CHAPTER XXII

THE RAISING OF LAZARUS

FROM His wanderings in Perea Jesus is called to the neighborhood of Jerusalem by the news of the sickness and the death of His dearest friend, Lazarus of Bethany. He returns to Bethany with the definite purpose of restoring Lazarus to life. The career of Jesus as a miracle-worker is now to close in one astounding and consummating act. His last parable lifts the curtain of the world to come, and reveals man as a creature of infinite destinies; His last great act of miracle is to recall from that unseen world one who has already met its solemn judgment and entered on its new and unimaginable life.

The raising of Lazarus is generally esteemed the greatest miracle of Christ; it would be more correct to describe it as His most deliberate miracle, of which we have the most detailed description. In itself it is not more remarkable than the restoration to life of the son of the widow of Nain, related by St. Luke; or of the daughter of Jairus which was considered so authentic, that it is recorded in each of the synoptic Gospels. Nor are these previous miracles less detailed, unless we use detail as the synonym for mere amplitude of phrase and narrative. The great feature of this last miracle is its deliberation; in all other respects it is neither more or less astonishing than previous miracles. We may, of course, except the frequent miracles of healing. These may be explained in some degree by "the subtle co-operation of two imaginations and two wills," and even to the

rationalist they are not incredible. It is when we are confronted with the raising of the dead that all ordinary expliHere the most devout mind may be forgiven

cations fail us.

occasional pangs of incredulity.

The narrative is full of special difficulties which no man of intelligence can ignore. The most serious of these difficulties is the silence of the synoptic Gospels. How is it that John alone relates an event of such importance? But we may ask with equal relevance, how is it that John does not relate the raising from the dead of Jairus's daughter? Or, how is it that only Luke relates the touching and inimitable story of the restoration to life of the only son of the widow of Nain? Of all the earlier miracles of Jesus these were by far the most astounding, and were of equal significance; we should expect therefore that whatever things the biographer of Jesus would omit, these would be precisely the things that could never be omitted. But the Evangelists did not obey the ordinary canons of biography. The modern biographer would certainly begin his work by collecting the most remarkable incidents in the career of his hero, because he would know that he could satisfy the public taste and judgment in no other way. But the Evangelists found the whole life of Jesus so remarkable that they felt no need of such discrimination. Each related the events that he best remembered, or which were best attested by the general memory. Moreover, there was a good reason why John alone should record the miracle of Lazarus, which does not apply to the earlier Evangelists. John is especially the historian of the Judean ministry, and of the Passion. Threefourths of his entire Gospel, as we have seen, is devoted to the last six months of the life of Jesus. He is therefore the natural historian of Lazarus, and it is possible that he shared the friendship of the house at Bethany in a degree not known

to Matthew or Peter. If we are to proceed upon the principle that only those incidents in the life of Jesus are authentic which are attested by more than one Evangelist we must dismiss Luke's story of the widow of Nain as well as John's story of the raising of Lazarus; and it is manifest that this narrow principle, rigidly applied, would delete from the Scriptures many of the acts and words of Jesus which the world holds most lovely, most significant, and most precious as the food of faith.

A less serious, but not unimportant, difficulty is that in the final trial of Jesus nothing is said of this stupendous act which almost immediately preceded it. But the same thing may be said of a hundred wonderful and benignant acts in the life of Christ. We may ask with equal surprise where were the blind men whose eyes Christ had opened, the lame men whom he had cured, that not one of them was found in the hall of Caiaphas to bear witness to his Benefactor? Two notable miracles of this class had been wrought under the hostile eyes of the priests themselves in Jerusalem; yet neither the paralytic of the Pool of Bethesda, nor the man blind from his birth whom the priests had excommunicated, either as witnesses or friends in the last tragic scenes, appear when the full storm of ruin broke upon their Healer. The explanation is that Jesus was not tried as a false Messiah, but as a political offender. The aim of the priests was to prove that He had perverted the nation, because upon this charge alone could they secure His death. Therefore they had ceased to weigh the evidence for or against His miracles; they had become a matter of indifference. Lazarus himself, had he appeared before the Sanhedrim, would have been quite incapable of deflecting a course of judgment already predetermined, or of altering by any appeal or evidence that he could offer a verdict which purposely ignored such evidence,

But difficulties based upon the silence of the synoptic Gospels, or the absence of Lazarus from the trial of Jesus, are trivial compared with the difficulties which arise from the nature of the narrative itself. The plain question which must be met is, Is the story true? It would be foolish to reply that the question is irreverent and inadmissible, because the whole story challenges criticism, and John shows no disposition to evade this criticism. The apostles themselves, in the far more important matter of Christ's own resurrection, never imagined that their statements would be received without examination. St. Matthew himself relates that even in that last sublime moment, when Jesus vanished into the heavens, "some doubted"; and St. Paul argues at length the possibility of resurrection with the Corinthian converts. Blind faith is as foolish as blind incredulity. All phenomena, whatever the ultimate verdict passed upon them, must first of all be examined at the tribunal of the reason. It is scarcely wonderful that a phenomenon so astounding as this should have been examined with unusual severity, or that men should have sought any kind of plausible invention which should relieve the reason from accepting a story which contradicts at every point all the known familiar facts of human experience.

Is this story an invention? John certainly shows himself in his Apocalypse capable of sublime powers of invention, but they are precisely those powers which are least capable of sober narrative. If we may use the term, the Apocalypse. is distinguished by a certain noble insobriety of thought and phrase; it is a gorgeous dream, behind whose veils move the forms of Nero, as the Beast, and his victims, as invincible protagonists, struggling on a stage that is set among the clouds amid the marvels of infinity. But it would require a mind of very different quality, infinitely more exact and deli

cate, to invent such a narrative as this. With what an exquisite touch are the characters of the two sisters rendered! They live, they move; their thoughts are beautifully natural and spontaneous; they excite the liveliest pity and a breathless interest. Nor are they copied from the earlier portraits of St. Luke. It is Mary now who remains disconsolate and crushed; it is Martha, filled with faith, who declares herself convinced that Jesus is the Son of God. The character of Thomas is also rendered with an equal fidelity to what we know of him already, yet with the addition of new elements, which would certainly not have occurred to a writer of fiction. Thomas, hitherto the man of divided mind, is now the hero, who casts aside his hesitations, and is prepared to die with Christ. The various emotions of Christ Himself; His words when the message of the anxious sisters reaches Him in Perea; His debate with the disciples; His conversation with Martha; His outburst of sorrow at the grave; His prayer at the doorway of the tomb-all these things are conveyed with a realism, with a firmness and fidelity of touch, surely not possible to fiction. We may omit from consideration the culpability that would attach to John for passing off as history what was really fiction, and the condemnation of his whole Gospel which such a charge involves, if it be proven. Whether he was morally capable of inventing such a story is not the question; but certainly he was intellectually incapable. Whatever course our thoughts may take upon the nature of the story, it is beyond dispute that John believed himself to be narrating something that had actually happened, and he narrates it with a close attention to the sequence and probability of history, which would be impossible in deliberate invention.

Is the story a parable? This is the ingenious suggestion of those who desire to maintain reverence for Christ while