SATURDAY.
The Resuscitation of Lazarus. —II.
I. When Jesus came to the grave of Lazarus, " He groaned in the spirit, and humbled Himself, and He wept." (John xi. 33.) He acted in this manner from a principle of charity, "to weep with those that weepM (Rom. xii. 15), and to convince us that "we have not a high priest, who cannot have compassion on our infirmities. (Heb. iv. 15.) Then He said to them, " Take away the stone; and lifting up His eyes," He addressed a prayer to His eternal Father, to teach us that we ought to take away every impediment to our salvation, and always to implore the divine assistance when we undertake any serious work, particularly the conversion of sinners.
II. When the tombstone was removed, Jesus " cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth." Ponder the power and efficiency of that word, which even the dead obey. For " presently he that had been dead came forth, bound feet and hands, with winding bands, and his face was bound about with a napkin." This man that lay four days in his grave is a perfect emblem of an inveterate sinner, bound and fettered with evil habits, as so many winding bands, pressed and kept down by the custom of sinning, as if he were in his grave, and finally shut up and enclosed by hardness of heart, as with a tombstone. Such sinners are almost incorrigible; hence Christ "cried out with a loud voice." He daily cries out to such, and is not heard. Fear the habit of sinning, for, as St. Augustine says, "He scarcely can rise who is borne down by sin."
III. The Pharisees having heard of this miraculous
