the watering-pots with water, and performs the desired miracle.
We cannot enter into the secret sanctuary of that divine mind,
nor know exactly what Jesus meant by saying "Mine hour is not yet
come"; it was a phrase of frequent occurrence with him when asked
to take steps in his life. Probably it was some inward voice or
call by which he felt the Divine will moving with his own, and he
waited after the suggestion of Mary till this became clear to him.
What he might not do from partial affection, he might do at the
Divine motion, as sanctioning that holy state of marriage which the
Jewish law had done so much to make sacred. The first miracle of the
Christian dispensation was wrought in honor of the family state,
which the Mosaic dispensation had done so much to establish and
confirm.
The trials of Mary as a mother were still further complicated by the
unbelief of her other children in the divine mission of Jesus. His
brethren had the usual worldly view of who and what the Messiah was
to be. He was to come as a conquering king, with pomp of armies, and
reign in Jerusalem. This silent, prayerful brother of theirs, who
has done nothing but work at his trade, wander in the wilderness
and pray and preach, even though gifted with miraculous power, does
not seem in the least to them like a king and conqueror. He may be
a prophet, but as the great Messiah they cannot believe in him.
They fear, in fact, that he is losing his senses in wild, fanatical
expectation.
We have a scene given by St. John where his brethren urge him, if
he is the Messiah and has divine power, to go up to Jerusalem and
make a show of it at once. The feast of tabernacles is at hand,
and his brethren say to him, "Depart hence and go into Judæa, that
thy disciples may see the works that thou doest. If thou do these
things, _show thyself to the world_. For neither did his brethren
believe on him. Then said Jesus, My time is not yet come; but your
time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but me it hateth
because I testify of it that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up to
this feast. I go not up yet, for my time is not yet full come."
To the practical worldly eye, Jesus was wasting his time and
energies. If he was to set up a kingdom, why not go to Jerusalem,
work splendid miracles, enlist the chief-priests and scribes, rouse
the national spirit, unfurl the standard, and conquer? Instead of
that he begins his ministry by choosing two or three poor men as
disciples, and going on foot from village to village preaching
repentance. He is simply doing the work of a home missionary. True,
there come reports of splendid miracles, but they are wrought in
obscure places among very poor people, and apparently with no motive
but the impulse of compassion and love to the suffering. Then he
is exhausting himself in labors, he is thronged by the crowds of
the poor and sorrowful, till he has no time so much as to eat. His
brethren, taking the strong, coarse, worldly view of the matter,
think he is destroying himself, and that he ought to be taken home
by his friends with friendly violence till he recover the balance
of his mind; as it is said by one Evangelist, "They went out to
lay hands on him, for they said, He is beside himself." Thus the
prophecy is fulfilling: he is a sign that is spoken against; the
thoughts of many hearts are being revealed through him, and the
sword is piercing deeper and deeper every day into the heart of his
mother. Her heart of heart is touched,--in this son is her life; she
is filled with anxiety, she longs to go to him,--they need not lay
hands on him; _she_ will speak to him,--he who always loved her
voice, and for so many years has been subject to her, will surely
come back with _her_. In this hour of her life Mary is the type
of the trial through which all mothers must pass at the time when
they are called on to resign a son to his destiny in the world, and
to feel that he is theirs no more; that henceforth he belongs to
another life, other duties and affections, than theirs. Without this
experience of sorrow Mary would have been less dear to the heart of
mortal woman and mother.
Jesus, meanwhile, is surrounded by an eager crowd to whom he is
teaching the way to God. He is in that current of joy above all joy
where he can see the new immortal life springing up under his touch;
he feels in himself the ecstasy of that spiritual vigor which he is
awakening in all around him; he is comforting the mourner, opening
the eyes of the spiritually blind, and lighting the fire of heavenly
love in cold and comfortless hearts. Love without bounds, the love
of the shepherd and bishop of souls, flows from him to the poor whom
he is enriching. The ecstatic moment is interrupted by a message:
"Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with
thee." With a burst of heavenly love he spreads his arms towards the
souls whom he is guiding, and says, "Who is my mother and who are
my brethren? My mother and my brethren are _these_ that hear the
Word of God and do it; for whosoever will do the will of my Father
in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother." As well
attempt to imprison the light of the joyous sun in one dwelling as
to bound the infinite love of Jesus by one family!
There was an undoubted purpose in the record of these two places
where Jesus so positively declares that he had risen to a sphere
with which his maternal relations had nothing to do. They were set
as a warning and a protest, in advance, against that idolatry of the
woman and mother the advent of which he must have foreseen.
In the same manner we learn that, while he was teaching, a woman
cried out in enthusiasm, "Blessed be the womb that bore thee, and
the paps that thou hast sucked." But he answered, "Yea, rather,
blessed are they that hear the Word of God and do it." In the same
grave spirit of serious admonition he checked the delight of his
disciples when they exulted in miraculous gifts. "Lord, even the
devils were subject unto us." "Rejoice not that the devils are
subject to you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in
heaven."
Undoubtedly an hour was found to console and quiet the fears of his
mother so far as in the nature of the case they could be consoled.
But the radical difficulty, with her as with his own disciples, lay
in the fixed and rooted idea of the temporal Messianic kingdom.
There was an awful depth of sorrow before them, to which every
day was bringing them nearer. It was pathetic to see how Jesus
was moving daily among friends that he loved and to whom he
knew that his career was to be one of the bitterest anguish and
disappointment. He tried in the plainest words to tell them the
scenes of his forthcoming trial, rejection, suffering, death, and
resurrection,--words so plain that we wonder any one could hear them
and not understand,--and yet it is written, "They understood not his
saying. They questioned one with another what the rising from the
dead should mean." They discussed offices and stations in the new
kingdom, and contended who should be greatest. When the mother of
James and John asked the place of honor for her sons, he looked at
her with a pathetic patience.
"Ye know not what ye ask. Can ye drink of the cup that I shall
drink? Can ye be baptized with my baptism? They said, We are able."
He answered, with the scenes of the cross in view, "Ye shall,
indeed, drink of the cup I shall drink, and be baptized with my
baptism; but to sit on my right hand and my left is not mine to
give. It shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my
Father."
We see no more of Mary till we meet her again standing with the
beloved John at the foot of the cross. The supreme hour is come; the
sword has gone to the depths! All that she hoped is blasted, and
all that she feared is come! In this hour, when faith and hope were
both darkened, Mary stood by the power of love. _She stood by the
cross!_ The words are characteristic and wonderful. We see still the
same intense, outwardly collected woman who met the salutation of
the angel with calm inquiry, and accepted glory and danger with such
self-surrender,--silent, firm, sustained in her anguish as in her
joy! After years of waiting and hope deferred, after such glorious
miracles, such mighty deeds and words, such evident tokens of God's
approval, she sees her son forsaken by God and man. To hers as to no
other mortal ears must have sounded that death-cry, "My God, my God,
why hast _thou_ forsaken me?"
But through all, Mary _stood_; she did not faint or fall,--she was
resolved to drink of HIS cup to the last bitter dregs. Though the
whole world turn against him, though God himself seems to forsake
him, she will stand by him, she will love him, she will adore him
till death, and after, and forever!
The dying words of Jesus have been collected and arranged by the
Church in a rosary,--pearls brought up from the depths of a profound
agony, and of precious value in all sorrow. Of those seven last
words it is remarkable what a proportion were words for other than
himself. The first sharp pang of torture wrung from him the prayer,
"Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." The second word
was of pardon and comfort to the penitent thief. The third the
commendation of his mother to his beloved friend.
If any mortal creature might be said to have entered into the
sufferings of the great atonement with Jesus, it was his mother in
those last hours. Never has sorrow presented itself in a form so
venerable. Here is a depth of anguish which inspires awe as well
as tenderness. The magnificent "Stabat Mater," in which the Church
commemorates Mary's agony, is an outburst with which no feeling
heart can refuse sympathy. We rejoice when again we meet her, after
the resurrection, in the company of all the faithful, waiting to
receive that promised illumination of the Holy Spirit which solved
every mystery and made every doubt clear.
In all this history we see the picture of a woman belonging to that
rare and beautiful class who approach the nearest to our ideal of
angelic excellence. We see a woman in whom the genius and fire of
the poet and prophetess is tempered by a calm and equable balance
of the intellect; a woman not only to feel deeply, but to examine
calmly and come to just results, and to act with energy befitting
every occasion. Hers are the powers which might, in the providence
of God, have had a public mission, but they are all concentrated in
the nobler, yet secret mission of the mother. She lived and acted
in her son, not in herself. There seems to be evidence that both
Jesus and his mother had that constitutional delicacy and refinement
that made solitude and privacy peculiarly dear, and the hurry and
bustle and inevitable vulgarities of a public career a trial. Mary
never seems to have sought to present herself as a public teacher;
and in the one instance when she sought her son in public, it was
from the tremulous anxiety of a mother's affection rather than the
self-assertion of a mother's pride. In short, Mary is presented to
us as the mother, and the mother alone, seeking no other sphere.
Like a true mother she passed out of self into her son, and the life
that she lived was in him; and in this sacred self-abnegation she
must forever remain, the one ideal type of perfect motherhood.
This entire absence of self-seeking and self-assertion is the
crowning perfection of Mary's character. The steadiness, the silent
reticence, with which she held herself subject to God's will,
waiting calmly on his Providence, never by a hasty word or an
imprudent action marring the divine order or seeking to place self
in the foreground, is an example which we may all take reverently to
our own bosoms.
We may not adore, but we may love her. She herself would not that
we turn from her Son to invoke her; but we may tenderly rejoice in
the feeling so common in the primitive Church, that in drawing near
to Jesus we draw near to all the holy who were dear to him, and so
to her, the most blessed among women. We long to know more of this
hidden life of Mary on earth, but it is a comfort to remember that
these splendid souls with whom the Bible makes us acquainted are
neither dead nor lost. If we "hear the Word of God and do it," we
may hope some day to rise to the world where we shall find them, and
ask of them all those untold things which our hearts yearn to know.
[Illustration: THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS]
THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.
In the great drama of the history of Jesus many subordinate figures
move across the stage, indicated with more or less power by the
unconscious and artless simplicity of the narrative. Among these
is the daughter of Herodias, whose story has often been a favorite
subject among artists as giving an opportunity of painting female
beauty and fascination in affinity with the deepest and most
dreadful tragedy.
Salome was the daughter of Herodias, who was a woman of unbridled
passions and corrupt will. This Herodias had eloped from her husband
Philip, son of Herod the Great, to marry her step-uncle, Herod
Antipas, who forsook for her his lawful wife, the daughter of the
king of Arabia. Herod appears in the story of the Gospels as a man
with just enough conscience and aspiration after good to keep him
always uneasy, but not enough to restrain from evil.
When the ministry of John powerfully excited the public mind, we are
told by St. Mark that "Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just
man and holy, and he observed him, and when he heard him he did many
things and heard him gladly."
The Jewish religion strongly cultivated conscience and a belief
in the rewards and punishments of a future life, and the style of
John's preaching was awful and monitory. "Behold the axe is laid
at the root of the tree, and whatsoever tree doth not bring forth
good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire." There was
no indulgence for royal trees; no concession to the divine right
of kings to do evil. John was a prophet in the spirit and power of
Elijah; he dwelt in the desert, he despised the power and splendor
of courts, and appeared before kings as God's messenger, to declare
his will and pronounce sentence of wrath on the disobedient. So
without scruple he denounced the adulterous connection of his royal
hearer, and demanded that Herod should put away the guilty woman as
the only condition of salvation. Herod replied, as kings have been
in the habit of replying to such inconvenient personal application
of God's laws: he shut John up in prison. It is said in St. Mark
that Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have killed him,
but she could not. The intensity of a woman's hatred looks out
through this chink of the story as the secret exciting power to the
man's slower passions. She would have had him killed had she been
able to have her way; she can only compass his imprisonment for the
present, and she trusts to female importunities and blandishments to
finish the vengeance. The hour of opportunity comes. We are told in
the record: "And when a convenient day came, Herod on his birthday
made a supper to his lords and high captains and chief estates of
Galilee."
One of the entertainments of the evening was the wonderful dancing
of Salome, the daughter of his paramour. We have heard in the annals
of the modern theatre into what inconsiderate transports of rapture
crowned heads and chief captains and mighty men of valor have been
thrown by the dancing of some enthroned queen of the ballet; and one
does not feel it incredible, therefore, that Herod, who appeared to
be nervously susceptible to all kinds of influences, said to the
enchantress, "Ask me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee;
and he sware unto her after the pattern of Ahasuerus to Esther,
saying, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me I will give it thee, to the
half of my kingdom." And now the royal tigress, who has arranged
this snare and watched the king's entrance into the toils, prepares
to draw the noose. Salome goes to her mother and says, "What shall I
ask?" The answer is ready. Herodias said, with perfect explicitness,
"Ask for the head of John the Baptist." So the graceful creature
trips back into the glittering court circle, and, bowing her
flower-like head, says in the sweetest tones, "Give me here John the
Baptist's head in a charger."
The narrative says very artlessly, "And the king was sorry, but
for his oath's sake, and for the sake of them that sat with him at
meat, he would not refuse her, and immediately the king sent an
executioner and commanded his head to be brought, and he went and
beheaded him in prison!"
What wonderful contrasted types of womanhood the Gospel history
gives! We see such august and noble forms as Elisabeth, the mother
of the Baptist, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, alongside of this
haughty royal adulteress and her beautiful daughter. The good were
the lower, and the bad the higher class of that day. Vice was
enthroned and triumphant, while virtue walked obscure by hedges and
byways; a dancing girl had power to take away the noblest life in
Judæa, next to that which was afterward taken on Calvary.
No throb of remorse that we know of ever visited these women, but of
Herod we are told that when afterwards he heard of the preaching and
mighty works of Jesus, he said, "It is John the Baptist that I slew.
He is risen from the dead, therefore mighty works do show forth
themselves in him."
In the last scenes of our Lord's life we meet again this credulous,
superstitious, bad man. Pilate, embarrassed by a prisoner who
alarmed his fears and whom he was troubled to dispose of, sent Jesus
to Herod. Thus we see the licentious tool and slave of a bad woman
has successively before his judgment-seat the two greatest men of
his age and of all ages. It is said Herod received Jesus gladly,
for he had a long time been desirous to see him, for he hoped some
miracle would be done by him. But he was precisely of the class of
whom our Lord spoke when he said, "An adulterous generation seeketh
a sign, and there shall no sign be given them." God has no answer to
give to wicked, unrepentant curiosity, and though Herod questioned
Jesus in many words he answered him nothing. Then we are told,
"Herod with his men of war set Jesus at naught, and mocked him, and
arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate." And
this was how the great ones of the earth received their Lord.
[Illustration: THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA]
THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA.
We are struck, in the history of our Lord, with the _unworldliness_
of his manner of living his daily life and fulfilling his great
commission. It is emphatically true, in the history of Jesus, that
his ways are not as our ways, and his thoughts as our thoughts.
He did not choose the disciples of his first ministry as worldly
wisdom would have chosen them. Though men of good and honest hearts,
they were neither the most cultured nor the most influential of his
nation. We should have said that men of the standing of Joseph of
Arimathea or Nicodemus were preferable, other things being equal, to
Peter the fisherman or Matthew the tax-gatherer; but Jesus thought
otherwise.
And furthermore, he sometimes selected those apparently most
unlikely to further his ends. Thus, when he had a mission of mercy
in view for Samaria, he called to the work a woman; not such as we
should suppose a divine teacher would choose,--not a pre-eminently
intellectual or a very good woman,--but, on the contrary, one of
a careless life and loose morals and little culture. The history
of this person, of the way in which he sought her acquaintance,
arrested her attention, gained access to her heart, and made of
her a missionary to draw the attention of her people to him, is
wonderfully given by St. John. We have the image of a woman--such
as many are, social, good-humored, talkative, and utterly without
any high moral sense--approaching the well, where she sees this
weary Jew reclining to rest himself. He introduces himself to her
acquaintance by asking a favor,--the readiest way to open the heart
of a woman of that class. She is evidently surprised that he will
speak to her, being a Jew, and she a daughter of a despised and
hated race. "How is it," she says, "that thou, a Jew, askest drink
of me, a woman of Samaria?" Jesus now answers her in that symbolic
and poetic strain which was familiar with him: "If thou knewest
the gift of God, and who this is that asketh drink of thee, thou
wouldst ask of him, and he would give thee living water." The woman
sees in this only the occasion for a lively rejoinder. "Sir, thou
hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; from whence then
hast thou that living water?" With that same mysterious air, as if
speaking unconsciously from out some higher sphere, he answers,
"Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever
shall drink of the water that I shall give, shall never thirst.
The water that I shall give shall be a well in him springing up to
everlasting life."
Impressed strangely by the words of the mysterious stranger, she
answers confusedly, "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not,
neither come hither to draw." There is a feeble attempt at a jest
struggling with the awe which is growing upon her. Jesus now touches
the vital spot in her life. "Go, call thy husband and come hither."
She said, "I have no husband." He answers, "Well hast thou said I
have no husband; thou hast had five husbands, and he thou now hast
is not thy husband; in that saidst thou truly."
The stern, grave chastity of the Jew, his reverence for marriage,
strike coldly on the light-minded woman accustomed to the easy
tolerance of a low state of society. She is abashed, and hastily
seeks to change the subject: "Sir, I see thou art a prophet"; and
then she introduces the controverted point of the two liturgies and
temples of Samaria and Jerusalem,--not the first nor the last was
she of those who seek relief from conscience by discussing doctrinal
dogmas. Then, to our astonishment, Jesus proceeds to declare to
this woman of light mind and loose morality the sublime doctrines
of spiritual worship, to predict the new era which is dawning on
the world: "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when neither in this
mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. The hour
cometh and now is when the true worshiper shall worship the Father
in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship
him. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him
in spirit and in truth." Then, in a sort of confused awe at his
earnestness, the woman says, "I know that Messiah shall come, and
when he is come he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I
that speak unto thee am he."
At this moment the disciples returned. With their national
prejudices, it was very astonishing, as they drew nigh, to see that
their master was in close and earnest conversation with a Samaritan
woman. Nevertheless, when the higher and godlike in Jesus was in
a state of incandescence, the light and fire were such as to awe
them. They saw that he was in an exalted mood, which they dared not
question. All the infinite love of the Saviour, the shepherd of
souls, was awaking within him; the soul whom he has inspired with a
new and holy calling is leaving him on a mission that is to bring
crowds to his love. The disciples pray him to eat, but he is no
longer hungry, no longer thirsty, no longer weary; he exults in the
gifts that he is ready to give, and the hearts that are opening to
receive.
The disciples pray him, "Master, eat." He said, "I have meat to eat
that ye know not of." They question in an undertone, "Hath any one
brought him aught to eat?" He answers, "My meat and my drink is to
do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish his work." Then,
pointing towards the city, he speaks impassioned words of a harvest
which is at hand; and they wonder.
But meanwhile the woman, with the eagerness and bright, social
readiness which characterize her, is calling to her townsmen, "Come,
see a man that told me all that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?"
What followed on this? A crowd press out to see the wonder. Jesus
is invited as an honored guest; he spends two days in the city, and
gathers a band of disciples.