His people. To a mere worldly man death must needs be a terrible thing ; but he that has Christian faith may boldly say, as he lays down life, " I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest : for it is Thou, Lord, that makest me dwell in safety."
We should notice, lastly, in this passage, lioiv much of natural temperament clings to a believer even after conversion. We read that when Thomas saw that Lazarus was dead, and that Jesus was determined, in spite of all danger, to return into Judaea, he said, " Let us also go, that we may die with Him." There can only be one meaning in that expression : it was the language of a despairing and de- sponding mind, which could see nothing but dark clouds in the picture. The very man who afterwards could not be- lieve that his Master had risen again, and thought the news too good to be true, is just the one of the twelve who thinks that if they go back to Judaea they must all die !
Things such as these are deeply instructive, and are doubtless recorded for our learning. They show us that the grace of God in conversion does not so re-mould a man as to leave no trace of his natural bent of character. The sanguine do not altogether cease to be sanguine, nor the desponding to be desponding, when they pass from death to life, and become true Christians. They show us that we must make large allowances for natural temperament, in forming our estimate of individual Christians. We must not expect all God's children to be exactly one and the same. Each tree in a forest has its own peculiarities of shape and growth, and yet all at a distance look one mass of leaf and verdure. Each member of Christ's body has his own distinctive bias, and yet all in the main are led by one Spirit, and love one Lord. The two sisters Martha and Mary, the apostles Peter and John and Thomas, were certainly very unlike one another in many respects. But