Towards this resurrection all creation is groaning and travailing. And that groan which burst from Christ at the grave of Lazarus, was the expression of His sympathy in that groan of His creatures; even as His own travail hour, in the garden, on the cross, in the tomb of Joseph, showed that the path of the Shepherd is the same as that of the sheep, to victory and rest. Why cannot we enter into His sufferings? why cannot we look forward hopefully to His triumph? There are some fearful words in the text I have taken to-day--fearful in the midst of all their consolation--which explain the secret. It is said, '_He that_ BELIEVETH _in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live_.' Do we not feel sometimes as if all power of believing in anything that is great and noble were departing from us? Do we not feel as if to believe in Him who is goodness and truth, were the hardest effort of all? Does it not appear as if a second death were coming upon us,--a death of all energy, of all trust, of all power to look beyond ourselves? Oh, if this numbness and coldness have overtaken us, or should overtake us,--if we should be tempted to sit down in it and sink to sleep,--let the cry which awakened Lazarus awake us. Let us be sure that He who is the resurrection and the life is saying to each of us, however deep the cave in which he is buried, '_Come forth!_' however stifling the grave-clothes with which he is bound, '_Loose him, and let him go!_' DISCOURSE XXI. THE DEATH FOR ALL NATIONS. [Lincoln's Inn, 5th Sunday after Trinity, June 22, 1856.] ST. JOHN XI. 49, 50. _And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not._