home with the mighty question of the last verse, seems hardly- able to give any but a vague answer. In truth, we cannot ex- pect that she would speak distinctly about that which she only understood imperfectly. She therefore falls back on a general answer, in which she states simply, yet decidedly, what was the extent of her creed.
Our English word, " I believe," hardly gives the full sense of the Greek. It would be literally, " I have believed, and do believe." This is my faith, and has been for a long time.
Augustine, Bede, Bullinger, Chemnitius, Gualter, Maldonatus, Quesnel, and Henry, think that the first word of Martha's reply is a full and explicit declaration of faith in everything our Lord had just said. "Yes, Lord, I do believe Thou art the resurrection and the life," etc. I cannot see this myself. The idea seems contradicted by Martha's subsequent conduct at the grave.
Musculus strongly maintains that Martha's confession, good as it was, was vague and imperfect. Lampe takes much the same view.
\Thou art the Christ... Son of God.. .came.. .world.'] Here is Martha's statement of her belief. It contains three great points : (1) that Jesus was the Christ, the anointed One, the Messiah ; (2) that He was the Son of God ; (3) that He was the promised Redeemer, who was to come into the world. She goes no further, and probably she could not. Yet considering the time she lived in, the universal unbelief of the Jewish nation, and the wonderful difference in the views of believers before the crucifixion and after, I regard it as a noble and glorious confession, and even fuller than Peter's, in Matthew xvi. 16. Melancthon points out the great superiority of Martha's faith to that of the most intellectual heathen, in a long and interesting passage.
It is easy to say that Martha's faith was rather vague, and that she ought to have seen everything more clearly. But we at this period of tinie, and with all our advantages, are very poor judges of such a matter. Dark and dim as her views were/ it was a great thing for a solitary Jewish woman to have got hold of so much truth, when within two miles, in Jerusalem, all who held such a creed as hers were excommunicated and persecuted.
Let us note that people's views of truth may be very defec- tive on some points, and yet they may have the root of the matter in them. Martha evidently did not yet fully realize that Christ was the resurrection and the life : but she had learned the alphabet of Christianity,— Christ's Messiahship and Divin- ity, and doubtless learned more in time. We must not con- demn people hastily or harshly, because they do not see all at once.
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