III.
A Sword in the Soul.
"Yea and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul."
1. Simeon saw that the work of salvation would in some mysterious way be the work of a warrior, and that the same sword as wounded Him would pierce the heart of His mother also. This vision of a coming battle did not lessen his faith in victory, but it moved him to speak of things which were not in the salutation of the angel to Mary, or in the song which the ' A. P. Stanley, Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold, i. 34.
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shepherds heard by night. Jesus is the prepared Saviour, and will finish the work given Him to do; but He will not be welcomed by all Israel. He will not fail nor be discouraged, but He must first suffer many things and be despised and rejected of men. Mary is highly favoured among women, and all generations will call her blessed, but the highest favour she will receive is to be a partaker in the anguish of her Son. The greatness of her privilege, and the exaltation of her hopes are the measure of her future dismay, while her Son advances to His goal through con- tradiction and death. "Yea and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul; that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed."
In the huge temple, deck'd by Herod's pride. Who fain would bribe a God he ne'er believed. Kneels a meek woman, that hath once conceived, Tho' she was never like an earthly bride. And yet the stainless would be purified, And wash away the stain that yet was none, And for the birth of her immaculate Son With the stern rigour of the law complied: The duty paid received its due reward When Simeon bless'd the Baby on her arm; And though he plainly told her that a sword Must pierce her soul, she felt no weak alarm, For that for which a Prophet thank'd the Lord Once to have seen, could never end in harm.^
2. Must not the prediction that a sword would pierce through her soul also be a reminder that her unique position as the mother of the Saviour did not exempt her from the probation through which all had to pass who listened to the teaching and beheld the mighty works of her Son ? But the commentators, with a un- animity which is unusual, resort to another interpretation. From Origen to Sir William Eamsay, they bid us find in the simile of the sword a picture of the sufferings which the career of the Christ would of necessity entail upon His mother. There is more difference of opinion when the attempt is made to determine the special nature of the sufferings which are foretold, the par- ticular incident of her career to which the words apply. Some,
* Hartley Coleridge.
74 A TOUCHSTONE OF CHARACTER
with reason, as it would seem, leave the reference vague and un- defined. The Christ was a great Eeformer. He was the leader of a religious revolution. He was therefore certain to meet with fierce opposition from the votaries of the ancient traditions and the ancient faith. He was a sign which would be spoken against. His life would inevitably be one of sorrow; and, with every anguish of her Son, the mother's heart would be torn. Others becoming a little more precise, would have us think of some un- known eclipse of faith, by which the Virgin's confidence in the Divine mission of her Son was clouded. Epiphanius, with no less imagination, will have it that Simeon foresees her martyrdom. But the dominant view, stereotyped in the words of one of the few Sequences which still remain in the Koman Missal, finds in the mention of the sword piercing her soul an allusion to the agony of the Mother as she watched her Divine Son hanging upon the cross, and dying the malefactor's death —
Stabat Mater dolorosa Juxta crucem lacrimosa.
Qua pendebat Filius, Cuius animam gementem Contristantem et dolentem
Pertransiuit gladius.
3. The higher the privilege, the deeper will be the wound. " The nearer to Christ, the nearer," from the very first, " to the sword." The more real her title to be the "Blessed among women," the more real the anguish which would crush her spirit as she awoke to the cross which was to be the crown of His mission. The more genuine the love which treasured up the angels' song as she " kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart," the more intense the disappointment which " sought him sorrowing," not once, but again and again, and failed to find Him in His true being till Calvary and the opened sepulchre have made all things plain.
^ Those who have seen Holman Hunt's " Shadow of the Cross," will remember how Mary is employed when she gets the first awful premonition of what her Child's fate is to be. She is engaged — so the painter fancies her — looking into a coffer, where the gifts of the wise men are preserved, feasting her eyes on the beautiful crowns and bracelets and jewels, so prophetic, as she
ST. LUKE II. 34, 35 75
thinks, of what her Son's after-destiny is to be. And then she turns, and what a contrast ! There, in shadow on the wall, imprinted by the western light, she sees her Son stretched on a cross ! What a sight for a mother to see ! As she looks, the solemn, mysterious words of Simeon flash through her heart, " Yea and a sword shall pierce through thine own soul." Against that awful destiny her mother's heart rises up in arms, and it was, I believe, this love, this misguided love, that led her to seek to keep back her Child from His mission, and point Him into a path of glory, not of shame ; of royalty, not of sacrifice ; of a crown, not of a cross.^