look most accidental, from whose mind law has issued, who alone enables men to work in harmony with His law; so, by raising a man from the dead, He would show what was continually going on in the unseen world; what the Father was doing there with those who were lost to the sight of their fellows, and who seemed to perish. '_The Son would quicken whom He would._' He would take an instance here and there to illustrate the general course of His Father's government. He would break the bonds of the grave for the widow's son, or the brother of Martha and Mary, that man might understand how little these chains could bind the whole universe of human beings, if the Father pleased to set them free.