that power? Surely there is something immortal about the name; it prepares us for understanding how thin the thread is which separates death from taking of rest in sleep. The words, '_I go to awake him out of sleep_,' could, of course, convey little sense till the event interpreted them. But the expression, '_Nevertheless let us go to him_,' must have had a strange sound. 'Go to one who was already dead,--what could that mean? What did it all mean?' Thomas, the greatest doubter among them, assuredly could not tell. But he was willing to die with his Master; and that was the best preparation for understanding whatever He had to teach. '_Then when Jesus came, He found that he had lain in the grave four days already._' The commentator takes this opportunity of saying a word about Eastern customs, and the need of a burial immediately after death. Does he suppose that that necessity makes the story less near and dear to the sorrower of the West? The longer he is permitted to look at a face which appears often as if it had lost its restlessness,--not its beauty or its life,--the more dark and terrible must be the grave which is to hide it from him altogether, the more earnestly he must ask, Can light ever penetrate into that darkness? It is because the story of Lazarus has been believed to meet this question; because it comes into contact with the fact which speaks most directly to the senses and to the imagination of every one of us, that we cling to it when the topics of ordinary consolation are wearisome, unintelligible, even hateful, to us. By such topics the sisters of Lazarus were tormented; for St. John says,--'_Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off: and many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother_.' They endure the visitation impatiently or patiently, according to their different dispositions. '_Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met Him: but Mary sat still in the house._' The impulse of the first is to find a Friend to whom she can dare to make complaints, because she trusts Him; the other retreats into herself, and, perhaps, finds that same Friend there, teaching her another kind of lore than that which the well-meaning comforters are pouring into her ear.