Divine Tears over an Early Grave, and the Sleep of the Dead
“JESUS WKPT.” — JOHN xL 35. “OUR FRIEND LAZARUS 8LEEFETH.” — JOHN xi. II.
DIVINE TEARS OVER AN EARLY GRAVE,
AND THE SLEEP OP THE DEAD.
LET us torn aside for a little and see this great sight. It is the Creator of all worlds in tears, — the Grod-man Mediator dissolved in tenderest grief These tears form the most touching episode in sacred story; and if we are in sorrow, it may either dry our own or give them the warrant to flow when we are told — Jesus wept!
Whence those tears? There is often, as we have remarked in a previous meditation, a false interpretation put upon this brief verse, as if it denoted the expression of the Saviour’s sorrow for the loss of a loved friend. This, it is plain, it could not be. However mingled may have been the hopes and fears of the weeping mourners around him, He at least knew that in a few brief moments Lazarus was to be restored. He could not surely weep so bitterly, possessing as He then did, the confident assurance that death was about to give back its captive, and light up every tear-dimmed eye with an ecstasy of joy. Whence, then, we again ask, this strange and mysterious grief? We have space only for two, among other reasons.
(i). Jesus wept out of sympathy for the bereaved.
The hearts at His side were breaking with angaish. All unconscious of how soon and how wondrously their sorrow was to be turned into joy, the appalling thought was alone present to them in all its fearfulness — “Lazarus is dead!” When He, the God-man Mediator, with the refined sensibilities of His tender heart, beheld the poignancy of their affiction, the pent-up torrent of His own human sympathies could be restrained no longer. His tears flowed too.
But it would be a contracted view of the tears of Jesus, to think that two solitary mourners in a Jewish graveyard engrossed and monopolised that sympathy. It had a vastly wider sweep.
There were hearts, yes, myriads of desolate sufferers in ages then unborn, who He knew would be brought to stand as you, reader, have lately been, and as He was then doing, by the grave of loved relatives — mourners who would have no visible Comforter or Restorer to rush to, as had Martha and Mary, to assuage their grief, and give them back their dead; and when He thought of this, “Jesus wept!”
What an interest it gives to this scene of weeping, to think that at that eventful moment the Saviour had before Him the bereaved of all time; — that His eye was roaming at that moment through deserted chambers, and vacant seats, and opened graves, down to the end of the world! The Rachels weeping for their children, — the “little daughters” that “lay a-dying; “the young men” carried out — the only sons of their mothers; “the Ezekiels mourning in the dust and ashes of disconsolate widowhood, “the desire of their eyes taken away by a stroke; “the unsolaced sisters brooding over a sad future, with the prop and joy of existence swept down, — the light of their being eclipsed in mysterious darkness! Think (as you are now perusing these pages), throughout the wide world, how many breaking hearts there are — how loud the wail of suffering humanity, could we but hear it! — those written childless and fatherless, and friendless and homeless! — Bethany-processions pacing with slow and measured step to deposit their earthly all in the custody of the tomb! Think of the Marys and Marthas who are now” going to some grave to weep there,” perhaps with no Saviour’s unseen, yet graciously ever-present smile to gladden them; — or the desolate chambers that are now resounding to the plaintive dirge, “Absalom, Absalom! would God I had died for thee; Absalom, my son! my son! “Think of all these experiences at that moment vividly brought before the Redeemer’s eye — the long and loud miserere echoing dismally from the remotest bounds of time, and there “entering into the ear of the God of Sabaoth,’^ and can you wonder that — Jesics wept?
Blessed and amazing picture of the Lord of glory! It combines the delineation alike of the tenderness of His humanity, and the majesty of His Godhead. His Humanity / It is revealed in those teardrops, falling from a human eye on a human grave. His Godhead! It is manifested in His ability to take in with a giant grasp all the prospective sufferings of His suffering people.
Weeping believer! thine anguished spirit was included in those Bethany tears! Be assured thy grief was visibly portrayed at that moment to that omniscient Saviour. He had all thy sorrows before Him — thy anxious moments during the tedious sickness — the trembling suspense — the nights of weary watching — the agonising revelation of “no hope;” the pulses of that young Ufe ebbing; the fresh green sods of that early tomb. Bethany’s graveyard became to Him a picture-gallery of the world’s aching hearts; and thine yes! thine was there! And as He beheld it, Jesus wept!”
(2.) Jesus wept when He thought of the triumphs of Death!
He was treading a burial-ground; mouldering heaps were around Him — silent sepulchral caves, giving forth no echo of life. They must have significantly called to the mind of the Divine Spectator how sin had blasted and scathed His noblest workmanship, converting the fairest province of His creation into one vast Necropolis — one dismal “city of the dead:” — the body, “so fearfdlly and wonderfully made,” and on which He had originally placed His own impress of “very good,” ruinedj and resolved into a mass of humiliating dust!
If the architect mourns over the destruction of some favourite edifice which the storm has swept down, or the fire has wrapt in conflagration and reduced to ashes; if the sculptor mourns to see his breathing marble with one rude stroke hurled to the ground, and its fragments scattered at his feet, — what must have been the sensations of the Almighty Architect of the human frame, at whose completion the morning stars and the sons of God chanted a loud anthem, as He thought of that frame, now a devastated wreck, mouldering in dissolution and decay, the King of Terrors sitting in regal state, holding His high holiday over a vassal world!
In Bethany He beheld only a few of these broken and prostrate columns, but they could not fail to be suggestive of millions on millions which were yet in coming ages to undergo the same doom of mortality.
If even our less sensitive hearts are wrung with emotion at the tidings of some mournful catastrophe, which occupies, after all, but some passing hour in the world’s history, but which has carried death and lamentation into many households; — the sudden pestilence that has swept down its thousands — the gallant vessel that was a moment before spreading proudly its white wings to the gale, the joyous hearts on board dreaming of hearth and home, and “the many ports that would exult in the gleam of her mast” — the next! hurrying down to the depths of an ocean grave, with no survivor ,to tell the story! — Or the terrible records of war — the ranks of bold and brave laid low in the carnage of battle — youth and strength and beauty and rank and friendship blent in one ‘red burial! ’ — if these and such-like mournful tales of death, and the power of death, affect at the moment even the most callous amongst us, causing the lip to grow pale, and demanding the tribute of more than a tear — oh! what must it have been to the Omniscient eye and exquisitely sensitive spirit of Jesus, as, taking in all time at a glance, He beheld the Pale Horse with its ghastly rider trampling under foot the vast human family, converting the globe into a mournful Valley of vision; vessels freighted with immortality lying stranded on the shores of Time.
Yes! we can only understand the full import of these tears of Jesus, as we imagine to ourselves His Godlike eye penetrating at that moment every church-yard; the mausoleums of the rich — the lowly graves of the poor; the marble cenotaph of the noble and illustrious, slumbering under fretted aisle and cathedral canopy; — the myriads whose requiem is chanted by the bleak winds of the desert or the chimes of the ocean! The child carried away in the twinkling of an eye — the blossom just opening, and then frost-blighted; the aged sire, cut down like a shock of corn in its season; the young exulting in the prime of manhood; the pious and benevolent, the great and good, succumbing indiscriminately to the same inexorable decree; the erring and thoughtless, reckless of all warning, hurried away in the midst of scorned mercy, — as He beheld this ghastly funeral procession moving before Him, the whole world going to the same long home, and He Himself left alone the survivor — can we wonder that Jestis wept f
And yet to pass, ere we close, from this scene of the Tears and the Grave, — in another gladdening sense He could say, “Our friend Lazarus deepeth! “And with a still more glorious and exalted meaning than when He spake them on His way to that Bethany burial-ground, does He utter the same to us regarding our beloved dead. Here it is that Christianity and Paganism meet together in impressive and significant contrast. The one comes to the dark river with her pale, sickly lamp. It refuses to bum; — the damps of Lethe dim and quench it. Philosophy tries to discourse on death as a” stem necessity,’* — of the duty of passing heroically into this mysterious, oblivion-world — taking with bold heart “the leap in the dark,” and confronting, as we best can, blended images of annihilation and terror.
The Gospel takes us to the tomb, and shows us Death vanquished and the grave spoiled. Death truly, too well do those whose eyes trace these pages know, is in itself an unwelcome messenger at their door. It is the dark event in this our earth, — the deepest of the many deep shadows of an otherwise fair creation-a cold, cheerless thing, lying at the heart of humanity.
freezing up the gushing fonntains of joyoos life. But the Grospel shines, and the cold iceberg melts. The Sun of Righteousness effects what philosophy, with all its boasted power, never could. Jesus is the abolisker of Death. He has taken all that is terrible from it. So complete, indeed, is the Redeemer’s victoiy, that He Himself speaks of it as no longer a reality, but a shadow — a phantom foe from which we have nothing to dread. “Whosoever believeth in Me shall never die.^” K a man keep My saying, he shall never see deathr These are an echo of the Psalmist’s most familiar words, a transcript of his expressive figure, when he pictures the dark valley to the believer as the valley of a “shadow.** The substance is removed! When the gaunt spirit meets him on the midnight waters, he may, like the disciples at first, be led to ‘^ cry out for fear.” But a gentle Voice of love and tenderness rebukes his dread, and calms his misgivings — “It is I! be not afraid.”
Disconsolate mourners! you that have been bereaved of your young ones, come with me to the death-chamber and gaze on that quiet slumber!
The figure is no hyperbole, but a sober verily. The gentle smile of a foretasted heaven is seen playing on the marble lips-the rays gilding the mountain-tops after the golden sun has gone down.
“Sweetly remembering that the parting sigh
Appointed them to slumber, not to die;
The starting tear we check — we kiss the rod,
And not to earth resign them, but to God.”
Or come with me and let us visit the early grave.* Still it is a place of sleep; a quiet dormitory “until the day break” and the night shadows of earth “flee away.” The dust slumbering there, though it may only be that of a dear infant, is precious because redeemed; the angels of God have it in custody; they encamp round about it, waiting the mandate to “gather the elect firom the four winds of heaven — from the one end of heaven to the other.” Oh, wondrous day, when the dishonoured casket shall be raised, a “glorified body,” to receive once more the immortal jewel, polished and made meet for the Master’s use! Sleep in Jesus! The youngest of His saints fall asleep in His arms of infinite love. There their angel-spirits repose, until the body, “sown in corruption,” shall be “raised in incorruption,” and both reunited in the day of His appearing, become “a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of their God.”
Yes! Jesus dries thy tears with the encouraging assurance, “Thy dead shall live; together with My body they shall arise.” * Let thy Lazarus — thy child, thy son, thy daughter, thy loved and loving young companion or friend — “sleep on now and take their rest;” the time will come when My voice shall be heard proclaiming, “Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in dust:” — “The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.” Soon shall the day-dawn of glory streak the horizon; and then, I shall go that I may awake them out of sleep! ’
“Wherefore, comfort one another vnth these words.*’
THE HUMAN RETROSPECT.
**AydJu rttumed unto hit brethren and taidf The child it not; and I, lehither «%att
I got” — Gen. xxxvii. 30. “Lord, to vJiom thall toe go f Thou hatt the wordt of eternal 2i/e.” — John vi. 68.
Oh, weeping parent! standing mid the throng
Of mourners; anguished thoughts are burdening thee,
Too sad for utterance — too deep for tears!
Other portentous clouds which hang their pall
Athwart life’s mountain-tops may melt away,
And leave no trace behind: the loss of health,
Or wealth, or outward things. The sun breaks forth,
And the familiar summits, as of old.
May gleam again. Not so the chronic shroud
Overspread by death I Death I ’tis with you the rush
Of the remorseless avalanche; sweeping down
The vernal flowers that deck the mountain-side,
In wild, resistless havoc; stripping bare
Where moss and silver lichen crowned erewhile
A thousand nooks of loveliness.
The Past!
What volumes that suggestive word contains
Of tender recollection 1 hallowed hours, — Soothing life’s sorrows, — sweetening its joys.
The Future! Once the calendar of bliss,
Studded its lustrous firmament with stars
Of early promise, suddenly eclipsed
In the profound of darkness 1
“That bright sun”
(Hark to the tearful dirge of many a lip)
” May shine as brightly as it did before, — Its light seems dim to me! Those emerald fields
And crested hills, and undulating slopes;
The shady groves, where pendent foxgloves rang
Their chime of forest bells; and buttercups
In showers of golden rain decked the mead;
Or graceful in their bridal beauty waved
The birchen tresses: softly murmuring streams
That lulled asleep the wild-flowers in the dell
With the glad ripple of their evensong;
The purple glow of sunset flushing o*er
The western sky: — These all too vividly
Fond hours recall, irrevocably gone:
While faithful memory (sad chronicler
Of vanished bliss) invests the retrospect
With living truth. The joyous melody
Of youthful voices seems to linger there;
Each sylvan footpath hath its tear to claim,
And tale of buried love. How once I watched
The herald footsteps of the opening year 1
A silent earth emerging from the grave
Of icy winter, and her winding-sheet
Of snow exchanging, to be decked anew
In verdant robes of renovated life:
The warbling choristers of wood and grove
That sang so late their plaintive elegies,
As if chief mourners o’er her tomb, again
Vocal with praise I Ah! sadly, strangely sounds
To the bereaved heart such symphony!
These tuneless melodies by hill and dale,
Of pensive sorrow latent chords awake.
Which make the bosom powerless to respond
To the glad jubilee. There is one sleep
Too deep to be disturbed. While prisoned fields
Baret from their wintry dangeon, where the storm And tempest (gloomy warders) guarded them; The stem Custodier of captive millions Alone denies surrender! Spring may clothe The churchyard’s sacred sod with yerdure fresh. Or lend her glistening dews (expressiye teardrops) To mingle their mute sympathy, and mourn Life’s tender hlossoms blighted in the bud; But her reanimating voice in vain Evokes the ashes slumbering underneath!
Pilgrim of sadness! turn, from shattered tents And riven canvas, to the Shelter sure No storm-blast can assail! The Alpine peak, By human foot unsealed — ^unscaleable, Summer and winter robed in virgin snow, With mien majestic downward seems to gaze Upon the wrestling of the elements; No jewel in its icy crown displaced; No wrinkle on its everlasting brow. Type of the Rock of Ages; high above All fluctuations! Human props may fail; The dearest fellowships of earth may cease; Its tenderest ties be severed. One remains Faithful among the faithless. Lift your gaze Above these leafless boughs and wintry skies And slanting shadows; and exulting say, “Thou art the same: Thy years they shall not fail!” He sitteth in His world of calm, beyond The reach of mutability; unchanged ‘Mid fitful storm and sunshine, bii’ths find deaths, Glad marriage-peals and doleful funeral-knells. No desolating billow which has swept Away our earthly moorings, can dislodge The soul thus sheltered in the Living Rock! Upon the stormy waves we can descry The lustrous token of the covenant
Circling the angry spray. And on its scroll
Of blended ruby, emerald, and gold,
The glorious superscription can be read — / am Jehovah, a7id I cannot change!”
THE DIVINE WEEPER.
Who is this, in silence bending
0*er a dark sepulchral cave?
Sympathetic sorrow blending
With the mourners round the grave?
Christ the Lord is standing by
At the tomb of Bethany I
“Jesus wept! *’ — these tears are over,
But His heart is still the same.
Kinsman, Friend, and Elder Brother,
Is His everlasting name.
Saviour, who can love like Thee,
Gracious One of Bethany?
“Jesus wept!” — and still in glory
He can mark each mourner’s tear,
Loving to retrace the story
Of the heartd He solaced here.
Surely none can feel like Thee,
Weeping One of Bethany!
“Jesus wept! ‘* — that tear of sorrow
Is a legacy of love.
Yesterday — to-day — ^to-morrow — He the same doth ever prove;
Thou art all in all to me.
Living one of Bethany!