Grosey's Messages

The Bow in the Cloud

by

Dr. F. W. Boreham

Memory is the soul's best minister. Sydney Carton found it so. On the greatest night of his life – the night on which he resolved to lay down his life for his friend – a text swept suddenly into his mind, and, from that moment, it seemed to be written everywhere.

The story occurs, of course, in the Tale of Two Cities. The book lies on the grass beside me as I lounge upon this Australian lawn on a perfect autumn evening. It may be that the bronze and saffron tints upon the foliage around me, and the wrestling of the fallen leaves at my feet, have suggested pensive thoughts. However that may be, I allowed the book to slip from my hand a minute ago, whilst my truant fancy wandered away to all the stricken and bereaved homes that, in the course of my long ministry, I have been privileged to visit. If only I could hurry back to them and bind up the broken hearts that they sheltered with the thoughts that had come thronging through my mind since dropping this masterpiece of Dickens on the lawn!

Everybody knows the story. Sydney Carton was in Paris; the French Revolution was at his height; sixty–three shuddering victims have been borne that very day to the guillotine; each day's toll was heavier than that of the day before; no man's life was safe. Among the prisoners, awaiting death in the Conciergerie was Charles Darnay, the husband of her whom Sydney himself had loved with so much devotion, but so little hope.

"O Miss Manette," he had said, on the only occasion on which he had revealed his passion, "when, in the days to come, you see your own bright beauty, springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you!"

And now that hour had come. It happened that Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton were in form and feature, extraordinarily alike. Darnay was doomed to die on the guillotine; Carton was free. For the first time in his wayward life, Sydney saw his course clearly before him. His years had been spent aimlessly, but now he set his face like a flint towards a definite goal. He stepped out into the moonlight, not recklessly or negligently, but "with the settled manner of a tired man who had wandered and struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into his road and saw its end." He would find some way of taking Darnay's place in the gloomy prison; he would, by his substitution, restore her husband to Lucy's side; he would make his life sublime at its close. His career should resemble a day that, fitful and overcast, ends at length in a glorious sunset. He would save his life by losing it!

It was at that great moment that memory exercised its sacred ministry upon the soul of Sidney Carton. As he paced the silent streets, dark with heavy shadows, the moon and the clouds sailing high above him, he suddenly recalled the solemn and beautiful words which, falling from the lips of the Savior at Bethany, he had heard read at his father's grave: "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die." Sydney did not ask himself why the words rushed upon him, although, as Dickens says, the reason was not far to seek. But he kept repeating them. And, when he stopped, the air seemed full of them. The words addressed to Martha concerning her brother Lazarus were written across the houses on either side of him; he looked up, and they were inscribed across the dark clouds in the clear sky; the very echo of his footsteps reiterated them. When the sun rose, it seemed to strike those words – the burden of the night – straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. Night and day were both saying the same thing. He heard it everywhere: he saw it in everything –

"I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."

For Sydney Carton that great text throbbed with vital significance. What was that significance? What did it mean to him? What does it mean to us? What would it have meant to those sorrowing parishioners of mine?

We do not see the stars in the daytime. They are there at noon just as much as at night, but the dazzling splendor of the sun shames them into invisibility. Something very similar occurs in the touching narrative of the sorrow at Bethany. It is the only story of a personal bereavement, told with vivid domestic detail, that the New Testament gives us. It closes sensationally with the raising of Lazarus. Sometimes I wish that it did not. That stupendous miracle has engrossed all our attention to the detriment of several exquisitely beautiful things that occur elsewhere in the story. The sun has blotted out the stars. I am going to forget for a few minutes the dramatic close of the story. I am going to read it again, just as I would read any other record of domestic grief. And, reading it thus, I feel like one who, looking upward, gazes upon a sky, overspread with grey and gloomy clouds, yet who sees here and there the most glorious rifts of blue. Those rifts of blue are openings into immensity, peeps into infinity, windows that open upon the everlasting. Let me point to one or two.

I

In the course of that two–mile walk from the city to the stricken home, Jesus said a very striking thing. "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." Each word deserves to be examined under a microscope. To begin with, is it not intensely suggestive that, with Jesus, Lazarus is still Lazarus? He speaks of him, still by the fond, familiar name, and by that name, in the thrilling climax, again addresses him. "Lazarus, come forth!" And to that name, Lazarus responds.

"Where were thou, brother, those four days?

There lives no record of reply,

Which, telling what it is to die,

Has surely added praise to praise."[i]

We do not know. But wherever he was, he was still Lazarus. Death had done nothing to impair his essential identity. He was still Lazarus in the thought of Jesus. He was still Lazarus in his own consciousness. By the old name, Jesus called him. To the old name, he answered. The grave robbed him of nothing that was really worth preserving.

II

Lazarus is still Lazarus; the old identity is unimpaired. Lazarus is still our friendLazarus; the sweet old relationships are undisturbed. And, best of all, Lazarus is still ours. "Our friend Lazarus." If that means anything, it means that those whom we have loved long since and lost awhile are still our own. "Our friend sleepeth." God does not toy with our holiest affections, giving us one day those whom He would have us love, and the next day, snatching them from us. Our own are our own forever. Lazarus, though dead, is still our Lazarus.

The same idea occurs in the Old Testament. In the first chapter of the Book of Job, which Carlyle considered the greatest drama ever written, we are told how Job, by one fell stroke of dire calamity, lost all that he had. And then, in the last chapter, we are told that "the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." And in each case there is an inventory. Job lost seven thousand sheep; at the end he possesses fourteen thousand – twice as many. He lost three thousand camels; six thousand are at last given him – twice as many. He loses five hundred yoke of oxen; in the last chapter he owns one thousand – twice as many. He loses seven sons and three daughters; in the last chapter seven sons and three daughters are born to him. Why are the numbers of sheep, camels and oxen doubled, whilst the number of sons and daughters remains the same? And since the number of sons and daughters remains the same, how can it be said that he had twice as many as before? The reply is obvious. He had lost his sheep and camels and oxen forever. The sons and daughters who had passed from his sight, together with the sons and daughters around his knees, gave him twice as many as he had before. It means that Lazarus is still our Lazarus. That is Wordsworth's idea in "We are Seven."

"Sisters and brothers, little maid,

How many may you be?"

"How many? Seven and all," she said,

And, wondering, looked at me.

"And where are they? I pray you tell."

She answered, "Seven are we;

And two of us at Conway dwell,

And two are gone to sea.

"Two of us in the churchyard lie,

My sister and my brother;

And, in the churchyard cottage, I

Dwell near them with my mother."

It appeared to her questioner that there was matter here for subtraction, but the curly-headed little maiden would not hear of it.

"How many are you, then," said I,

"If they two are in heaven?"

The little maiden did reply,

"O master! We are seven."

"But they are dead; those are dead!

Their spirits are in heaven!"

'Twas throwing words away; for still

The little maid would have her will,

And said, "Nay, we are seven!"[ii]

She clung to her conviction that Lazarus is still our Lazarus, and she had the divine authority for her simple faith.

Or, turning our faces in a fresh direction, let us peer through another rift in this leaden sky into the clear heavens beyond. Is it not very singular that on His arrival at the home in Bethany – His home at Bethany – He wept? In our bereavement, we attempt to stifle sorrow by the thought of their happiness whom we have lost. Jesus knew intimately the perfect felicity of Lazarus, and yet He wept! He knew, too, that, in an hour, the joy of Mary and of Martha would be complete, and yet He wept! Do these tears need explanation?

It is, at any rate, a comfort that He wept. By weeping, He at least assured us that there is nothing faithless, nothing wicked in our tears. And it would be like Him to sympathize with us in our sorrow, however, needless that sorrow might be. Sorrow is sorrow, even though there be no sufficient cause for grief; and, just because the anguish was there, He shared His bitterness. There is a lovely letter written by Mrs. Carlyle to that rugged old husband of hers, in the course of which she tells him how, during a recent illness, she was greatly comforted by her maid. The girl only came into the room and rubbed her cheek against her mistress's; but it strangely soothed her. "And sometimes," adds Mrs. Carlyle, "I could tell that her cheek was wet, and her tears meant much to me." I like to think of poor Jane Carlyle's letter when I read the story of those tears at Bethany.

And was there not an element of pity in them? Pity for the sisters, since they were unable to see all that He had seen – the glory upon which, with unveiled face, Lazarus was gazing. And pity for Lazarus, too. He himself knew what it was to leave that brighter world for this less radiant one, and He felt for Lazarus in having to make the same great sacrifice.

Professor David Smith, in writing on the epistles of Isadore, the Greek scholar and saint, quotes from a letter which Isadore wrote to Theodosius the Presbyter, on this very matter. Isadore, says the Professor, was a gentle and gracious soul who had quitted the city of Alexandria and sought a life of retirement in order that he might give himself to devotion and study. He had no aptitude for ecclesiastical activities and contentions, and his name never appears in the bitter and futile controversies which mark the ecclesiastical history of that period; yet he exercised in his seclusion, a rare ministry of rich and far-reaching beneficence. He was a scholar, and he was gifted with an understanding heart and a sympathetic spirit. Troubled folk turned to him in their perplexities, and they found him a wise counsellor. He wrote letters near and far, and over two thousand of these have survived.

In one he deals with this question as to why our Lord wept by the grave of Lazarus. "Why," he asks, "did Jesus weep for Lazarus, knowing that He would raise him from the dead?" Isadore answers his own question. "It was precisely on that account," he says, "that Jesus wept. Lazarus had entered into his felicity, and Jesus wept at having to recall him. The miracle was necessary in order to convince the unbelieving Jews of his divine title; but in His eyes, knowing as He did the eternal realities, it was a cruel necessity. The storm-tossed mariner had reached the haven, and He must call him back to the billows; the warrior had won his crown, and He must call him back to the conflict. And so He wept – not because Lazarus had passed into the joy unspeakable, but because he must return to this poor troubled life."

From any point of view, then, the silent tears are wondrously, and divinely significant.

IV

Just one more rift in those grey skies. We have walked with Jesus along the Bethany Road; we have sat with Him in the house of sorrow; let us, without waiting to witness the actual miracle, go with Him to the tomb. "And he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth!" Why, with a loud voice, since Lazarus lay at His feet? Old Matthew Henry, with rare insight, declares that He cried with a loud voice to show that He was not addressing the dead body at all. Had He spoken softly, it might have been supposed that the living soul and the dead body were in inextricably intermingled. He looked away from the dead body, and cried with a loud voice that it might be seen that He was addressing a living soul at a distance, and not a dead man close at hand.

And why was it needful to call upon Lazarus by name? There were no others lying in that grave. Would it not have been sufficient had He simply cried, "Come forth!"? "He singles out Lazarus by name," says Augustine, finely, "lest all the hosts of the dead should hear His voice and come forth together!" The time had not yet come for that. Someday He will say, "Come forth!" and the dead will rise from land and sea at His sublime behest. But, on that day at Bethany, He only wanted one. He named His man, and, from out the world invisible, Lazarus instantly came at His call.

V

Peering through these rifts of blue, I clearly see two things. I see that, wherever those old companions are whom I have loved long since and lost awhile, they are within His care and at Hiscall. At any moment, He has but to speak their names, and they instantly rise to greet Him. And the other thing is this. He calls Lazarus and Lazarus alone. Why only Lazarus? If it is in His power to summon our dear ones from their graves and restore them to their old, familiar places, why does He not do it? The fact that He calls Lazarus, and Lazarus alone, proves indisputably that the others are better where they are. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

[i] Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam A.H.H., first published in 1850, is a long elegy mourning the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam, tracing Tennyson's deep grief and gradual emotional healing. The poem explores themes of faith, doubt, and the search for meaning, ultimately moving toward a sense of spiritual reconciliation and hope. The verses quoted by FWB refer specifically to the biblical story of Lazarus (John 11), questioning what Lazarus experienced during the four days he was dead before being raised by Jesus.

[ii] William Wordsworth's We Are Seven(1798) depicts a conversation between an adult and a young girl who insists that she has seven siblings, even though two have died. Through her innocent perspective, the poem highlights a child's unwavering sense of connective faith between the seen and unseen, and challenges the adult's logical view of death and familial separation.