The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 104

totypes of the earlier history of her race. The visit of Elisabeth to her, the marvellous accompaniments of her Child's birth, the visit of the shepherds, the song of the angels, and the pondering by Mary over these mysterious events, are recorded by Luke. The providential deliverance of the young Child and bis mother from the jealous madness of Herod is preserved by Matthew, while Luke adds the appearance in the temple when Simeon forewarns her that a sword should pierce her own heart. We further discover her maternal solicitude, the obedience she claimed and received up to a certain point and no further. 'l'he one incident recorded during the thirty years implies on her part (it may be) some carelessness and failure of apprehension of the wondrous charge eutrusted to her. Sorrowing and anxious, she and Joseph receive a word whioh, like a sword, pierced her. There were depths in her Son's consciousness which she could not fathom, and there was an inward voice he heard, but which she could not hear, A solitary event subsequently recorded, and by Mark only in its fulness, which shows that the Pharisees had, by a diabolio plot which they hatched to shut up Jesus as one "beside himself," endeavoured to make the mother and brethren parties to it. The way in which Christ ba.ffled this design, and even emancipated himself from the control of mother a.nd brethren, is highly significant (Ma.rk iii. 20, 30-35). .After this Mary appears to have followed him on his last visit to Jerusalem, and to have stood by him when in his death-agony. After the Resurrection she is (in Luke's continua.tion of his Gospel) mentioned once only, and then as being present in the upper cha.mber. Not a.nother syllable bearing upon her character or even existence can be found in the New Testament or early Christian literature. Neither St. Pa.ul, St. Peter, nor St. John, neither St. James nor St. Jude who may have been her own children, make the faintest reference to her. It is open to question whether she is obscurely referred to in the Apocalypse (xii. 1-6). We dare not lift the veil, nor do we a.ppe&l to the apocryphal gospels. All that we may reasona.bly infer is her self-repression, her Old Testament standpoint, her desire for the honour of her Son, and some doubtfully placed measures taken for his safety. Her belief in his resnrrection, and her association after the Resurrection with the twelve apostles and the brethren. The gentle, holy, retiring spirit hides itself in the glory of her Son and Lord. The fourth evangelist, who clearly speaks of himself as the beloved disciple, who has never once mentioned his own name nor that of his own mother, never breathes the name of" Mary," and folds her memory in the perfumed cerements of a holy charge he received from his dying Lord. He states firmly that her home was in his house, He l:lecomes her protector and keeper to the end. Where that took place he does not say; ont the very fa.et that he should have received the charge a.t the cross, con.firms a statement made by St. Luke {Acts L 14). This visit to Jerusalem was full of interest to the other and older tradition. The Fourth Gospel simply shows how this event brought its author into closest relation with the blessed virgin-mother of the Lord. Yet with one except.ion he adds nothing to what we know, and with reverent silence he passes over details alrea.dy widely current for a generation before he wrote his Gospel. Still, in mentioning the mother at all, he clears hims~lf from all d_~tic, CerinthiJl:n, or Mar- cionite teaching. The author, by the underlying presuppos1t1on of the entrre Gospel, viz. that Jesus was "the Word made flesh," and by his repeated attempt to illustrate Christ's consciousness of having "come down from heaven," and being essentially "the Son of God," not "born aga.in," bnt "sent from God," originally and fundamentally "born of the Spirit," coincid~s with, if he. does not give the ~eepest exp~nation of. the imma.cula.te conception. It 1B very startling that the one thmg he pos1t1vely mentions is the scene at Cana, where the Lord indicated his freedom from the meternal yoke, his refa.sal to claim Messianic dignity in the manner indicated by her, and yet along other lines in answer to her considerate appeal, lavishes love upon her friends, showing forth the glory of his love even more than that of his power. In eh. vL 42, by the phrase, "whose father and mother we know," the author of the Fourth Gospel reveals the fact of current belief in Christ's human parentage, and o.lso of the change of abode made by the/amily of Jesus from Nazareth to Capernaum (eh. iL 12). . .. . Such subtle harmonies of thought convince us that the author was fam1har with the Bame unique Personage, and was delineating the same character,  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. .JOHN. CIV