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of a mountain. What, another private resurrection! But if I accept these statements as facts, shall I also believe the first man who tells me that he has, quite recently, conversed with Romulus and Numa in a valley remote from the haunts of men?

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But what shall we say of miracles involving resurrection from the dead? The first two Gospels record, with conflicting version, but one instance of doubtful restoration to life. Matthew relates that a certain ruler came to Jesus, saying, 'My daughter is even now dead; but come and lay thy hands on her, and she shall live.' 1 But, as Jesus had never professed to restore life to the dead, how could Jairus expect that the ordinary laws of mortality were to be suspended in favour of his daughter? Mark, however, depicts Jairus saying, 'My little daughter lieth at the point of death I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her; and she shall live.' 2

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Jesus, having arrived at the house of Jairus, found the people there lamenting under the impression that the little girl was dead, but he assured them that she was only asleep, and taking her hand, she immediately Jesus then requested all present to keep the matter strictly private. Had they obeyed him, we should never have heard the story, and Jesus does not therefore ask us to believe that this was a case of resurrection from the dead.

arose.

Luke furnishes a legendary version of this miracle,3 and adds the resurrection of the widow's son. The motive of this miracle was compassion for a mother's grief; how, therefore, did Jesus escape the importuni2 Mark v. 22, 23, R

1 Matt. ix. 18.

3 Luke viii. 41-56.

ties of the entire population of Judæa, urgently soliciting the restoration of their dead? There were no telegraphs in those days, to instantaneously communicate to the remotest limits of the Roman Empire that resurrection from the dead had become an plished fact; but the means of communication were sufficiently well organised to draw thousands of excited pilgrims from Athens, Alexandria, Rome, and other great centres of population, hastening to the obscure village of Nain, to hear but one word from the lips of the risen dead, and to implore the great Hebrew Thaumaturgist to summon relatives and friends from the unseen world.

The most dramatic instance of resurrection is recorded by the fourth Evangelist.1 Jesus was the intimate friend of Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus, who became ill and died. When Jesus heard of the illness of his friend, he said to his disciples, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby ;' and, having waited until Lazarus was actually dead and buried, he communicated the fact to his disciples, and said, 'I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.' If, therefore, Apostles, enjoying the privilege of personal intimacy with Jesus, required so marvellous a confirmation of faith, how much more do we, removed from him by eighteen centuries, need a sign from heaven to reanimate convictions paralysed by the disheartening evidence of primitive and medieval credulity!

The body of Lazarus had lain four days in the grave,

1 John xi.

but this proved no obstacle to his resurrection. When the stone had been rolled away, Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth! And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes.'

The soul of Lazarus had therefore been four days absent from the body in the unknown region where the spirits of the departed dwell. We know not the locality of this shadowy realm, but may reasonably place it beyond the fixed stars, from which a ray of lightrequiring about eight minutes to travel from the sunreaches us, not in minutes, but in years. At a given moment, therefore, the body of Lazarus lies corrupting in the tomb; his soul, removed to an incalculable distance from the earth, reclines on Abraham's bosom, conversing with Moses, Solomon, or Isaiah. Jesus suddenly exclaims, Lazarus, come forth!' and the spirit, travelling with a velocity inconceivably swifter than light, instantaneously re-occupies the body, and restores it to uncorrupted vitality.

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Had

Restoration to life was a comparatively tame event to the man who had learned the secrets of the unseen world, but when the spectators had recovered from the first sensations of stupefaction and terror, they necessarily crowded around him in frantic excitement, pouring inexhaustible questions into his weary ears. he beheld the ineffable glory of Jehovah? formed the acquaintance of angels, and conversed with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Where is heaven? Where is hell? What the joys of the righteous? and the tortures of the wicked? Had he seen the parents, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters of the speakers? and did they prefer

R 2

the companionship of angels to the society of their friends on earth?

These are some of the questions which would have been inevitably addressed to the man seen issuing alive from his grave. But in vain we search the pages of the Evangelist for one word from the lips of him, who could have finally closed the controversy between Pharisees and Sadducees by disclosing his personal experience of the life beyond the grave.

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We are informed that at a supper at Bethany, Lazarus sat at the table with Jesus, and many came to see the man who had risen from the dead. But although the comparatively unimportant incident of Mary anointing the feet of Jesus with a costly ointment is fully recorded, no reference is made to the momentous question of the resurrection. Had Lazarus been forbidden to reveal the secrets of the unseen world, or has the Evangelist suppressed the priceless revelations. which would have given mankind the full assurance of immortality?

This miracle was performed so openly, that even the Pharisees were convinced of its truth. They believed in the doctrine of the resurrection, and yet, when they had attained full attestation of its credibility, they hastened to conspire with unbelieving Sadducees for the destruction of the evidence through the murder of Lazarus. Is it possible to conceive the character, motives, and design of men determined to suppress the resurrection from the dead? Have ancient or modern times produced the incomprehensible monster who would not joyfully welcome a traveller returned in the flesh from the region beyond the grave? Did the conspirators

contemplate assassination, or the conviction of Lazarus, before the judgment-seat of Pilate, of the crime of rising from the dead? And would Lazarus, thus arraigned, have disclosed his marvellous experience, and established the supernatural mission of Jesus? But how then would the Scriptures have been fulfilled? For Pilate would never have consented to the crucifixion of the marvellous being who could summon the dead from their graves. The Roman governor would have assuredly changed the future history of mankind by obtaining incontestable evidence of the miracle, and despatching a swift messenger to break in upon the sullen solitude of Tiberius at Capreæ, with the startling announcement that a man had risen from the dead.

If Christianity rests on the credibility of miracles, and eternal happiness or misery is contingent on faith in Christianity, how unfortunate for mankind that the great miracle of resurrection could not have been postponed to the nineteenth century, when scientific investigation could fully attest the marvellous event, and some modern Lazarus, travelling as a public lecturer from city to city, could carry conviction to the minds of even the most sceptical!

What would not we moderns pay to hear the lecturer who could practically solve the spiritual mysteries, which have perplexed the minds of philosophers from Thales to Comte, and of theologians from the first priest who worshipped on the banks of the Euphrates or the Nile, to the eminent apologists who now profess to enlighten us on eternal hope or everlasting despair!

But Orthodoxy assures us that the reticence of Evangelists was intended to screen Lazarus from persecution.