Appendix
To the public, Mary of -Magdala is the most interesting woman of the Bible because she portrays the transition from extreme darkness into the most brilliant light — she is the Paul of the female world. But there is a dispute between the public and the critics as to where her story begins, as to whether she is the subject of the little picture in Luke vii, 38. I heard a distinguished minister tell a congregation she was not; and the people were very angiy — was it after her they had called their hospitals! Let the public be at peace; I can get back from the critics all they have taken away, except the special form of Mary’s sin. Their Magdalene is equally redeemed. She had been possessed with seven demons. The number denotes quality, it says she was a perfect slave to her passions. It would not be adequate to paint her as a hysterical or epileptic woman; the whole moral will was subjugated. The peculiarity of moral demoniacal possession was that it came in gusts, not by deliberation.
What is the next step of the process? Is it the expulsion of the -demons from Mary? No; it is her meeting with Jesus. Christ must be born before evil days. You must not exact holiness as the price of coming to Christ. The vision of spring must dawn in winter. It is Christ that casts out demons, not the expulsion of demons that brings Christ. To rejuvenate a soul all round, it is generally enough to change a single point. Mary was transformed by one ideal; it lit the metropolis, the heart, and the glory spread to all the provinces.
Then, from being helped, came her desire to help. She is not poor; she ministers financially. She ministers sympathetically where she can give nothing but her presence at the cross. And she ministers memorially, to the memory of the departed; she is present at the burial. And she has the first vision of the rising. Point out the paradox of the first vision being made to a woman who had been excited by the gusts of demoniacal possession. I think the picture wants to show the completeness of her cure.
She is the least hysterical of all observers. Show this by the narrative in John xx, 11. She came to the grave vdth prosaic .expectations, to preserve a dead body. When she had a vision of Jesus she mistook Him for the gardener; an hysterical woman would have taken the gardener for Jesus. When she recognizes Him there is no screaming, just the word ‘’Master;” and the wish to keep Him by her. “Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.” Finally, as with Paul, the vision is followed by an apostolic mission; she is sent as an apostle to the apostles to tell of the risen Christ.
Woman’s mission should ever be to bring tidings of hope in — the home, district visit, and the like.
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The representative women of
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