Article September 6, 1913 Issue

"Lazarus, come forth"

ROBERT ELLIS KEY

He who comes to a Christian Scientist in trouble, in sickness, or in doubt, who makes a personal appeal for sympathy, does not go away with the "cold assertion, 'Nothing ails you'" (Science and Health, p. 460). As the divine idea becomes more beautifully apparent to the human consciousness, the human heart responds with increasing tenderness,—not with the sympathy of mutual suffering, where sorrow shared is only partly borne, but with the inspiration of loving sympathy, which, discerning another's need, is able to supply it from the inexhaustible source of divine Love.

In the eleventh chapter of St. John's gospel we are told that Jesus wept, but surely the tears he shed were not for Lazarus, who had seemingly passed away from mortal consciousness. Our Lord knew too well the life eternal, the dominion of Spirit. He knew that darkness and oblivion are not for him whose Life is God. His tears were surely tears of pity and disappointment that so many of those about him had doubting hearts and helpless hands. The disciples had imbibed his teaching, and through the understanding of divine Love were privileged to heal the sick, comfort the sorrowing, raise the dead, here among them he found sorrow uncomforted, decay discussed, death meekly submitted to!

"Thou hast delivered my soul from the grave," sang the psalmist, and it is from the tomb of earthly hopes that the human sense emerges at the call of the divine idea. As we stand aside and watch the ebb and flow of human fears and fancies, we shall see more clearly the nothingness of evil and the all-inclusiveness of good, God. We are thereby enabled to help those who, believing in a power opposed to God, are groping "in the dark recesses of mortal thought" (Science and Health, p. 102), unable to roll away the stone which false belief has placed there.

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"Lazarus, come forth"

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