MARY AT THE CROSS 107 because he was the ordained forerunner and herald of the Christ, does not Mary become the greatest of women because she was ordained of heaven to be the mother of the world's Saviour? "Blessed art thou among women," said the angel; and every noble soul since then has repeated the angelic salutation, "Blessed art thou among women. ... In the final, awful scene on Calvary "there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother." What a picture of heroism!.... where all was dark, cruel, frenzied, blood-thirsty, tragical, there stood Mary nearest to the cross, her mother-soul all fearless, undaunted, magnificently heroic. And was it this mother's heroism that inspired the presence of the other women, and of John, the only disciple that had not in cowardice forsaken Jesus and fled? Was it Mary's thought, "I must be, I will be with him and nearest him to the last"? And was the thought of the others, "Let us follow Mary and be with her in this awful trial"? Had not Mary insisted on standing by the cross of Jesus in all the danger and horror of that crucifixion, can we imagine that John would have stood there, or Mary's sister, or Mary Magdalene? Again does Jesus show his appreciation of his mother's devotion, and, tenderly addressing her in his dying agony, he commends her to the care of John, the disciple whom he loved. Was not Mary's presence there a comfort to her dying Son? The loyalty, the fearless, dauntless, heroic, loving devotion of motherhood shone forth into the darkness of that appalling tragedy as the greatest thing in the world. There is nothing in history to equal it; of all heroic deeds of heroic women or of heroic men nothing parallels that last act of Mary's devotion-"There stood by the cross of Jesus his mother." And had not that heroism a blessed reward? Mary must have longed for one more look of loving recognition, one more word of comfort from Jesus..... "Will he know I am here?" "Will he be able to see me and recognize me?" "Will he speak to me?" These questions must have filled her anxious, agitated heart. He does know she is there; he does see her; he does speak to her! O, so tender, so considerate, so comforting is that recognition! Yes, "Blessed art thou among women!" Here on dark and tragic Calvary, as in angelencircled Bethlehem, and now in all the earth, and forever, are Gabriel's accents true: "Blessed art thou among women. " And for thy faithfulness to Jesus Christ, the world's omnific Saviour, for thy wondrous and heroic motherhood, no less than for the heaven-imposed honor of which the Holy Ghost had found thee worthy-"Blessed art thou among women." For the Nazareth conception, for the Bethlehem birth, for the devotion of Calvary, thy song of exultation passes into prophecy and into music eternal: "From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." And with thee, heroine of heroines, holiest of mothers, shall heroic motherhood everywhere and always be calledBLESSED. FRANK M. BRISTOL, Bishop of Methodist Episcopal Church. Heroines of 108 DID THE HEART OF JESUS BREAK? "A mother's love-how sweet the name! What is a mother's love? A noble, pure, and tender flame enkindled from above, to bless a heart of earthly mould; an ardent love that ne'er grows cold-this is a mother's love." Quoted in The Crown Jewels of Art, by Franklin Edson Belden, p. 272. 86. Did Jesus die of a broken heart; and 487 years before Christ was born, did Zechariah prophesy that the body of Jesus would be pierced? BIBLE EVIDENCE. Zechariah 12:10 (B. C. 487)—And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son,. .... Psalm 22:16-.... they pierced my hands and my feet. John 19:33, 34-But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead already, they brake not his legs: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. SECULAR EVIDENCE. Jesus died of a broken heart. The terrifying cry which all had heard marked the moment of a fatal rupture of the heart. When a Roman soldier thrust his lance into the side of the dead Christ it pierced the lung and then the pericardium, and from the wound flowed blood and water. John alone witnessed the phenomenon. It made so deep an impression on his mind that in extreme old age he spoke of Christ as One who "came by water and blood; not by water only, but by water and blood." John saw something symbolic in this phenomenon; the modern reader sees rather a dreadful witness to the agony which Christ endured. From the moment when the Last Supper ended no food had passed the lips of Christ, and every moment had been crowded with intolerable agony. The physical pain which He endured was but part of this accumulated torture; in His betrayal, in the outrages heaped upon Him by the priests, in the tremendous storm of execration which broke upon Him from every side, in the horror of this exhibition of the diabolism of human nature, in His sense of the weight of all human sin which pressed upon Him, in His desertion not only by man but by God, wave upon wave of agony swept over Him, until the torn and wounded heart could endure no more. He succumbed not to physical injuries, but to the violence of His own emotions. And in this was the proof that God had not deserted Him. By what seems almost a miracle to the Roman soldiers His sufferings were mysteriously abridged. Six brief hours of suffering had brought that sweet release of death which in ordinary crucifixions came only after many hours, and even many days. WILLIAM J. DAWSON, The Life of Christ, p. 423. 87. Did Jesus prophesy correctly his own resurrection? BIBLE EVIDENCE. Mark 10:32-34-And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them: began to tell them what things should happen unto him, Saying, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles: And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again. John 2:22-When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. SECULAR EVIDENCE. The first piece of Christian literature which has an independent existence and to which we can fix a date is St. Paul's first Epistle to the Thessalonians. Lightfoot dates it in 52 or 53; Harnack places it five years earlier. We may say, then, that it was written some twenty years after the Crucifixion. St. Paul is not an historian; he is not attempting to describe what Jesus Christ said or did. He is writing a letter to encourage a little Christian society which he, a Jew, had founded in a distant Greek city; and he reminds his readers of many things which he had told them when he was with them. The evidence to be collected from his epistles generally must not detain us here, but we may glance for a moment at this one letter, because it contains what appears to be the first mention of Jesus Christ in the literature of the world..... Now the opening sentence of this letter is as follows: "Paul and Silvanus and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you, and peace. .. The writers speak of themselves as "apostles," or messengers, of Christ; they refer to similar societies "in Christ Jesus," which they call "churches of God," in Judaea, and they say that these also suffer from the Jews there, who had "killed the Lord Jesus" some time before. But they further speak of Jesus as "raised from the dead," and they refer to the belief which they had led the society to entertain, that He would come again "from heaven to deliver them from the coming wrath.' Moreover, they urge them not to grieve for certain members of the society who have already died, saying that, "if we believe that Jesus died and rose again," we may also be assured that "the dead in Christ will rise" and will live forever with Him..... Historically it is of great value as showing how widely within twenty or twenty-five years of the Crucifixion a religion which proclaimed developed theological teaching as to "the Lord Jesus Christ" had spread in the Roman Empire. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Vol. XV, p. 348. Death is a dragon, the grave its den; a place of dread and terror; but Christ goes into its den, there grapples with it, and forever overcomes it, disarms it of all its terror; and not only makes it cease to be inimical, but to become the greatest blessing to the saints; a bed of rest, and a perfuned bed; they do but go into Christ's bed, where He lay before them. FLAVEL in One Thousand and One Thoughts From My Library, by D. L. |