Mary the Guiding

‘HEN Israel sought a king, her women lost their kingdom. They passed from their own empire into the thirst for another empire. Their empire had been the kingdom of home it was universal, it was cosmopolitan, and within its limits they were free. But when the kingdom arose in Israel, her women became political, local, eastern. They ceased to be representative; they became merely national. It is not that they were curtailed in their environment; they possessed the land more amply than their predecessors. It was not a narrowing of area, but a narrowing of sympathy. That which makes a man or woman local is not the place wherein they dwell, but the degree of sympathy which they cherish to other places. The females of the Kings and Chronicles fail to be representative because they fail to look over their own wall. They have been conquered by the spirit of nationality; they have become more Jewish than human. Three periods have there been in the feminine life of Israel. In the first the nation was unformed, and woman was cosmopolitan. In the last the nation was dismantled, and woman in Christ became cosmopolitan once more. But in the middle period the female figures have an exclusively Jewish aspect; they have ceased to be interesting to man as man. The difference does not lie in a diminution of intellectual height, but in a narrowing of sympathetic breadth. The intellect of Jezebel had all the subtlety of Rebekah and all the energy of Deborah; but her aims were not those of Rebekah nor of Deborah. Rebekah aimed to establish the rule of motherhood in the home — and that was a work for all time. Deborah aimed to establish a maternal guardianship outside the home — and that was also a work for all time. But Jezebel’s aim was personal ambition. She wanted to be the woman of her own age, to dominate the day and hour. She prosecuted that purpose with commanding ability and maintained it through a long period of success; but her very success was her subordination — it made her temporary and local.

We pass, then, from the nation unformed to the nation dismantled; and woman is again representative of the universal human. On the threshold of the new dawn there stands a female figure which has been the admiration of all future years. Mediaeval art has linked it to beauty; but in the Old Gallery it shines rather by a light from the soul than by a symmetry of form or feature. It is Mary — the prospective mother of the Lord Jesus. Her immediate appeal in the Gospel narrative is not to the eye, but to the ear. When we first meet her she has burst into song, and the sight is drowned in the song. It is a song of glory. The woman is seen to break from her shell and get back again into the wide ocean of humanity; she soars beyond the trammels of the Jew into the bosom of the universal race. She is about to give the world a cosmopolitan Man — a man who will rise above principalities and powers and make the kingdom of the earth one kingdom. ‘’From henceforth,” she cries, “all generations shall call me blessed” — not Jew nor Greek nor Roman, but the united race. The very burden of her song is the abolition of principalities and powers. It is like the song of Hannah — a thanksgiving for the elevation of the humble, for the suppression of the mighty, for the advent of an age when the meek shall inherit the earth and the poor in spirit shall receive the kingdom.

How shall I approach this woman! There is a solemnity about her before which I shrink; I feel like Moses at the burning bush — that the place on which I stand is holy ground. But I must remember that I am dealing with representative woman — with that which belongs to common experience. I cannot dwell on that which is abnormal. If the portrait of Mary is to be a subject for this Gallery, it must be approached not in sunlight but in moonlight. We must disregard its transcendent features. We must pass by that in it which is supernatural. We must find in it something which is shared by the sisterhood of high human souls. Over the mystery of the mother of Jesus controversy has raged, and is raging still. But it is not her mystery that concerns us here; it is the thing in which she is not mysterious. I shall take my stand at that point of the Gallery where faith blends with experience. I shall humbly recognize the fact that again as at the world’s genesis the Spirit is brooding on the face of the human waters, and that from the movement of its wings there is coming a fresh stream of life into the human soul; and having recognized that fact, I shall uncover my head and pass on to the practical question.

What is the practical question? I take it to be this, What does the mother of Jesus represent to her sisters in humanity? And the answer to this will depend on our solution of another question — What was that particular work which Mary had to do for her son? Wc are often startled by this problem. We commonly say that a mother’s province is to train her child for heaven. But here, by supposition, the child is himself jrom heaven, and it is the mother who should be guided by hwi. Nor, subsequent to the birth of Jesus, is Mary ever introduced to us as a guide towards His mission. We often receive from her portrait just the opposite impression, and we are disappointed at the result. It gives us a shock to find that the mother of our Lord is more prosaic than ideal. Bui why should it! What if in this very perception we are on the borders of a big discovery — the discovery of Mary’s real mission to her sisters of humanity! I firmly believe that such is the case — that in reaching the prosaic attitude of Mary we have reached the secret of her mission to Jesus. I hold that mission to have been, not the guidance of His spiritual nature, but the guidance of His outward or physical nature. She was sent, not to stimulate the higher life, but to prevent the higher life from making Him forget His lower needs. A moment’s reflection will make it clear that the case has a real parallel in every-day experience.

Here is a mother who has a student son. She is very proud of him — and no wonder! In school and college he has swept everything before him. His wisdom and learning have been the admiration of all. He has been spoken of everywhere as the coming man — the man who is to signalize the next generation; and the prophecies of his success have been loud and many. But there is one fear in the mother’s heart — what if he should not live to fulfil the predictions! She has observed that each gain has been purchased by a loss. The pursuit of knowledge has been absorbing; but it has absorbed the moments that should be devoted to the requirements of the flesh. He has been irregular in his hours of food. He has exposed himself to cold through the sheer tendency to transfixed attention. He has not allowed room for physical exercise. He has disregarded little ailments that should have been looked to. Altogether, this mother is convinced that what her son needs is not a sympathizer but a drag — not one who will accelerate his upward progress but one who will try to impede his wings and hold him more down to the lower plain.

Now, this was the case with Mary. There had been committed to her care a great trust — the preservation of a gifted son for a heavenly mission. The greatest danger that son’s early years had to encounter came from that mission itself. He was so absorbed in the thought of it that He was in peril of losing sight of the common earth and being crushed ere His work began. He was quite conscious of this Himself. “The zeal of Thy house,” He cries, “hath eaten me up.” There could not be a stronger testimony to His impression that the inner fire was consuming the outer man. It did not take the form of outward exhaustion so much as of outward oblivion. The appetite for heaven so absorbed Him that He was in danger of forgetting the hunger of earth — would have utterly forgotten it but for the drags which earth imposed upon His chariot wheels. All who surrounded Him felt this. You remember when His disciples came back to Samaria’s well and found Him jaded and weary. They at once see that the outer man has had its wants hid by the inner. “Master, eat!” they cry. It is a voice of deep anxiety — the desire for the secular good of the sacred. The answer is striking and graphic, and reveals at a flash the whole situation, “I have meat to eat that ye know not of; my meat is to do the will of Him that sent me.” There is no sense of exhaustion; there is an impression of abundant strength; but it is strength from a source which cannot last by itself alone. The soul needs the body. The zeal of God’s house is too much if it eats up the produce of the house of Nazareth. A guardian must be found for the wants of common day. The heavenly Father has provided for the Divine Christ; some one must provide for the man Jesus.

That mission falls upon the earthly parent. The province of Mary is to counteract the influ - ence of the fire in the soul of Jesus, and to keep Him from being consumed by the zeal for God’s house. From the very outset she seems to have realized this. Ere ever the spirit of Jesus had wakened into full human consciousness, we have a hint of what the mother’s course will be. The land was laden with portents of the growing child. Shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem were telling of a wondrous vision — how at midnight as they watched their flocks there shone forth to them the glory of the noonday, and how the silent air was rent with rapturous song. They were telling how angel voices had predicted the heavenly mission of the babe, had hailed Him as the saviour of mankind, had adored Him as the source of glory above and of peace below. What does the mother say to this? Very striking is the statement of her attitude — “She kept all these things in her heart.” The idea is that of concealment. She does not go about crying, “You hear what they are saying of my son!” She does not even tell the opening years of that son Himself of the Divine destiny that has been presaged for Him. Whence this reticence? Can there be any answer but one? It was to prevent the bush from being consumed by its own burning — consumed before the time. It was to restrain the fire of heaven from putting out the fire of earth. It was to protect the child from losing His childhood. It was to shield the outer man from oblivion to the wants of the flesh — from forgetfulness of food, from disregard of diet, from inadequate engagement in exercise, from contempt for cold, from fearlessness of fatigue, from belittling the burdens of the body. That is why the mother of Jesus hid in her heart the shepherds’ song.

When Jesus was twelve years old there came a presage of the danger which His mother had foreboded. He had reached what in modern language might be called the age of confirmation — the period of life when a child took upon himself the vows that had been made for him by his parents. Speaking in present-day terms we may say that Jesus when twelve years old went up to Jerusalem for His first act of personal consecration. I have always been inclined to regard this episode not only as His earliest personal burden, but as the only purely personal burden of His life. His other moments were blended with the burdens of humanity. His contact with disease brought pain; but it was a sense of the sufferer’s pain. His bearing of the cross brought grief; but it was grief for human sin. The burden of the boy, on the contrary, was all His own. It was the first sense of His individual responsibility; and we know what that is. We have felt it at our earliest communion; we have experienced it at our first hour of receiving a trust. It was perhaps the only moment in which Jesus felt Himself quite alone. He realized His solitude in the initial gleam of His light. He stood in the temple of God at twelve years old and suddenly said, “I am a man.” Earth faded from Him. Nazareth vanished from His sight. Parents receded into the distance. The home of His childhood grew dim. He felt only one presence — that of the Father. The Father and He were alone together, and the door was shut. The temple was the universe, and the universe was divided between these two. He was lost in self-questionings, lost in musings. There were many in the temple besides Him, but He did not see them; His eyes were on His Father. He forgot even the ceremony for which He had come; He did not know when it was over. Crowds streamed from the building; but the boy remained. His parents left; but the boy remained. The inner circle of the doctors began their private business; but the boy remained. His mother thought He was by her side; but she had left Him behind — behind with God.

Mary and her husband return to seek for Jesus. They find Him in the temple and they rebuke Him; “Why hast Thou dealt thus with us!” I’ should have expected them to have blamed themselves. I should have imagined their words to be, “We have been very careless of you in not telling of our departure.” It was no part for a boy of twelve to lay down the law to his mother as to when it was time to go. I suspect the secret of Mary’s annoyance was not the missing of Jesus but the place where she found Him. She was afraid of the premature revealing of that which she had hid in her heart. Was the child of tender years to be burdened all at once with manhood! Was the noon to rush without warning upon the dawnl Was the human spirit of Jesus to be borne, in an instant, beyond its natural depths and have its youth drowned in the waters of to-morrow! This, as I take it, was the question of the mother’s soul. I justify that question. I approve of the anxiety — though not of the rebuke. I think the maternal heart of Mary had real ground for solicitude about her child. Would the doctors of the temple take Him and make Him a king — a king in mind when He was a boy in body! If so, the fire would consume the gauze and He would never reach His destined goal. What mother would not tremble at such a prospect as that!

And I am confirmed in the view that this is the thought of the narrator by the words concerning Jesus which immediately follow the anxiety of His parents, ‘’and He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them.” Why state that He was “subject to them!” Every Jewish son was subject to his parents. The obedience of a child to his parents was the cardinal Jewish virtue — the first commandment with promise. Why emphasize the obedience of the Divine child! Clearly because in His case the words have quite a peculiar meaning. It is not the obedience of the boy Jesus that is spoken of; it is the subordination of His higher life. What I understand the narrative to mean is that the mother gets her way — that during these long years at Nazareth she is allowed to hide in her heart the forecasts of the coming hour — that no premature development is permitted to disturb the natural tenor of that home life of Jesus, which the Father had ordained was to be a growth in wisdom and in stature. Men have often lamented the paucity of the records of Christ’s early life. But if you accept my interpretation of this passage, the paucity is explained. The maternal plan was to surround Jesus as much as possible with the commonplace, to prevent the too early maturity of the growing boy. And it was because the maternal plan succeeded that we have these long years of apparent stagnancy. Stagnant they were not. The mother’s instinct was right. It was the commonplace that secured the glorious manhood; it was the hazy dawn that made the warm day; it was the protracted development that prevented the Son of Man from being crushed in the progress of the child Jesus.

We pass over a period of eighteen years; and the curtain again rises. It is at the marriage-feast of Cana; mother and son are once more seen side by side. It would seem for a moment as if the former had deserted her plan. She appears eager to push Jesus forward — to drive Him prematurely into His mission; “They have no wine,” she says. But in reality Mary is true to herself, true to her policy. Her act was really a diversion from the mission of Jesus. It was an effort to localize her son, to secularize Him, to invest Him with a commonplace glory of wonder-working which hundreds had claimed before, and which utterly hid the purpose of His kingdom. I do not for a moment suppose that the mother thought she was pointing Him to His destiny. I believe she was designedly calling Him from that destiny to an exercise of power which was physical. Her whole object and aim had been to keep His opening years within the physical. He was now thirty years old and His public work must begin; but let it begin in the physical, in the family circle, in the scene of domestic enjoyment! Let it not come by a plunge into the depths of wisdom, but by an act of smiling radiance among His own kith and kin, an act performed in the interchange of social courtesy! Cana is the continuation of the mother’s plan. Cana is the reflex of Nazareth — the survival of that mode of training by which Mary had sought to subject the youthful will of Jesus. It is not surprising she does not see that the youth has become a man. Mothers rarely discern that boundary-line. We issue the orders of yesterday and are astonished that they are no longer received in the spirit of yesterday. We do not see that the boy has ceased to be a boy, that he has touched the zenith of the hill and is looking down upon his former self. Jesus has outgrown the physical mode of education; he is beginning to long for the inner stream. He is unsatisfied with His mother’s latest command — unsatisfied rather than dissatisfied; it is not that it is bad but that it is inadequate. Yet, though it is beneath the level of His Kingdom, though, as He declares Himself, it does not reach the dignity of His coming hour, filial affection makes Him yield once more.

But the next time is the point of resistance. We pass over a few months. Jesus has arrived in Capernaum; and He has grown in experience even since the feast of Cana. The full force of His mission has burst upon Him, for He has fathomed the depths of human sin. He has been in Samaria; He has seen those who come by night. His heart is on fire with pity, with the enthusiasm for man’s salvation. He feels that His hour has at last come; He seems to feel as if He had been losing time which He ‘must make up for. He harangues the multitude in groups; He appeals to the perishing sinners in the streets of Capernaum; He warns, threatens, exhorts, denounces. Such a form of address men have never heard before; they thought He was mad, and they said so. The report ran from Capernaum to Nazareth that He had been afflicted with mental alienation. It reached the cottage home; it struck the dreaded knell in the mother’s heart. She feels that the hour she has anticipated with horror has come — that the rush of light has been too sudden for the tender eyes of Jesus. She never doubts that the thing she feared has happened — that premature disclosure has destroyed her son’s balance of mind. Her only thought is to get Him home, to have Him nursed. She rushes down to Capernaum; she brings His brothers; she brings His sisters; she brings everything that can attract Him, that can recall His memory of the old days. It is in vain. Jesus is not mad; but He has seen the kingdom. He cannot go back to Nazareth. Far up the height a voice is calling “Excelsior!” The cotlage-home is lost in another sight — a house with many mansions. The wedding-feast is forgotten in the marriage of the earth and sky- Mother and brethren fade before two mightier agencies — the fatherhood of God and the fraternity of man.

This was the boundary-line of Mary’s power over Jesus. There is always a day, and there always ought to be a day, in which a true son takes the reins from his mother. But do not think Mary’s course was wrong, though it had a boundary-line. It was right. It was the work given her by the Father. She was commissioned to guide the early steps of Jesus by moderating their pace. Ever she seemed to hear the Spirit of God whispering to her soul, “Do not let Him go too fast; keep Him thirty years at Nazareth.” Nor do I for a moment suppose that even after Capernaum our Lord had any feeling but approval for the past conduct of His mother. To the latest hour of His life He regarded that mother with the most tender solicitude. His last act towards her has always to my mind been fraught with a peculiar significance. It is when, at the foot of the cross, He transfers her bond of motherhood from Himself to His beloved disciple, “Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother!” It has been a subject of endless difficulty with the critics. It has been asked, “Why entrust her to John when she had a son of her own!” But in asking such a question it has always been taken for granted that the union was purely for the sake of Mary. I think it was in great measure for the sake of John. Here was a human soul in some respects resembling His own — a soul on fire, a soul on wings, a soul which was to have moments of Patmos flight into regions which eye has not seen and human heart has not conceived! Was it not well that he too should have some one to mitigate his fire, to sober the intensity of his light! Was it not well that for him too there should be provided a Nazareth — a home of commonplaces presided over by that very mother who had moderated the flight of His own spirit! Such a thought on the part of Jesus would be more than a recognition of His mother; it would be a recognition of her policy in the past as something to be endorsed and vindicated. It would be the testimony that the family training had been the true road to the cross — that the delay had been good, the postponement powerful. It would write the inscription on the mother’s home at Nazareth, “She has done all things well.”

Ye mothers of England who have sons with a promise of greatness, do not force that promise to premature fulfilment! Do not overstrain the young life in its morning! Take a leaf out of the book of Mary! — for hers was a leaf from the Book of God. I would have you to prolong the days of Nazkreth. Be not in haste to send your sons into the wilderness of temptation! I hear people say that children should be taught to see things as they are. Not so say I. I would let them have their dream at Nazareth, yea, their vision at Jordan, ere the realities are unveiled. Do not begin by teaching life’s solemnity! Begin by revealing its smile! The Father’s house must be opened with music and dancing. Nor would I have you forget that in the training of your child the physical requirement is the earliest requirement. Do not elongate his school hours! Do not multiply his lessons! Do not tire his memory! Do not crush his brain with problems! Do not neglect the comforts of the outer man! Let him gather rose-buds while he may! Forbid that he should begin too soon to question the doctors or to write down their answers! Endue him first of all with the blessings we call commonplace! Give him strength of body to prepare him for the toil of mind! Give him power of sinew that he may pity the halt and maimed! Give him congenial friends that he may learn the glory of brotherhood! Give him a sense of vitality that he may battle with disease and death! Let him start with the joy of a crown that he may have sympathy with those who bear the cross! The children of Israel were led to the land of Canaan by the longer way; your children will best reach their goal by the devious road of Nazareth.

MARY THE THOUGHT-READING