Lazarus, a tale of the world's great miracle/Chapter 17
CHAPTER XVII.
AND Lazarus came forth. A faint twitching of the members, a sort of convulsive tremor running from the head to foot, was all the multitude could see, as they pressed forward, a seething mass of tightly packed humanity, to witness this final and gigantic miracle.
In the doorway of the cave stood Lazarus, scarce able to move for the tight swathing of his grave clothes. His hands were tied close to his sides, and his face was bound about with a napkin. Standing there, he looked like some earth-sodden mummy, taken out of a sarcophagus and stood on end, or like a statue hewn in stone. No features, no colouring of life were visible. Immovable he stood and waited, while thousands of hearts seemed almost to cease to beat, checked, as it were, by some magic awe-inspiring wand. There are moments when no cry of ecstasy, no shouts of applause, no clamour of approbation, can express the quiverings of admiration, wrung from a fanatical crowd, like a hushed silence that dares not utter sound. And so it was on this unmatched occasion. A terrible quiet, as if a destroying angel had struck the bystanders dumb, had fallen on all; an awful thrill that seemed to lock together by magnetic force in one great manacle the soul of each onlooker; a terrible faintness as of death; a blinding of the eyes, as though the sun's too-scorching rays had struck the eyeballs; and, here and there, a dumb opening of the mouth as if to speak, though utterance could not come. A sickening dread, as if heaven and hell would open wide their gates to them. This, and far more than this, fell on the Jews, and the crowd, that had denied the Christ and clamoured to see Lazarus alive, were satisfied, each doubt laid still, each question answered. The power of the Eternal had been shown.
What could they do but fall down in adoration and belief? This would come, but meantime the multitude, from sheer excitement, wept.
One voice alone was raised in doubt.
"Is it indeed he?"
It came from one well known to the Nazarene. It was a voice He loved, as often it is the voice one loves the best that wounds the most.
It was Thomas the unbeliever who had spoken—Thomas, to whom faith came ever hardly, yet who loved the Lord. But the words had lashed the seeming feverishness of silence into a living cry.
"Is it he? Is it he, or is it another? Show us thy face! Art thou indeed Lazarus?"
"Loose him and let him go," commanded the Messiah, for all answer; but the voice that had spoken with such force to raise the dead man from the grave was weary now, and tired and disappointed. Even now, when the great miracle was over, when God Himself had seemed to bow to earth to fashion the triumph of His Son; when heaven and hell, at His command, had thrown back their portals to let the spirit enchained of God return to earth; when the great fulfilment of a nation's yearning had come to pass; still they believed not fully. Would they believe when, mounted high on a tree of shame, should hang the Son of God, in proof of boundless love? Would they believe when He should be seated on a cloud weighted with God's own glory to be worthy to bear the Conqueror of sin to heaven? No. The answer to His agonised prayer had been accorded; the great experiment, the precursor of the greater love to come, had been completed; science, suspicion, philosophy, conventionality, the laws of this world and the next, all had been overruled; yet from the voice of His own follower had come the cry of doubt, sprung up again, like some posionous weed that will not be denied its growth.
The tears of Christ had been shed in vain; Lazarus returned but to tread in the same pastures, on the same piercing thorns, to battle once more with the same enemy who had lived in the hearts of men while Lazarus died.
None at first durst approach the motionless body; then John, the beloved of the Lord, stepped forward at his Lord's behest.
One by one John cut with the dagger that hung by his side the cords that bound the hands and feet, leaving to the last the face; but whether he feared to look on Lazarus, or wished to keep them in suspense, not one could tell. Meanwhile the crowd continued silent, almost breathless. At last the napkin fell, and Lazarus stood there in all the beauty of his countenance.
Then rose such an uproar as could be heard almost at Jerusalem. 'T was as if a million lions roared by the shores of a stormy sea. Some prostrated themselves, women shrieked, some even dropped down dead with wonder; while little children, paralysed with fear, hid their sweet faces in their mothers' robes and howled.
Soldiers forgot to keep order. In the tumult no voice was granted precedence. All was confusion and astonishment and fear, except where here and there some fell in adoring worship at the Messiah's feet; others tore down the hill towards Jerusalem to tell the first news to the Pharisees of what the Nazarene had done.