But this will not exhaust the elements of bliss in the case of the "perfected just" on the day of their final triumph. Though the presence of their adorable Redeemer would be enough, and more than enough, to fill their cup with happiness, there will be others also to welcome them, and to augment their joy. Lazarus' Lord was not _alone_ at the sepulchre's brink, at Bethany, ready to greet him back. Two loved sisters shared the joy of that gladsome hour. We are left to picture for ourselves the reunion, when, with hand linked in hand, they retraversed the road which had so recently echoed to the voice of mourning, and entered once more their home, radiant with a sunshine they had imagined to have passed away from it for ever!
So will it be with the believer on the morning of the Resurrection. While his Lord will be _there_, waiting to welcome him, there will be others ready with their presence to enhance the bliss of that gladdening restoration. Those whose smiles were last seen in the death-chamber of earth, now standing--not as Martha and Mary, with the tear on their cheek and the furrow of deep sorrow on their brow, but robed and radiant in resurrection attire, glowing with the anticipations of an everlasting and indissoluble reunion!
Can we anticipate, in the resurrection of Lazarus, our own happy history? Yes! _happier_ history, for it will not _then_ be to come forth once more, like _him_, into a weeping world, to renew our work and warfare, feeling that restoration to life is only but a brief reprieve, and that soon again the irrevocable sentence will and must overtake us! Not like _him_, going to a home still covered with the drapery of sorrow,--a few transient years and the mournful funeral tragedy to be repeated,--but to enter into the region of endless life--to pass from the dark chambers of corruption into the peace and glories of our Heavenly Father's joyous _Home_, and "so to be for ever with the Lord!"
Sometimes it is with dying believers as with Lazarus. Their Lord, at the approach of death, _seems_ to be absent. He who gladdened their homes and their hearts in life, is, for some mysterious reason, away in the hour of dissolution; their spirits are depressed; their faith languishes; they are ready to say, "Where is now my God?" But as He returned to Bethany to awake His sleeping friend, so will it be with all his true people, on that great day when the arm of death shall be for ever broken. If _now_ united to Him by a living faith,--loved by Him as Lazarus was, and conscious, however imperfectly, of loving Him back in return,--we may go down to our graves, making Job's lofty creed and exclamation our own, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God."