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TOPIC: MacDuff, John - Memories Of Bethany (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 01 Opening Thoughts
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OPENING THOUGHTS
Places associated with great minds are always interesting. What a halo of moral grandeur must ever be thrown around that spot which was hallowed above all others by the Lord of glory as the scene of His most cherished earthly friendship! However holy be the memories which encircle other localities trodden by Him in the days of His flesh—Bethlehem, with its manger cradle, its mystic star, and adoring cherubim—Nazareth, the nurturing home of His youthful affections—Tiberias, whose shores so often echoed to His footfall, or whose waters in stillness or in storm bore Him on their bosom—the crested heights where He uttered His beatitudes—the midnight mountains where He prayed—the garden where He suffered—the hill where He died—there is no one single resort in His divine pilgrimage on which sanctified thought loves so fondly to dwell as on the home and village of BETHANY.
Its hours of sacred converse have long ago fled. Its honored family have slumbered for ages in their tomb. Bethany's Lord has been for centuries enthroned amid the glories of a brighter home. But though its Memories are all that remain, the place is still fragrant with His presence. The echoes of His voice—words of unearthly sweetness—still linger around it; and have for eighteen hundred years served to cheer and encourage many a fainting pilgrim in his upward ascent to the true Bethany above!
There, the Redeemer of the world proclaimed a brief but impressive Gospel. Heaven and earth seemed then to touch one another. We have the tender tones of a Man blended with the ineffable majesty of God. Hopes "full of immortality" shine with their celestial rainbow-hues amid a shower of holy tears. The canceling from our Bibles of the 11th chapter of John would be like the blotting out of the brightest planet from the spiritual firmament. Each of its magnificent utterances has proved like a ministering-angel—a seraph-messenger bearing its live coal of comfort to the broken, bleeding heart, from the holiest altar which SYMPATHY (divine and human) ever upreared in a trial-world! Many has been the weary footstep and tearful eye that has hastened in thought to BETHANY—"gone to the grave of Lazarus, to weep there."
While "the town of Mary and her sister Martha" furnishes us, thus, with a garnered treasury of Christian solaces, it exhibits also one of the loveliest of the Bible's domestic portraits. If the story of Joseph and his brethren is in the Old Testament invested with surpassing interest, here a Gospel home-scene in the New, of still deeper and tenderer pathos—a picture in which the true Joseph appears as the central figure, without any estrangements to mar its beauty. Often at other times a drapery of woe hangs over the pathway of the Man of Sorrows. But Bethany is bathed in sunshine—a sweet oasis in His toil-worn pilgrimage.
At this quiet abode of congenial spirits He seems to have had His main "sips at the fountain of human joy," and to have obtained a temporary respite from unwearied labor and unmerited enmity. The "Lily among thorns" raised His drooping head in this Eden-home. There we can follow Him from the courts of the Temple—the busy crowd—the lengthened journey—the miracles of mercy—the hours of vain and ineffectual pleading with obdurate hearts. We can picture Him as the guest of a peaceful family, spirit blending with spirit in sanctified communion. We can mark the tenderness of His holy humanity. We can see how He loved, and sympathized, and wept, and rejoiced!
As the tremendous events which signalized the close of His pilgrimage drew on, still it is Bethany with which they are mainly associated. It was at Bethany the fearful visions of His cross and passion cast their shadow on His path. From its quiet palm-trees He issued forth on His last day's journey across Mount Olivet. It was with Bethany in view He ascended to heaven. Its soil was the last He trod—its homes were the last on which His eye rested when the cloud received Him up into glory. The beams of the Sun of Righteousness seemed as if they loved to linger on this consecrated height.
We cannot doubt that many incidents regarding His often sojournings there are left unrecorded. We have more than once, indeed, merely the simple announcement in the inspired narrative that He retired from Jerusalem all night to the village where His friend Lazarus resided. We dare not withdraw more of the veil than the Word of God permits. Let us be grateful for what we have of the gracious unfoldings here vouchsafed of His inner life—the comprehensive intermingling of doctrine, consolation, comfort, and instruction in righteousness. His Bethany sayings are for all time—they have "gone through all the earth"—His Bethany words "to the end of the world!" Like its own alabaster box of precious ointment, "wherever the Gospel is preached," these will be held in grateful memorial.
John, of all the Evangelists, was best qualified to do justice to this matchless picture. Baptized himself with the spirit of love, his inspired pencil could best portray the lights and shadows in this lovely and loving household. Preeminently like his Lord, he could best delineate the scene of all others where the tenderness of that tender Savior shone most conspicuous. He was the disciple who had leaned on His bosom—who had been admitted by Him to nearest and most confiding fellowship. He would have the Church, to the last period of time, to enjoy the same. He interrupts, therefore, the course of his narrative that he may lift the veil which enshrouds the private life of Jesus, and exhibit Him in all ages in the endearing attitude and relation of a Human Friend. Immanuel is transfigured on this Mount of Love before His suffering and glory! The Bethany scene, with its tints of soft and mellowed sunlight, forms a pleasing background to the sadder and more awful events which crowd the Gospel's closing chapters.