“When Martha came to Jesus, she showed her true though imperfect faith by almost attributing her brother’s death to Jesus’ absence. But even in the moment, looking in the face of the Master, a fresh hope, a new budding of faith, began in her soul. She thought--‘What if, after all, he were to bring him to life again!’ O, trusting heart, how thou leavest the dull-plodding intellect behind thee! While the conceited intellect is reasoning upon the impossibility of the thing, the expectant faith beholds it accomplished. Jesus, responding instantly to her faith, granting her half-born prayer, says, ‘Thy brother shall rise again;’ not meaning the general truth recognised, or at least assented to by all but the Sadducees, concerning the final resurrection of the dead, but meaning, ‘Be it unto thee as thou wilt. I will raise him again.’ For there is no steering for a fine effect in the words of Jesus. But these words are too good for Martha to take them as he meant them. Her faith is not quite equal to the belief that he actually will do it. The thing she could hope for afar off she could hardly believe when it came to her very door. ‘O, yes,’ she said, her mood falling again to the level of the commonplace, ‘of course, at the last day.’ Then the Lord turns away her thoughts from the dogmas of her faith to himself, the Life, saying, ‘I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this?’ Martha, without understanding what he said more than in a very poor part, answered in words which preserved her honesty entire, and yet included all he asked, and a thousandfold more than she could yet believe: ‘Yea, Lord; I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.’ “I dare not pretend to have more than a grand glimmering of the truth of Jesus’ words ‘shall never die;’ but I am pretty sure that when Martha came to die, she found that there was indeed no such thing as she had meant when she used the ghastly word _death_, and said with her first new breath, ‘Verily, Lord, I am not dead.’ “But look how this declaration of her confidence in the Christ operated upon herself. She instantly thought of her sister; the hope that the Lord would do something swelled within her, and, leaving Jesus, she went to find Mary. Whoever has had a true word with the elder brother, straightway will look around him to find his brother, his sister. The family feeling blossoms: he wants his friend to share the glory withal. Martha wants Mary to go to Jesus too.