THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS

The Lord performed that miracle once for all in the body which much
more blessedly he performs every day in the souls of penitents. He
restored life to Lazarus, but it was a temporal life, one that would
die again. He bestows life on the penitent; life, but it is life
that will remain, world without end. The one is wonderful in the
eyes of men; the other is far more wonderful in the judgment of the
faithful; and in that it is so much the greater, by so much the more
is it to be sought. This is written of Lazarus, not for Lazarus
himself, but for us and to us. "Whatsoever things," saith the
Apostle, "were written of old, were written for our learning." The
Lord called Lazarus once, and he was raised from temporal death. He
calls us often, that we may rise from the death of the soul. He said
to him once, "Come forth!" and immediately he came forth at one
command of the Lord. The Lord every day invites us by Scripture to
confession, exhorts us to amendment, promises the life which is
prepared for us by him who willeth not the death of a sinner. We
neglect his call, we despise his invitation, we contemn his promise.
Placed between God and the devil, as between a father and a foe, we
prefer the enticement of the enemy to a father's warning. "We are
not ignorant," says the Apostle, "of the devices of Satan,"--the
devices, I say, by which he induces us to sin, and keeps us back
from repentance. Suggesting sin, he deprives us of two things by
which the best assistance might be offered to us, namely, shame and
fear. For that which we avoid, we avoid either through fear of some
loss, or through the reverence of shame.... When, therefore, Satan
impels any one to sin, he easily accomplishes the object, if, as we