harvest sown by a chance interview of Jesus with this woman. In the
eighth of Acts we read of the ingathering of a church in a city of
Samaria, where it is said that "the people, with one accord, gave
heed to the things spoken by Philip, and there was great joy in that
city."
One thing in this story impresses us strongly,--the power which
Jesus had to touch the divinest capabilities in the unlikeliest
subjects. He struck at once and directly for what was highest and
noblest in souls where it lay most hidden. As physician of souls he
appealed directly to the vital moral force, and it acted under his
touch. He saw the higher nature in this woman, and as one might draw
a magnet over a heap of rubbish and bring out pure metal, so he from
this careless, light-minded, good-natured, unprincipled creature,
brought out the suppressed and hidden yearning for a better and
higher life. She had no prejudices to keep, no station to preserve;
she was even to her own low moral sense consciously a sinner, and
she was ready at the kind and powerful appeal to leave all and
follow him.
We have no further history of her. She is living now somewhere; but
wherever she may be, we may be quite sure she never has forgotten
the conversation at the well in Samaria, and the man who "told her
all that ever she did."
[Illustration: MARY MAGDALENE]
MARY MAGDALENE.
One of the most splendid ornaments of the Dresden Gallery is the
Magdalen of Batoni. The subject has been a favorite among artists,
and one sees, in a tour of the various collections of Europe,
Magdalens by every painter, in every conceivable style. By far the
greater part of them deal only with the material aspects of the
subject. The exquisite pathos of the story, the passionate anguish
and despair of the penitent, the refinement and dignity of Divine
tenderness, are often lost sight of in mere physical accessories.
Many artists seem to have seen in the subject only a chance to
paint a voluptuously beautiful woman in tears. Titian appears
to have felt in this wonderful story nothing but the beauty of
the woman's _hair_, and gives us a picture of the most glorious
tresses that heart could conceive, perfectly veiling and clothing a
very common-place weeping woman. Correggio made of the study only
a charming effect of light and shade and color. A fat, pretty,
comfortable little body lying on the ground reading, is about the
whole that he sees in the subject.
Batoni, on the contrary, seems, by some strange inspiration, to set
before us one of the highest, noblest class of women,--a creature
so calm, so high, so pure, that we ask involuntarily, How could
such a woman ever have fallen? The answer is ready. There is a
class of women who fall through what is highest in them, through
the noblest capability of a human being,--utter self-sacrificing
love. True, we cannot flatter ourselves that these instances are
universal, but they do exist. Many women fall through the weakness
of self-indulgent passion, many from love of luxury, many from
vanity and pride, too many from the mere coercion of hard necessity;
but among the sad, unblest crowd there is a class who are the
victims of sovereign power to forgive sins and dispense favors.
The repentant Magdalene became henceforth one of the characteristic
figures in the history of the Christian Church. Mary Magdalene
became eventually a prominent figure in the mythic legends of
the mediæval mythology. A long history of missionary labors and
enthusiastic preaching of the gospel in distant regions of the earth
is ascribed to her. Churches arose that bore her name, hymns were
addressed to her. Even the reforming Savonarola addresses one of
his spiritual canticles to St. Mary Magdalene. The various pictures
of her which occur in every part of Europe are a proof of the
interest which these legends inspired. The most of them are wild and
poetic, and exhibit a striking contrast to the concise brevity and
simplicity of the New Testament story.
The mythic legends make up a romance in which Mary the sister of
Martha and Mary Magdalene the sinner are oddly considered as the
same person. It is sufficient to read the chapter in St. John which
gives an account of the raising of Lazarus, to perceive that such a
confusion is absurd. Mary and Martha there appear as belonging to
a family in good standing, to which many flocked with expressions
of condolence and respect in time of affliction. And afterwards,
in that grateful feast made for the restoration of their brother,
we read that so many flocked to the house that the jealousy of
the chief priests was excited. All these incidents, representing
a family of respectability, are entirely inconsistent with any
such supposition. But while we repudiate this extravagance of
the tradition, there does seem ground for identifying the Mary
Magdalene, who was one of the most devoted followers of our Lord,
with the forgiven sinner of this narrative. We read of a company
of women who followed Jesus and ministered to him. In the eighth
chapter of Luke he is said to be accompanied by "certain women
which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities," among whom
is mentioned "Mary called Magdalene," as having been a victim of
demoniacal possession. Some women of rank and fortune also are
mentioned as members of the same company: "Joanna the wife of Chusa,
Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered to him
of their substance." A modern commentator thinks it improbable that
Mary Magdalene could be identified with the "sinner" spoken of by
St. Luke, because women of standing like Joanna and Susanna would
not have received one of her class to their company. We ask why
not? If Jesus had received her, had forgiven and saved her; if _he_
acknowledged previously her grateful ministrations,--is it likely
that they would reject her? It was the very peculiarity and glory
of the new kingdom that it had a better future for sinners, and for
sinful woman as well as sinful man. Jesus did not hesitate to say
to the proud and prejudiced religious aristocracy of his day, "The
publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you." We
cannot doubt that the loving Christian women who ministered to Jesus
received this penitent sister as a soul absolved and purified by the
sovereign word of their Lord, and henceforth there was for her a
full scope for that ardent, self-devoting power of her nature which
had been her ruin, and was now to become her salvation.
Some commentators seem to think that the dreadful demoniacal
possession which was spoken of in Mary Magdalene proves her not to
have been identical with the woman of St. Luke. But on the contrary,
it would seem exactly to account for actions of a strange and
unaccountable wickedness, for a notoriety in crime that went far to
lead the Pharisees to feel that her very touch was pollution. The
story is symbolic of what is too often seen in the fall of woman. A
noble and beautiful nature wrecked through inconsiderate prodigality
of love, deceived, betrayed, ruined, often drifts like a shipwrecked
bark into the power of evil spirits. Rage, despair, revenge,
cruelty, take possession of the crushed ruin that should have been
the home of the sweetest affections. We are not told when or where
the healing word was spoken that drove the cruel fiends from Mary's
soul. Perhaps before she entered the halls of the Pharisee, while
listening to the preaching of Jesus, the madness and despair had
left her. We can believe that in his higher moods virtue went from
him, and there was around him a holy and cleansing atmosphere from
which all evil fled away,--a serene and healing purity which calmed
the throbbing fever of passion and gave the soul once more the image
of its better self.
We see in the manner in which Mary found her way to the feet of
Jesus the directness and vehemence, the uncalculating self-sacrifice
and self-abandon, of one of those natures which, when they move,
move with a rush of undivided impulse; which, when they love, trust
all, believe all, and are ready to sacrifice all. As once she had
lost herself in this self-abandonment, so now at the feet of her God
she gains all by the same power of self-surrender.
We do not meet Mary Magdalene again till we find her at the foot
of the cross, sharing the last anguish of our Lord and his mother.
We find her watching the sepulcher, preparing sweet spices for
embalming. In the dim gray of the resurrection morning she is there
again, only to find the sepulcher open and the beloved form gone.
Everything in this last scene is in consistency with the idea of
the passionate self-devotion of a nature whose sole life is in its
love. The disciples, when they found not the body, went away; but
Mary stood without at the sepulcher weeping, and as she wept she
stooped down and looked into the sepulcher. The angels said to her,
"Woman, why weepest thou? She answered, Because they have taken away
my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." She then turns
and sees through her tears dimly the form of a man standing there.
"Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?
She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou
have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will
go and take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary! She turned herself
and said unto him, Rabboni,--Master!"
In all this we see the characteristic devotion and energy of her who
loved much because she was forgiven much. It was the peculiarity
of Jesus that he saw the precious capability of every nature, even
in the very dust of defilement. The power of devoted love is the
crown-jewel of the soul, and Jesus had the eye to see where it
lay trampled in the mire, and the strong hand to bring it forth
purified and brightened. It is the deepest malignity of Satan to
degrade and ruin souls through love. It is the glory of Christ,
through love, to redeem and restore.
In the history of Christ as a teacher, it is remarkable, that, while
he was an object of enthusiastic devotion to so many women, while
a band of them followed his preaching and ministered to his wants
and those of his disciples, yet there was about him something so
entirely unworldly, so sacredly high and pure, that even the very
suggestion of scandal in this regard is not to be found in the
bitterest vituperations of his enemies of the first two centuries.
If we compare Jesus with Socrates, the moral teacher most frequently
spoken of as approaching him, we shall see a wonderful contrast.
Socrates associated with courtesans, without passion and without
reproof, in a spirit of half-sarcastic, philosophic tolerance. No
quickening of the soul of woman, no call to a higher life, came from
him. Jesus is stern and grave in his teachings of personal purity,
severe in his requirements. He was as intolerant to sin as he was
merciful to penitence. He did not extenuate the sins he forgave.
He declared the sins of Mary to be _many_, in the same breath that
he pronounced her pardon. He said to the adulterous woman whom he
protected, "Go, sin no more." The penitents who joined the company
of his disciples were so raised above their former selves, that,
instead of being the shame, they were the glory of the new kingdom.
St. Paul says to the first Christians, speaking of the adulterous
and impure, "Such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are
sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and
by the Spirit of God."
The tradition of the Church that Mary Magdalene was an enthusiastic
preacher of Jesus seems in keeping with all we know of the strength
and fervor of her character. Such love must find expression, and
we are told that when the first persecution scattered the little
church at Jerusalem, "they that were scattered went everywhere,
preaching the word." Some of the most effective preaching of
Christ is that of those who testify in their own person of a great
salvation. "He can save to the uttermost, for he has saved ME," is
a testimony that often goes more straight to the heart than all the
arguments of learning. Christianity had this peculiarity over all
other systems, that it not only forgave the past, but made of its
bitter experiences a healing medicine; so that those who had sinned
deepest might have therefrom a greater redeeming power. "When thou
art converted, strengthen thy brethren," was the watchword of the
penitent.
The wonderful mind of Goethe has seized upon and embodied this
peculiarity of Christianity in his great poem of Faust. The first
part shows the Devil making of the sweetest and noblest affection of
the confiding Margaret a cruel poison to corrupt both body and soul.
We see her driven to crime, remorse, shame, despair,--all human
forms and forces of society united to condemn her, when with a last
cry she stretches her poor hands to heaven and says, "Judgment of
God, I commend myself to you"; and then falls a voice from heaven,
"She is judged; she is saved."
In the second part we see the world-worn, weary Faust passing
through the classic mythology, vainly seeking rest and finding
none; he seeks rest in a life of benevolence to man, but fiends
of darkness conflict with his best aspirations, and dog his steps
through life, and in his dying hour gather round to seize his soul
and carry it to perdition. But around him is a shining band. Mary
the mother of Jesus, with a company of purified penitents, encircle
him, and his soul passes, in infantine weakness, to the guardian
arms of Margaret,--once a lost and ruined woman, now a strong and
pitiful angel,--who, like a tender mother, leads the new-born soul
to look upon the glories of heaven, while angel-voices sing of the
victory of good over evil:--
"All that is transient
Is but a parable;
The unattainable
Here is made real.
The indescribable
Here is accomplished;
The eternal womanly
Draws us upward and onward."
[Illustration: MARTHA AND MARY]
MARTHA AND MARY.
The dramatic power of the brief Bible narratives is one of their
most wonderful characteristics. By a few incidents, a word here and
there, they create a vivid image of a personality that afterwards
never dies from our memory. The women of Shakespeare have been set
upon the stage with all the accessories of dress, scenery, and the
interpreting power of fine acting, and yet the vividness of their
personality has not been equal to that of the women of the Bible.
Mary and Martha, the two sisters of Bethany, have had for ages a
name and a living power in the Church. Thousands of hearts have
throbbed with theirs; thousands have wept sympathetic tears in their
sorrows and rejoiced in their joy. By a few simple touches in the
narrative they are so delicately and justly discriminated that they
stand for the representatives of two distinct classes. Some of the
ancient Christian writers considered them as types of the active
and the contemplative aspects of religion. Martha is viewed as
the secular Christian, serving God in and through the channels of
worldly business, and Mary as the more peculiarly religious person,
devoted to a life of holy meditation and the researches of heavenly
truth. The two were equally the friends of Jesus. Apparently, the
two sisters with one brother were an orphan family, united by the
strongest mutual affection, and affording a circle peculiarly
congenial to the Master.
They inhabited a rural home just outside of Jerusalem; and it seems
that here, after the labors of a day spent in teaching in the
city, our Lord found at evening a home-like retreat where he could
enjoy perfect quiet and perfect love. It would seem, from many
touches in the Gospel narrative, as if Jesus, amid the labors and
applauses and successes of a public life, yearned for privacy and
domesticity,--for that home love which he persistently renounced, to
give himself wholly to mankind. There is a shade of pathos in his
answer to one who proposed to be his disciple and dwell with him:
"Foxes have holes; the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of
Man hath not where to lay his head." This little orphan circle, with
their quiet home, were thus especially dear to him, and it appears
that this was his refuge during that last week of his life, when he
knew that every day was bringing him nearer to the final anguish.
It is wonderful how sharply and truly, in a narrative so brief,
the characters of Martha and Mary are individualized. Martha, in
her Judæan dress and surroundings, is, after all, exactly such a
good woman as is often seen in our modern life,--a woman primarily
endowed with the faculties necessary for getting on in the
world, yet sincerely religious. She is energetic, business-like,
matter-of-fact, strictly orthodox, and always ready for every
emergency. She lives in the present life strongly and intensely, and
her religion exhibits itself through regular forms and agencies.
She believes in the future life orthodoxly, and is always prompt
to confess its superior importance as a matter of doctrine, though
prone to make material things the first in practice. Many such
women there are in the high places of the Christian Church, and
much good they do. They manage fairs, they dress churches, they
get up religious festivals, their names are on committees, they
are known at celebrations. They rule their own homes with activity
and diligence, and they are justly honored by all who know them.
Now, nothing is more remarkable in the history of Jesus than the
catholicity of his appreciation of character. He never found fault
with natural organization, or expected all people to be of one
pattern. He did not break with Thomas for being naturally a cautious
doubter, or Peter for being a precipitate believer; and it is
specially recorded in the history of this family that Jesus loved
Martha. He understood her, he appreciated her worth, and he loved
her.
In Mary we see the type of those deeper and more sensitive natures
who ever aspire above and beyond the material and temporal to the
eternal and divine; souls that are seeking and inquiring with a
restlessness that no earthly thing can satisfy, who can find no
peace until they find it in union with God.
In St. Luke we have a record of the manner in which the first
acquaintance with this family was formed. This historian says:
"A woman named Martha received him at her house." Evidently the
decisive and salient power of her nature caused her to be regarded
as mistress of the family. There was a grown-up brother in the
family; but this house is not called the house of Lazarus, but the
house of Martha,--a form of speaking the more remarkable from the
great superiority or leadership which ancient customs awarded to the
male sex. But Martha was one of those natural leaders whom everybody
instinctively thinks of as the head of any house they may happen to
belong to. Her tone toward Mary is authoritative. The Mary-nature
is a nature apt to appear to disadvantage in physical things. It
is often puzzled, and unskilled, and unready in the details and
emergencies of a life like ours, which so little meets its deepest
feelings and most importunate wants. It acquires skill in earthly
things only as a matter of discipline and conscience, but is always
yearning above them to something higher and divine. A delicacy
of moral nature suggests to such a person a thousand scruples
of conscientious inquiry in every turn of life, which embarrass
directness of action. To the Martha-nature, practical, direct, and
prosaic, all these doubts, scruples, hesitations, and unreadinesses
appear only as pitiable weaknesses.
Again, Martha's nature attaches a vast importance to many things
which, in the view of Mary, are so fleeting and perishable, and have
so little to do with the deeper immortal wants of the soul, that it
is difficult for her even to remember and keep them in sight. The
requirements of etiquette, the changes and details of fashion, the
thousand particulars which pertain to keeping up a certain footing
in society and a certain position in the world,--all these Martha
has at her fingers' ends. They are the breath of her nostrils, while
Mary is always forgetting, overlooking, and transgressing them.
Many a Mary has escaped into a convent, or joined a sisterhood, or
worn the plain dress of the Quaker, in order that she might escape
from the exaction of the Marthas of her day, "careful [or, more
literally, _full of care_] and troubled about many things."
It appears that in her way Martha was a religious woman, a sincere
member of the Jewish Church, and an intense believer. The preaching
of Christ was the great religious phenomenon of the times, and
Martha, Mary, and Lazarus joined the crowd who witnessed his
miracles and listened to his words. Both women accepted his message
and believed his Messiahship,--Martha, from the witness of his
splendid miracles; Mary, from the deep accord of her heart with
the wonderful words he had uttered. To Martha he was the King that
should reign in splendor at Jerusalem, and raise their nation to an
untold height of glory; to Mary he was the answer to the eternal
question,--the Way, the Truth, the Life, for which she had been
always longing.
Among many who urge and press hospitality, Martha's invitation
prevails. A proud home is that, when Jesus follows her,--her prize,
her captive. The woman in our day who has captured in her net of
hospitalities the orator, the poet, the warrior,--the star of all
eyes, the central point of all curiosity, desire, and regard,--can
best appreciate Martha's joy. She will make an entertainment
that will do credit to the occasion. She revolves prodigies of
hospitality. She invites guests to whom her acquisition shall
be duly exhibited, and all is hurry, bustle, and commotion. But
Mary follows him, silent, with a fluttering heart. His teaching
has aroused the divine longing, the immortal pain, to a throbbing
intensity; a sweet presentiment fills her soul, that she is near One
through whom the way into the Holiest is open, and now is the hour.
She neither hears nor sees the bustle of preparation; but apart,
where the Master has seated himself, she sits down at his feet, and
her eyes, more than her voice, address to him that question and
that prayer which are _the_ question and the _one great reality_ of
all this fleeting, mortal life.
The question is answered; the prayer is granted. At his feet she
becomes spiritually clairvoyant. The way to God becomes clear and
open. Her soul springs toward the light; is embraced by the peace of
God, that passeth understanding. It is a soul-crisis, and the Master
sees that in that hour his breath has unfolded into blossom buds
that had been struggling in darkness. Mary has received in her bosom
the "white stone with the new name, which no man knoweth save him
that receiveth it," and of which Jesus only is the giver. As Master
and disciple sit in that calm and sweet accord, in which giver and
receiver are alike blessed, suddenly Martha appears and breaks into
the interview, in a characteristically imperative sentence: "Lord,
dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid
her, therefore, that she help me."
Nothing could more energetically indicate Martha's character than
this sentence. It shows her blunt sincerity, her conscientious,
matter-of-fact worldliness, and her dictatorial positiveness.
Evidently, here is a person accustomed to having her own way and
bearing down all about her; a person who believes in herself without
a doubt, and is so positive that her way is the only right one that
she cannot but be amazed that the Master has not at once seen as
she does. To be sure, this is in her view the Christ, the Son of
God, the King of Israel, the human being whom in her deepest heart
she reverences; but no matter, she is so positive that she is right
that she does not hesitate to say her say, and make her complaint
of him as well as of her sister. People like Martha often arraign
and question the very Providence of God itself when it stands in
the way of their own plans. Martha is sure of her ground. Here is
the Messiah, the King of Israel, at her house, and she is getting
up an entertainment worthy of him, slaving herself to death for
him, and he takes no notice, and most inconsiderately allows her
dreamy sister to sit listening to him, instead of joining in the
preparation.