"Loose him, and let him go," were the clarion words of Christ Jesus at the sepulcher of Lazarus. We read in the eleventh chapter of John that, before those commanding words were spoken, "he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin." The question arises, If Christ Jesus could raise the dead who had so long lain in the tomb of mortal belief, why did he not set him wholly free to begin with? Why was Lazarus bound hand and foot with graveclothes? Was it because of the belief of the people, who were bound so firmly in their belief of death, wrapped around and around with the graveclothes of their thought of his mortality that, until they should see and acknowledge the freedom of the risen man, he did not appear free to their belief? His release from the graveclothes was likewise the healing of the mortal belief of the people in his death.
Like Thomas, they must have proof, and Christ Jesus gave it to them. When they saw the dead rise, their belief of death changed to one of life. Before this, the belief had been slowly, almost imperceptibly yielding, perhaps, for in the forty-first verse we read, "Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid." The stone—the obstacle of their unbelief—was rolled away, and their hearts were partially prepared for what followed, so that when the command came, "Loose him, and let him go," they obeyed. But the "loosing" was much more than merely unwrapping the swaddling garments of the grave; it was the great and mighty freeing of the mentality from the belief of death. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 75), "Had Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have resuscitated it."
His own and the belief of others that life was material and subject to death had "buried" Lazarus, in more than one sense of the word, until he seemed entirely "buried" by mortal belief in death.
