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SERMON XIX.

RESURRECTION TO LIFE.

"Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?"-JOHN Xi. 25, 26.

EXCEPT the cure of the two blind men at Jericho-certain cures in the temple during passion-week-the malediction of the fig-tree, and some manifestations of our Lord's power on the seizure of His person in the garden of Gethsemane with the exception of these, the raising of Lazarus from the dead was, I think, the last public miracle performed by Christ during His abode in the flesh. It was undoubtedly among the most considerable which we read of in the whole course of our Lord's ministry; and was an apt introduction to that greatest miracle of all— the seal of HIS mission and of OUR hope-HIS OWN RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. Accordingly we find Him preparing Himself for this exhibition of His power on the person of His deceased friend, with particular care and solemnity. He was at a distance from Bethany, the

place of Lazarus' residence, when Lazarus first fell sick; the alarm of the Jewish rulers, excited by His cure of the man born blind, and by His open claim to be the Son of God and ONE with His Father, having obliged Him to retire to Bethabara. When He received the news of His friend's illness, notwithstanding His affection for Lazarus and his sisters, He continued two days in the place where the message found Him, that the catastrophe might take place before His miraculous power should be interposed. He had indeed already restored life in two instances: the daughter of Jairus was one, and the widow's son of Nain was the other. But in both these instances, the evidence of the previous fact, that death had really taken place, was not so complete and positive as our Lord intended it should be, and as it really was in the case of Lazarus. It is remarkable, that our Lord's disciples, although they had been witnesses to these miraculous recoveries of the daughter of Jairus and of the widow's son of Nain, entertained not, at the time of the death of Lazarus, the most distant apprehension that their Master's power went to the recovery of life, once truly and totally extinguished. This appears evident from the alarm and despair which they expressed, when He informed them that Lazarus was dead: and when He declared His intention of visiting the afflicted family, they had so little expectation that the

revival of Lazarus could be the effect, or that it was indeed the purpose of His journey, that they would have dissuaded Him from leaving the place of His retirement; conceiving, as it should seem, that the only end of His proposed visit to Bethany, would be to gratify the feelings of a useless sympathy at the hazard of His own safety. "Master," they say unto Him, "the Jews of late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?" And when they found Him determined to go, "Let us also go, said Saint Thomas, "that we may die with Him." They rather expected to be themselves stoned by the Jews together with their Master; and to be, one and all, in the state of the departed Lazarus within a few days, than to see the life of Lazarus restored.

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Sentiments of this kind, my brethren, expressed by the apostles upon many similar occasions, afford a clear proof, that the disciples were not persons of an over-easy credulity-that they were not individuals who may, with any show of probability, be supposed to have been themselves deceived in the wonders which they reported of our Lord. They seem RATHER to have deserved the reproach which our Lord, after His resurrection, cast upon them-" Fools, and slow of heart to believe!" They appear to have credited nothing, till the testimony of their own senses extorted the belief. They reasoned not from what they had once seen accomplished,

to that which might yet further be achieved. They built no probabilities of the future upon the past. They formed no general belief concerning the extent of our Lord's power, from the effects of it which they had already seen. After the miraculous meal of five thousand persons on five loaves and two fishes, we find them filled with wonder, that He should be able to walk upon a troubled sea and to assuage the raging storm. And in the present instance, their faith in what was past carried them not forward to the obvious conclusion, that He who snatched the daughter of Jairus from the jaws of death, and raised a young man from his coffin, would be able to bring Lazarus back from the grave. This was, however, just what might be expected from such persons. For, being of low occupations and of mean attainments, their minds were wholly unimproved by education and experience. And though a vain philosophy may affect to speak contemptuously of the credulity of the vulgar, and think that they display their own refinement and penetration, by resisting the evidence which satisfies the generality of menthe truth is, my brethren, that nothing is so decidedly the mark of genuine barbarism as an obstinate incredulity. The evil-minded and the illiterate, from very different causes, agree, however, in this-that they are always the last to believe upon any evidence less than the testimony

of man.

of their own senses. Ingenuous minds are unwilling to suspect those frauds in other men, to which they feel an aversion themselves: therefore they always give testimony its due weight. The larger a man's opportunities have been of acquainting himself with the occurrences of his own and former ages, the more he knows of effects daily arising from causes which never were expected to produce them-of effects in the natural world, of which he cannot trace the cause; and of facts in the history of mankind, which can be referred to no principle in human nature-to nothing within the art and contrivance Hence the man of science and speculation, as his knowledge enlarges, loses his attachment to a principle by which the barbarian steadily adheres-that of measuring the probability of strange facts by his own experience. He will be at least as slow to reject as to receive testimony; and he will avoid that obstinacy of unbelief, which is satisfied with nothing but ocular demonstration, as of ALL erroneous principles the most dangerous, and as presenting the greatest obstacle to the mind's improvement. The illiterate man, unimproved by study and by conversation, thinks that nothing can possibly be, of which he has not beheld the counterpart. From a diffidence perhaps of his own ability to examine evidence, he is always jealous that you have an intention to impose upon him-that

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