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I. THE LOWEST VIEW OF LIFE looks out upon it only as a hostelry, where every guest is to seize on so many of the good things exposed as the laws allow. This selfish hunt will take different directions according to the ruling appetite. But the characteristic mark on it all is that it disowns God. This system not only fails to provide for the chief internal necessity — viz., a religion; it fails to meet the external fact of suffering. That is a test of all philosophies and theories of life. It is useless to leave it out of the calculation; it forces its way back into every lot. Life does not become a problem till we taste of its bitterness. Whenever pain, bereavement, etc., come, that comfort-seeking, epicurean plan of living collapses, and the least that the man can then do is to fly to Zeno's porch and borrow some crumbs of frigid dignity that fall from the stoics table.

II. ASCEND A STEP HIGHER. Here we find God to be acknowledged, but more through fear than devout submission. Providence had returned to the world from which unbelief had rejected Him; but the confession, "Thy will be done," is not so full as to include the giving up of the dearest idols, and there is the suspicion that here and there some sparrow or more precious thing may fall without the Father's notice. This state is met by suffering, the touchstone; how does it behave itself? Well, but not best. Soberly but not serenely. Some selfish preferences linger to mar the beauty of resignation — to keep back part of the souls trust, and so disturb the perfect peace of believing. There is the beginning of faith — too much to be thrown away, not enough to live by. This is precisely where Martha stands. There is a mixture of the strength and weakness of faith, perhaps of faith and superstition. She believed in the power and love of Jesus — that was her true faith — but she believed that it must operate in prolonging her brother's life, and was limited to His physical presence. That was the falsity and weakness of her faith. Jesus corrects it with, "Whosoever [anywhere] believeth on Me shall never die."

III. Out of that state into A HIGHER ONE STILL Christ wishes to lift her and us. Where a holy soul will be felt to be of more value than any freedom from pain; when sympathy with Christ is valued more than having a human friend at our side. Saved by suffering, not from it, is the law of life revealed in Christ. Character depends on inward strength, but this strength has two conditions: it is increased only by being put forth, and tested only by resistance. So the spiritual character must enter into conflict, and stand in comparison with something formidable enough to be a standard of its power.

1. The ordinary conditions of a prosperous fortune furnishes no such standard. The favoured moral constitutions which ripen into sainthood under perpetual comfort are rare exceptions. Suffering in some form must put faith to the proof and purify it; what form God, who knows best, must determine. The sisters must see Lazarus die, Matthew must forsake all to follow the Master. How many of us take up Martha's plaint instead of, "Lord in these chastenings of friendly love Thou hast been here — Thy will be done." And Christ shows three times over that the design here was that the disciples, the sisters, and the people, might believe.

2. In another class of moral experiences the principle has a direct application — in those who long. more earnestly for rest than faithful submission. They have heard that there is joy in believing, and so believe for the sake of the joy, and this, though a nobler thirst than that of the senses, is tainted with selfishness and wanting in faith. Then, again, the mercenary tendency to offer to God your good works as a price for purchasing self-complacency needs to be watched. It defeats its own end. Faith never comes that way: it comes swiftest when you seek it as an end least. Seek purity, harmony with God, and peace in God's good time will come. Stillness is our needed sacrifice. Baffled and broken the soul must often be ere its immortal strength comes. Not from but by this suffering we shall be saved.

3. We may embrace all those instances in which we doubt whether some care was not omitted whereby the fatal blow might have been warded off When shall we learn that God takes the past into His secure keeping, and that even out of sorrows that we might have prevented, a spiritual benefit may be now drawn greater than their prevention. Vain cry, "Lord, if Thou hadst," etc. But to receive and bless Him in whatever robes of darkness, when He comes. Conclusion:

1. Suffering is disciplinary.

2. If our desires reach only after exemption from it, they are but half faithless.

3. The true conquest and peace of faith, as well as the solution of the mystery of sorrow, lie in our willingness to suffer, so far as it may bring us to the society of our Lord.

(Bp. Huntington.)

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KJV: Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.

WEB: So when Jesus came, he found that he had been in the tomb four days already.