pushing each other this way and that, in their hurry to avoid contact with the afflicted one; and soon, as if by magic, the chambers were emptied of their human throng, to let the wasted vision of diseased mortality pass in.
One or two beckoned to Mary and Martha, but they shook their heads, and Mary whispered softly: "We fear nothing; he is our father."
However strict the Jewish laws, none could at such a moment refuse the father access to the body of his son. Simon, like his daughters, had retained a lingering hope that the Nazarene would save Lazarus from death, and so had put off his visit from day to day, till he had been too late to bid his son farewell. Great tears coursed down the cheeks of the poor old man. It was the overflowing of a sorrowful cup, filled to the brim with life's bitterness. Though he was compelled by the Jewish law to live apart from the rest of the world, his son had been the hope of his old age; he had watched his career with all the love and pride of a father, who feels that, but for some untoward accident, he might have been great himself.
Lazarus had been his second self—a second self, but free from his affliction. The rectitude of his son's life had been his joy; his high position, his pride; his kindness to his sisters, a burden lifted from his own shoulders. It was through his son that he had learned to know the Nazarene; yea, who knew what hopes of recovery Simon had fostered in the presence of the Christ? Yet both father and son had been disappointed in their hope of being healed of their disorders by the Nazarene. For all that, it
