“But O, my friends, what shall I say about this wonderful message? Think of being sick for the glory of God! of being shipwrecked for the glory of God! of being drowned for the glory of God! How can the sickness, the fear, the broken-heartedness of his creatures be for the glory of God? What kind of a God can that be? Why just a God so perfectly, absolutely good, that the things that look least like it are only the means of clearing our eyes to let us see how good he is. For he is so good that he is not satisfied with _being_ good. He loves his children, so that except he can make them good like himself, make them blessed by seeing how good he is, and desiring the same goodness in themselves, he is not satisfied. He is not like a fine proud benefactor, who is content with doing that which will satisfy his sense of his own glory, but like a mother who puts her arm round her child, and whose heart is sore till she can make her child see the love which is her glory. The glorification of the Son of God is the glorification of the human race; for the glory of God is the glory of man, and that glory is love. Welcome sickness, welcome sorrow, welcome death, revealing that glory! “The next two verses sound very strangely together, and yet they almost seem typical of all the perplexities of God’s dealings. The old painters and poets represented Faith as a beautiful woman, holding in her hand a cup of wine and water, with a serpent coiled up within. Highhearted Faith! she scruples not to drink of the life-giving wine and water; she is not repelled by the upcoiled serpent. The serpent she takes but for the type of the eternal wisdom that looks repellent because it is not understood. The wine is good, the water is good; and if the hand of the supreme Fate put that cup in her hand, the serpent itself must be good too,--harmless, at least, to hurt the truth of the water and the wine. But let us read the verses. “‘Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was.’ “Strange! his friend was sick: he abode two days where he was! But remember what we have already heard. The glory of God was infinitely more for the final cure of a dying Lazarus, who, give him all the life he could have, would yet, without that glory, be in death, than the mere presence of the Son of God. I say _mere_ presence, for, compared with the glory of God, the very presence of his Son, so dissociated, is nothing. He abode where he was that the glory of God, the final cure of humanity, the love that triumphs over death, might shine out and redeem the hearts of men, so that death could not touch them.