" The raising of Lazarus from the dead was a work of Christ beyond measure great, and of aU the miracles he had hitherto wrought imdoubtedly the most stupen- dous. 'If it can be incontrovertibly shown that Christ performed one such miraculous act as this,' says Tho- luck (in his Conimentur zum Evanfj. Johmwis), ' much will thereby be gained to the cause of Christianity. One poi.it so peculiar in its character, if irrefragably es- tablished, may serve to develop a belief in the entire evangelical record.' The sceptical Spinoza Avas fidly conscious of this, as is related by Bayle {Diet. s. v. Spino- za). It is not surprising, therefore, that the enemies of Christianity have used their utmost exertions to destroy the credibility of the narrative. The earlier cavils of Woolston and his followers were, however, satisfactorily answered by Lardner and others, and the more recent efforts of the German neologists have been ably and successfully refuted by Oertelius, Langius, and Reinhard, and by H. L. Heubner in a work entitled Miraculoriim ah Eranf/elisiis narralorum inter jiret at. gramviatico-his- torica (Wittenb. 1807), as well as by others of still more recent date, whose answers, with the objections to which they apply, may be seen in Kuinoel" (Kitto). See also Flatt, in Mag.fiir Dupnat. iind Aforal. xiv, 91 ; Schott, Opusc. i, 259 ; Ewald, Lazen-us Jiir Gehildete Christiisve- rehrer (Berl. 1790) ; and the older monographs cited by Volbeding, Index Programmatum, p. 49 ; Hase, Ethen Jesii, p. 1G9. The rationalistic views of Paulus (Kritisch. Kommentar) and Gabler {Journal f. A userl. Theol. Lit. iii, 235) have been successfully refuted by Strauss (Lebeu Jesu), and the mythological dreams of the latter have been dissipated by a host of later German writers, and the reality of the story triumphantly established (see especially Ncander, Das I^eben Jesu Christi; Stier and Olshausen, ad loc). The last modification of Strauss's theory (Die Ilalhen iind die Ganzen. p. 79 sq., Berl. 1865) has been demolished by Hengstenberg {Zeitschr. f. Prot- estant, u. Kirche, p. 39 sq., 18G8) ; comp. Spiith {Zeitschr. f. wissensch. Theol. p. 339, 18G8) and Holzmann {ibid. p. 71 sq., 1869). The views of Paulus have just been re- vived in the lively romance of M. E. Renan, entitled ]'ie de Jesus; and the latter's theory of a pious Jraiid has been completely demolished by Ebrard, Pressense, and Ellicott, in their works on our Lord's life. See also tlie Studien und Krii. ii, 1861 ; Watson, Lazarus of Bethany (London, 1844). Compare Jesus ; Mary.
2. A beggar named in the parable of Dives (Luke i<.\\, 20-25) as suffering the most abject poverty in this life, but whose humble piety was rewarded with idtimate bliss in the other world; the only instance of a proper name in a parable, and probably selected in this instance on account of its frecpiency. He is an imaginary rep- resentative of the regard which God exercises towards those of his sauits whom the world spurns and passes
LAZARUS
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unnoticed ; by otliers, however, he has been considered a real personage, with which accords the old tradition that even fjives the name of the rich man as being Do- bntk (sec ¥. Fabri, Ecaijat. i, 35 sq.). Some interpret- ers think he was some well-known mendicant of Jeru- salem (see Seb. Schmid, Fascic. disputut. p. 878 sq.), and have attempted to detine his disease (see Wetlcl, Kj-ercit. Med. cent, ii, dec. ii. No. 2 ; Bartolini, Morh. bibl. c. xxi) with the success that might be expected (S. G. Feige, De morte Laz. [Hal. 1733]).
Tlie history of this Lazarus made a deep impression upon the Church, a fact illustrated by the circumstance to which Trench calls attention, " that the term lazar should have passed into so many languages, losing alto- gether its signification as a proper name" (On Parables, p. 459, note). Early in the history of the Church Laza- rus was regarded as the patron saint of the sick, and es- pecially of those suffering from the terrible scourge of leprosy. "Among the orders, half military and half monastic, of the Tith century, was one which bore the title of the Knights of St. Lazarus (A.D. 1119), whose special work it was to minister to the lepers, first of Syria, and afterwards of Europe. The use of lazaretto and haar-house for the leper hospitals then founded in all parts of Western Christendom, no less than that of lazzarone for the mendicants of Italian towns, are indi- cations of the effect of the parable upon the mind of Europe in the Middle Ages, and thence upon its later speech. In some cases there seems to have been a sin- gular transfer of the attributes of the one Lazarus to the other. Thus in Paris the prison of St. Lazave (the Clos S. Lazare, so famous in 1848) had been originally a hos- pital for lepers. In the 17th century it was assigned to the Society of Lazarists, who took their name, as has been said, from Lazarus of Bethany, and St. Vincent de Paul died tliere in IGGO. In the immediate neighbor- hood of the prison, however, are two streets, the Rue d'Enfer and Kue de Paradis, the names of which indi- cate the earlier associations with the Lazarus of the par- able.
" It may be mentioned incidentally, as there has been no article under the head of Dives, that the occurrence of this word, used as a quasi-proper name, in our early English literature, is another proof of the impression which was made on the minds of men, either by the parable itself, or by dramatic representations of it in the medi.eval mysteries. It appears as early as Chaucer (• Lazar and Dives,' Sompnoure's Tale) and Piers Plough- man ('Dives in the deyntees Ij-vede,' 1. 9158), and in later theological literature its use has been all but uni- versal. In no other instance has a descriptive adjective passed in this way into the received name of an indi- vidual. The name Ximciisis, which Euthymius gives as that of the rich man (^Trench, Parables, 1. c), seems never to have come into any general use" (Smith). See Klinkhardt, Z^e /iO?«i«e divite et Lazaro (Lipsice, 1831); Walker, Parable of Lazarus (Lond. 1850); Meth. Qiutr. Per. July and Oct. 1859 ; Jour. Sac. Lit. April, July, and Oct. 18(54. See Pauaulk.