There was one woman whom the voice of a divine Messenger, straight
from heaven, pronounced highly favored. In what did this favor
consist?
Of noble birth, of even royal lineage, she had fallen into poverty
and obscurity. The great, brilliant, living world of her day knew
her as the rushing equipages and palatial mansions of our great
cities know the daughters of poor mechanics in rural towns.
There was plenty of splendor, and rank, and fashion in Jerusalem
then. Herod the Great was a man of cultivation and letters,
and beautified the temple with all sorts of architectural
embellishments; and there were High Priests, and Levites, and a
great religious aristocracy circling about its precincts, all of
whom, if they thought of any woman as highly favored of heaven,
would have been likely to think of somebody quite other than the
simple country girl of Nazareth. Such an one as she was not in all
their thoughts. Yet she was _the_ highly favored woman of the world;
the crowned queen of women; the One whose lot--above that of all
that have lived woman's life, before or since--was blessed.
The views adopted in the Roman Church with respect to this one Woman
of women have tended to deprive the rest of the world of a great
source of comfort and edification by reason of the opposite extreme
to which Protestant reaction has naturally gone.
John Knox was once taken on board a ship manned, as he says, by
Popish sailors, who gave into his hand an image of the Virgin Mary
and wanted to compel him to kiss it. Stout John tossed it overboard,
saying, "Let our Lady now save herself; she is light enough, let her
learn to swim." To have honored the Virgin Mary, even in thought,
was shrunk from by the Protestants of those times as an approach to
idolatry. An image or a picture of her in a Puritan house would have
been considered an approach to the sin of Achan. Truth has always
had the fate of the shuttlecock between the conflicting battledoors
of controversy.
This is no goddess crowned with stars, but something nobler, purer,
fairer, more appreciable--the One highly favored and blessed among
Women.
The happiness of Mary's lot was peculiar to womanhood. It lay mostly
in the sphere of family affection. Mary had in this respect a lot
whose blessedness was above every other mother. She had as her child
the loveliest character that ever unfolded through childhood and
youth to manhood. He was entirely her own. She had a security in
possessing him such as is not accorded to other mothers. She knew
that the child she adored was not to die till he had reached man's
estate--she had no fear that accident, or sickness, or any of those
threatening causes which give sad hours to so many other mothers,
would come between him and her.
Neither was she called to separate from him. The record shows that
he was with his parents until their journey to Jerusalem, when he
was twelve years old; and then, after his brief absence of three
days when he was left behind, and found in the temple disputing with
the doctors, we are told that "he went down to Nazareth and was
subject unto them."
These words are all that cover eighteen years of the purest
happiness ever given to mortal woman. To love, to adore, to possess
the beloved object in perfect security, guarded by a divine
promise--this blessedness was given to but one woman of all the
human race. That peaceful home in Nazareth, overlooked by all the
great, gay world, how many happy hours it had! Day succeeded day,
weeks went to months, and months into years, and this is all the
record: "Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with
God and man."
Looking at Jesus as a mere human being, a historical character, as
some do, the one great peculiarity of him is the intensity of the
personal affection he has been able to inspire. The Apostles give
him one title which was his above all the other children of men,
"THE BELOVED." Christ has been and now is beloved, as no other human
being ever was. Others have been good men,--true men, benefactors
of their race,--but when they died their personality faded from the
earth.
Tell a Hottentot or a Zulu the story of Socrates, and it excites
no very deep emotion; but, for eighteen hundred years, Hottentots,
Zulus, South Sea Islanders and savages, Greenlanders,--men, women,
and children in every land, with every variety of constitutional
habit,--have conceived such an ardent, passionate, personal love
to Jesus of Nazareth that they have been ready to face torture and
death for his sake.
"It is not for me to covet things visible or invisible," said
Polycarp, on his way to martyrdom, "if only I may obtain Jesus
Christ. The fire, the cross, the rush of wild beasts, the tearing
asunder of bones, the fracture of limbs, and the grinding to powder
of the whole body, let these, the devil's torments, come upon me,
provided only that I obtain Jesus Christ."
So felt the Christians of the first ages, and time does not cool
the ardor. There are at this present hour hundreds of thousands of
obscure men and women, humble artisans, ignorant negroes, to whom
Christ is dearer than life, and who would be capable of just this
grand devotion. It is not many years since that in the Island of
Madagascar Christian converts were persecuted, and there were those
who met death for Christ's sake with all the triumphant fervor of
primitive ages. Jesus has been the one man of whom it has been
possible to say to people of all nations, ages, and languages, "Whom
having not seen ye love, and in whom, though now ye see him not, yet
believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory."
If we should embody our idea of the Son with whom Mary lived in
secure intimacy for thirty years, we should call him Love, itself.
He was not merely lovely, but he was love. He had a warming,
creative power as to love. He gave birth to new conceptions of love;
to a fervor, a devotion, a tenderness, of which before the human
soul scarcely knew its own capacity.
Napoleon asserted the divinity of Jesus from the sole fact of his
wonderful power of producing love. "I know men," he said, "and
I know Jesus was not a man;--eighteen hundred years ago he died
defeated, reviled, and yet at this hour there are thousands all over
the world who would die for him. I am defeated and overthrown, and
who cares for me now? Who fights, who conquers for me? What an abyss
between my misery and the triumph of Jesus!"
The blessedness of Mary was that she was the one human being who had
the right of ownership and intimate oneness with the Beloved. For
thirty years Jesus had only the task of living an average, quiet,
ordinary human life. He was a humble artisan, peacefully working
daily for the support of his mother. He was called from her by no
public duty; he was hers alone. When he began his public career he
transcended these limits. Then he declared that every soul that
heard the will of God, and did it, should be to him as his mother--a
declaration at which every Christian should veil his face in awe and
gratitude.
We may imagine the peace, the joy, the serenity of that household of
which Jesus was the centre. He read and explained the Scriptures,
and he prayed with them, in such blessed words as those that are
recorded in St. John's Gospel. In this life of simplicity and
poverty he taught them that sweet and sacred secret of a peaceful
daily looking to God for food and raiment that can be learned only
by the poor and dependent. He made labor holy by choosing it as his
lot.
Many little incidents in Christ's life show the man of careful
domestic habits. He was in all things methodical and frugal. The
miraculous power he possessed never was used to surround him with
any profusion. He would have the fragments of the feast picked
up and stored in the baskets, "that nothing should be lost." His
illustrations show the habits of a frugal home. His parable of the
kingdom of heaven, likened to the leaven hidden in three measures
of meal, gives us to believe that doubtless he had often watched
his mother in the homely process of bread-making. The woman,
who, losing one piece of money from her little store, lights a
candle and searches diligently, brings to our mind the dwelling of
the poor where every penny has its value. His illustrations from
husbandry--ploughing, sowing, growing, the lost sheep, the ox fallen
into the pit, the hen and her chickens--all show a familiarity and
a kind sympathy with the daily habits and life interests of the
poor. Many little touches indicate, also, the personal refinement
and delicacy of his habits, the order and purity that extended to
all his ways. While he repressed self-indulgence and the profusion
of extravagant luxury, he felt keenly and justified bravely that
profusion of the heart that delights in costliness as an expression
of love.
There seems to be reason to think that the retirement and stillness
of the peasant life in Nazareth, its deeply hidden character, was
peculiarly suited to the constitutional taste both of Jesus and his
mother.
Mary seems, from the little we see of her, to have been one of those
silent, brooding women who seek solitude and meditation, whose
thoughts are expressed only confidentially to congenial natures.
There is every evidence that our Lord's individual and human nature
was in this respect peculiarly sympathetic with that of his mother.
The prophecy of Isaiah predicts this trait of his character:
"He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard
in the street." In the commencement of his ministry we find the
same avoidance of publicity. He hushed the zeal of his disciples.
He wrought miracles with injunctions of secrecy--"See thou tell
no man." The rush of sensational popularity seemed especially
distasteful to him, and we find him after a little retiring from it.
"Come ye with me into a desert place and rest awhile," he says to
his disciples, "for there were so many coming and going that they
found no leisure so much as to eat."
Thus, the retirement of the Garden of Gethsemane--where it is said
Jesus ofttimes resorted with his disciples--and the quietude of
the family of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus at Bethany, seemed to be
especially attractive to him. Indeed, so great a desire had he for
quiet and peace, and for the calm of that congenial thought and
communion that can be had with but a few, that his public life must
be regarded as a constant act of self-abnegation. It was as foreign
to him to be out in the hot glare and dust of publicity, and to
battle in the crowded ways of life, as to the most gentle woman.
Divine Love was ever, in this bustling, noisy, vulgar, outward life,
lonely, and a stranger. "He was in the world," says St. John, "and
the world was made by him, but the world knew him not."
There was one woman of all women to whom it was given to know him
perfectly, entirely, intimately--to whom his nature was knit in the
closest possible union and identity. He was bone of her bone and
flesh of her flesh--his life grew out of her immortal nature. We are
led to see in our Lord a peculiarity as to the manner of his birth
which made him more purely sympathetic with his mother than any
other son of woman. He had no mortal father. All that was human in
him was her nature; it was the union of the divine nature with the
nature of a pure woman. Hence there was in Jesus more of the pure
feminine element than in any other man. It was the feminine element
exalted and taken in union with divinity. Robertson has a very
interesting sermon on this point, showing how the existence of this
feminine element in the character of Jesus supplies all that want in
the human heart to which it has been said the worship of the Virgin
Mother was adapted. Christ, through his intimate relationship with
this one highly favored among women, had the knowledge of all that
the heart of man or woman can seek for its needs.
There is in the sacred narrative a reticence in regard to the
mother of Jesus which would seem to bear very significantly upon
any theories of their mutual relations, and especially upon their
present connection in spiritual matters--the idea that Mary, as
Mother of God, retains in heaven authority over her son, and that
he can deny her nothing. St. John takes care to state specifically
the scene in Cana of Galilee where Jesus informs his mother that, in
his divine relations and duties, her motherly relation has no place.
"Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come."
The address, though not in the connection wanting in respect, or so
abrupt as it appears in the translation, was still very decided,
and was undoubtedly one of those declarations meant not only for
her but for mankind. In the same spirit are his words where, in his
public ministration, word was brought to him that his mother and his
brethren stood without, desiring to see him:--
"Who is my mother, and who are my brethren? And he looked around
on them that sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my
brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my
brother and sister and mother."
From that noble utterance, the Song of Mary,--retained by the church
as a Magnificat,--there is evidence of a soul not only exalted by
genius and enthusiasm, but steeped in the traditions of ancient
prophecy. It is so like the Psalms of David that a verse of it,
if read out casually, might seem to be taken from them. There
is no doubt that a soul like this, when possessed of the great
secret of prophecy, devoted itself with ardor to all in the Hebrew
Scriptures which foreshadowed her son's career. She was the first
teacher of the child Jesus in the Law and the Prophets. One of
Raphael's most beautiful conceptions of her represents her sitting
thoughtfully, holding the hand of the infant Jesus, while the roll
of the prophecies lies in her lap, and her eyes are fixed on the
distance as in deep thought. There is a similar picture of her by
Palma Vecchio. The communings of Christ and his mother on these
subjects must have been so long and so intimate that she more calmly
and clearly knew exactly whither his life was tending than did his
disciples. She had been forewarned in Daniel of the time when the
Messiah was to be cut off, but not for himself; she understood,
doubtless, the deep, hidden meaning of the Psalm that describes the
last agonies, the utter abandonment of her son.
There is in her whole character a singular poise and calmness. When
the Angel of the Annunciation appeared to her she was not overcome
by the presence of a spiritual being as Daniel was, who records that
"he fell on his face and there was no strength in him." Mary, in
calm and firm simplicity, looks the angel in the face, and ponders
what the wonderful announcement may mean. When she finds that it
really does mean that she, a poor lonely maiden, is the chosen woman
of all the human race--the gainer of the crown of which every Jewish
woman had dreamed for ages--she is still calm. She does not sink
under the honor, she is not confused or overcome, but answers with
gentle submission, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me
according to his word."
Yet the words of the Magnificat show a keen sense of the honor and
favor done her. She exults in it with an innocent heartiness of
simplicity. "He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaid, for
from henceforth all nations shall call me blessed."
It is remarkable that Mary was never in any one instance associated
in public work with Jesus. She was not among the women who are
mentioned as following and ministering unto him. She was, it seems,
in Jerusalem at the last Passover of our Lord, but it was not
with her, or at her table, that he prepared to eat the Passover.
He did that as master in his own house, with a family of little
children of his own choosing. Mary was not at the first Eucharistic
feast. Undoubtedly there was foreknowledge and divine design in
all this, and doubtless Jesus and Mary were so completely one in
will and purpose that she was of perfect accord with him in all
these arrangements. There are souls so perfectly attuned to each
other, with such an exact understanding and sympathy, that personal
presence no longer becomes a necessity. They are always with each
other in spirit, however outwardly separated. But we find her with
him once more, openly and visibly, in the hour when all others
forsook him. The delicacy of woman may cause her to shrink from the
bustle of public triumph, but when truth and holiness are brought to
public scorn she is there to defend, to suffer, to die.
Can we conceive what this mob was, that led Jesus forth to death?
Mobs in our day are brutal, but what were they then? Consider what
the times must have been when scourging was an ordinary punishment
for criminals, and crucifixion an ordinary mode of execution; what
were the sights, the sounds, the exhibitions of brutality among
which Mary and the women friends of Jesus followed him to the cross!
And Mary did not faint--did not sink. She did not fall to the earth
when an angel predicted her glory; she did not fall now, when the
sword had gone through her heart. It is all told in one word, "Now
there _stood_ by the cross of Jesus his mother." The last word that
Jesus spoke to any mortal ear was to commend her to his dearest
friend.
After the resurrection Mary appears once more among the disciples,
waiting and praying for a descent of the Holy Ghost--and then in the
sacred record we hear of her no more.
But enough is recorded of her to make her forever dear to all
Christian hearts. That Mary is now with Jesus, that there is an
intimacy and sympathy between her soul and his such as belong to no
other created being, seems certain. Nor should we suffer anything to
prevent that just love and veneration which will enable us to call
her Blessed, and to look forward to meeting her in heaven as one of
the brightest joys of that glorious world.
V