And is it not well to have the scene thus cleared of the creature? Is it not a mercy--not in disguise, as some people say, but a plain, positive, palpable mercy--to have every human prop gone? Faith says, "Yes"--unhesitatingly and emphatically. Nature says, "No!" The poor heart craves something of the creature to lean upon, something that the eye can see. But faith--that most precious, priceless, divinely-wrought principle--finds its true sphere in being called to lean absolutely and abidingly upon the living God.
But it must be a real thing. It is of little use talking about faith if the heart be a stranger to its power. Mere profession is perfectly worthless. God deals in moral realities. "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man _say_ he have faith?" He does not say, "What doth it profit though a man _have_ faith?" Blessed be God, those who through grace have it, know that it profits _much_ every way. By faith the sinner is brought in living relationship with God, is justified, and lives unto Him. Faith glorifies God as nothing else can. It lifts the soul above the depressing influences of things seen and temporal. It tranquilizes the spirit in a most blessed manner. It enlarges the heart, by leading us out of our own narrow circle of personal interests, sympathies, cares and burdens, and connecting us livingly with the eternal, exhaustless spring of goodness. It works by love, and draws us out in gracious activity toward every object of need, but especially toward those who are of the household of faith.
It is faith alone that can move along the path where Jesus leads. To mere nature that path is dreadful. It is rough, dark, and lonely. Even those who surrounded our blessed Lord on the occasion of the death of Lazarus seemed wholly unable to comprehend His thoughts or follow intelligently in His footsteps. When He said, "Let us go into Judea again," they could think only of the Jews stoning Him. When He said, "I go, that I may awake him out of sleep," they replied, "If he sleep, he shall do well." When He spoke of his death, they thought that He had spoken of taking rest in sleep. When "He said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead: and I am glad _for your sakes_ that I was not there, _to the intent that ye may believe_" poor unbelieving nature, speaking through the lips of Thomas Didymus, said, "Let us also go, that we may die with Him."
In a word, we see total inability to take in the true bearing of the case, as viewed from a divine standpoint. Nature sees nothing but death and darkness, where faith basks in the sunlight of the divine presence. "Let us also go, that we may _die_ with Him." Alas, alas! was this all that even a disciple had to say? How absurd are the conclusions of unbelief! Let us go with the Prince of life, that--what? "we may die with Him"! What blindness even while attached to the Lord! Should not Thomas have said: "Let us go, that we may behold His glory; that we may see His marvelous doings in the very region of the shadow of death; that we may share in His triumphs; that we may shout, at the very gates of the grave, our hallelujahs to His deathless name?"