Woman in Sacred History
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Jesus, meanwhile, is surrounded by an eager crowd to whom he is teaching the way to God. He is in that current of joy above all joy where he can see the new immortal life springing up under his touch; he feels in himself the ecstasy of that spiritual vigor which he is awakening in all around him; he is comforting the mourner, opening the eyes of the spiritually blind, and lighting the fire of heavenly love in cold and comfortless hearts. Love without bounds, the love of the shepherd and bishop of souls, flows from him to the poor whom he is enriching. The ecstatic moment is interrupted by a message: "Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee." With a burst of heavenly love he spreads his arms towards the souls whom he is guiding, and says, "Who is my mother and who are my brethren? My mother and my brethren are these that hear the Word of God and do it; for whosoever will do the will of my Father in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother." As well attempt to imprison the light of the joyous sun in one dwelling as to bound the infinite love of Jesus by one family!
There was an undoubted purpose in the record of these two places where Jesus so positively declares that he had risen to a sphere with which his maternal relations had nothing to do. They were set as a warning and a protest, in advance, against that idolatry of the woman and mother the advent of which he must have foreseen.
In the same manner we learn that, while he was teaching, a woman cried out in enthusiasm, "Blessed be the womb that bore thee, and the paps that thou hast sucked." But he answered, "Yea, rather, blessed are they that hear the Word of God and do it." In the same grave spirit of serious admonition he checked the delight of his disciples when they exulted in miraculous gifts. "Lord, even the devils were subject unto us." "Rejoice not that the devils are subject to you, but rather rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
Undoubtedly an hour was found to console and quiet the fears of his mother so far as in the nature of the case they could be consoled. But the radical difficulty, with her as with his own disciples, lay in the fixed and rooted idea of the temporal Messianic kingdom. There was an awful depth of sorrow before them, to which every day was bringing them nearer. It was pathetic to see how Jesus was moving daily among friends that he loved and to whom he knew that his career was to be one of the bitterest anguish and disappointment. He tried in the plainest words to tell them the scenes of his forthcoming trial, rejection, suffering, death, and resurrection, – words so plain that we wonder any one could hear them and not understand, – and yet it is written, "They understood not his saying. They questioned one with another what the rising from the dead should mean." They discussed offices and stations in the new kingdom, and contended who should be greatest. When the mother of James and John asked the place of honor for her sons, he looked at her with a pathetic patience.
"Ye know not what ye ask. Can ye drink of the cup that I shall drink? Can ye be baptized with my baptism? They said, We are able." He answered, with the scenes of the cross in view, "Ye shall, indeed, drink of the cup I shall drink, and be baptized with my baptism; but to sit on my right hand and my left is not mine to give. It shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father."
We see no more of Mary till we meet her again standing with the beloved John at the foot of the cross. The supreme hour is come; the sword has gone to the depths! All that she hoped is blasted, and all that she feared is come! In this hour, when faith and hope were both darkened, Mary stood by the power of love. She stood by the cross! The words are characteristic and wonderful. We see still the same intense, outwardly collected woman who met the salutation of the angel with calm inquiry, and accepted glory and danger with such self-surrender, – silent, firm, sustained in her anguish as in her joy! After years of waiting and hope deferred, after such glorious miracles, such mighty deeds and words, such evident tokens of God's approval, she sees her son forsaken by God and man. To hers as to no other mortal ears must have sounded that death-cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
But through all, Mary stood; she did not faint or fall, – she was resolved to drink of his cup to the last bitter dregs. Though the whole world turn against him, though God himself seems to forsake him, she will stand by him, she will love him, she will adore him till death, and after, and forever!
The dying words of Jesus have been collected and arranged by the Church in a rosary, – pearls brought up from the depths of a profound agony, and of precious value in all sorrow. Of those seven last words it is remarkable what a proportion were words for other than himself. The first sharp pang of torture wrung from him the prayer, "Father, forgive them; they know not what they do." The second word was of pardon and comfort to the penitent thief. The third the commendation of his mother to his beloved friend.
If any mortal creature might be said to have entered into the sufferings of the great atonement with Jesus, it was his mother in those last hours. Never has sorrow presented itself in a form so venerable. Here is a depth of anguish which inspires awe as well as tenderness. The magnificent "Stabat Mater," in which the Church commemorates Mary's agony, is an outburst with which no feeling heart can refuse sympathy. We rejoice when again we meet her, after the resurrection, in the company of all the faithful, waiting to receive that promised illumination of the Holy Spirit which solved every mystery and made every doubt clear.
In all this history we see the picture of a woman belonging to that rare and beautiful class who approach the nearest to our ideal of angelic excellence. We see a woman in whom the genius and fire of the poet and prophetess is tempered by a calm and equable balance of the intellect; a woman not only to feel deeply, but to examine calmly and come to just results, and to act with energy befitting every occasion. Hers are the powers which might, in the providence of God, have had a public mission, but they are all concentrated in the nobler, yet secret mission of the mother. She lived and acted in her son, not in herself. There seems to be evidence that both Jesus and his mother had that constitutional delicacy and refinement that made solitude and privacy peculiarly dear, and the hurry and bustle and inevitable vulgarities of a public career a trial. Mary never seems to have sought to present herself as a public teacher; and in the one instance when she sought her son in public, it was from the tremulous anxiety of a mother's affection rather than the self-assertion of a mother's pride. In short, Mary is presented to us as the mother, and the mother alone, seeking no other sphere. Like a true mother she passed out of self into her son, and the life that she lived was in him; and in this sacred self-abnegation she must forever remain, the one ideal type of perfect motherhood.
This entire absence of self-seeking and self-assertion is the crowning perfection of Mary's character. The steadiness, the silent reticence, with which she held herself subject to God's will, waiting calmly on his Providence, never by a hasty word or an imprudent action marring the divine order or seeking to place self in the foreground, is an example which we may all take reverently to our own bosoms.
We may not adore, but we may love her. She herself would not that we turn from her Son to invoke her; but we may tenderly rejoice in the feeling so common in the primitive Church, that in drawing near to Jesus we draw near to all the holy who were dear to him, and so to her, the most blessed among women. We long to know more of this hidden life of Mary on earth, but it is a comfort to remember that these splendid souls with whom the Bible makes us acquainted are neither dead nor lost. If we "hear the Word of God and do it," we may hope some day to rise to the world where we shall find them, and ask of them all those untold things which our hearts yearn to know.
THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS
I n the great drama of the history of Jesus many subordinate figures move across the stage, indicated with more or less power by the unconscious and artless simplicity of the narrative. Among these is the daughter of Herodias, whose story has often been a favorite subject among artists as giving an opportunity of painting female beauty and fascination in affinity with the deepest and most dreadful tragedy.
Salome was the daughter of Herodias, who was a woman of unbridled passions and corrupt will. This Herodias had eloped from her husband Philip, son of Herod the Great, to marry her step-uncle, Herod Antipas, who forsook for her his lawful wife, the daughter of the king of Arabia. Herod appears in the story of the Gospels as a man with just enough conscience and aspiration after good to keep him always uneasy, but not enough to restrain from evil.
When the ministry of John powerfully excited the public mind, we are told by St. Mark that "Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and holy, and he observed him, and when he heard him he did many things and heard him gladly."
The Jewish religion strongly cultivated conscience and a belief in the rewards and punishments of a future life, and the style of John's preaching was awful and monitory. "Behold the axe is laid at the root of the tree, and whatsoever tree doth not bring forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire." There was no indulgence for royal trees; no concession to the divine right of kings to do evil. John was a prophet in the spirit and power of Elijah; he dwelt in the desert, he despised the power and splendor of courts, and appeared before kings as God's messenger, to declare his will and pronounce sentence of wrath on the disobedient. So without scruple he denounced the adulterous connection of his royal hearer, and demanded that Herod should put away the guilty woman as the only condition of salvation. Herod replied, as kings have been in the habit of replying to such inconvenient personal application of God's laws: he shut John up in prison. It is said in St. Mark that Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have killed him, but she could not. The intensity of a woman's hatred looks out through this chink of the story as the secret exciting power to the man's slower passions. She would have had him killed had she been able to have her way; she can only compass his imprisonment for the present, and she trusts to female importunities and blandishments to finish the vengeance. The hour of opportunity comes. We are told in the record: "And when a convenient day came, Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords and high captains and chief estates of Galilee."
One of the entertainments of the evening was the wonderful dancing of Salome, the daughter of his paramour. We have heard in the annals of the modern theatre into what inconsiderate transports of rapture crowned heads and chief captains and mighty men of valor have been thrown by the dancing of some enthroned queen of the ballet; and one does not feel it incredible, therefore, that Herod, who appeared to be nervously susceptible to all kinds of influences, said to the enchantress, "Ask me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee; and he sware unto her after the pattern of Ahasuerus to Esther, saying, Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me I will give it thee, to the half of my kingdom." And now the royal tigress, who has arranged this snare and watched the king's entrance into the toils, prepares to draw the noose. Salome goes to her mother and says, "What shall I ask?" The answer is ready. Herodias said, with perfect explicitness, "Ask for the head of John the Baptist." So the graceful creature trips back into the glittering court circle, and, bowing her flower-like head, says in the sweetest tones, "Give me here John the Baptist's head in a charger."
The narrative says very artlessly, "And the king was sorry, but for his oath's sake, and for the sake of them that sat with him at meat, he would not refuse her, and immediately the king sent an executioner and commanded his head to be brought, and he went and beheaded him in prison!"
What wonderful contrasted types of womanhood the Gospel history gives! We see such august and noble forms as Elisabeth, the mother of the Baptist, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, alongside of this haughty royal adulteress and her beautiful daughter. The good were the lower, and the bad the higher class of that day. Vice was enthroned and triumphant, while virtue walked obscure by hedges and byways; a dancing girl had power to take away the noblest life in Judæa, next to that which was afterward taken on Calvary.
No throb of remorse that we know of ever visited these women, but of Herod we are told that when afterwards he heard of the preaching and mighty works of Jesus, he said, "It is John the Baptist that I slew. He is risen from the dead, therefore mighty works do show forth themselves in him."
In the last scenes of our Lord's life we meet again this credulous, superstitious, bad man. Pilate, embarrassed by a prisoner who alarmed his fears and whom he was troubled to dispose of, sent Jesus to Herod. Thus we see the licentious tool and slave of a bad woman has successively before his judgment-seat the two greatest men of his age and of all ages. It is said Herod received Jesus gladly, for he had a long time been desirous to see him, for he hoped some miracle would be done by him. But he was precisely of the class of whom our Lord spoke when he said, "An adulterous generation seeketh a sign, and there shall no sign be given them." God has no answer to give to wicked, unrepentant curiosity, and though Herod questioned Jesus in many words he answered him nothing. Then we are told, "Herod with his men of war set Jesus at naught, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe, and sent him again to Pilate." And this was how the great ones of the earth received their Lord.
THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA
We are struck, in the history of our Lord, with the unworldliness of his manner of living his daily life and fulfilling his great commission. It is emphatically true, in the history of Jesus, that his ways are not as our ways, and his thoughts as our thoughts. He did not choose the disciples of his first ministry as worldly wisdom would have chosen them. Though men of good and honest hearts, they were neither the most cultured nor the most influential of his nation. We should have said that men of the standing of Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus were preferable, other things being equal, to Peter the fisherman or Matthew the tax-gatherer; but Jesus thought otherwise.
And furthermore, he sometimes selected those apparently most unlikely to further his ends. Thus, when he had a mission of mercy in view for Samaria, he called to the work a woman; not such as we should suppose a divine teacher would choose, – not a pre-eminently intellectual or a very good woman, – but, on the contrary, one of a careless life and loose morals and little culture. The history of this person, of the way in which he sought her acquaintance, arrested her attention, gained access to her heart, and made of her a missionary to draw the attention of her people to him, is wonderfully given by St. John. We have the image of a woman – such as many are, social, good-humored, talkative, and utterly without any high moral sense – approaching the well, where she sees this weary Jew reclining to rest himself. He introduces himself to her acquaintance by asking a favor, – the readiest way to open the heart of a woman of that class. She is evidently surprised that he will speak to her, being a Jew, and she a daughter of a despised and hated race. "How is it," she says, "that thou, a Jew, askest drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" Jesus now answers her in that symbolic and poetic strain which was familiar with him: "If thou knewest the gift of God, and who this is that asketh drink of thee, thou wouldst ask of him, and he would give thee living water." The woman sees in this only the occasion for a lively rejoinder. "Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; from whence then hast thou that living water?" With that same mysterious air, as if speaking unconsciously from out some higher sphere, he answers, "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again; but whosoever shall drink of the water that I shall give, shall never thirst. The water that I shall give shall be a well in him springing up to everlasting life."
Impressed strangely by the words of the mysterious stranger, she answers confusedly, "Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw." There is a feeble attempt at a jest struggling with the awe which is growing upon her. Jesus now touches the vital spot in her life. "Go, call thy husband and come hither." She said, "I have no husband." He answers, "Well hast thou said I have no husband; thou hast had five husbands, and he thou now hast is not thy husband; in that saidst thou truly."
The stern, grave chastity of the Jew, his reverence for marriage, strike coldly on the light-minded woman accustomed to the easy tolerance of a low state of society. She is abashed, and hastily seeks to change the subject: "Sir, I see thou art a prophet"; and then she introduces the controverted point of the two liturgies and temples of Samaria and Jerusalem, – not the first nor the last was she of those who seek relief from conscience by discussing doctrinal dogmas. Then, to our astonishment, Jesus proceeds to declare to this woman of light mind and loose morality the sublime doctrines of spiritual worship, to predict the new era which is dawning on the world: "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father. The hour cometh and now is when the true worshiper shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." Then, in a sort of confused awe at his earnestness, the woman says, "I know that Messiah shall come, and when he is come he will tell us all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am he."
At this moment the disciples returned. With their national prejudices, it was very astonishing, as they drew nigh, to see that their master was in close and earnest conversation with a Samaritan woman. Nevertheless, when the higher and godlike in Jesus was in a state of incandescence, the light and fire were such as to awe them. They saw that he was in an exalted mood, which they dared not question. All the infinite love of the Saviour, the shepherd of souls, was awaking within him; the soul whom he has inspired with a new and holy calling is leaving him on a mission that is to bring crowds to his love. The disciples pray him to eat, but he is no longer hungry, no longer thirsty, no longer weary; he exults in the gifts that he is ready to give, and the hearts that are opening to receive.
The disciples pray him, "Master, eat." He said, "I have meat to eat that ye know not of." They question in an undertone, "Hath any one brought him aught to eat?" He answers, "My meat and my drink is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish his work." Then, pointing towards the city, he speaks impassioned words of a harvest which is at hand; and they wonder.
But meanwhile the woman, with the eagerness and bright, social readiness which characterize her, is calling to her townsmen, "Come, see a man that told me all that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?"
What followed on this? A crowd press out to see the wonder. Jesus is invited as an honored guest; he spends two days in the city, and gathers a band of disciples.
After the resurrection of Jesus, we find further fruits of the harvest sown by a chance interview of Jesus with this woman. In the eighth of Acts we read of the ingathering of a church in a city of Samaria, where it is said that "the people, with one accord, gave heed to the things spoken by Philip, and there was great joy in that city."
One thing in this story impresses us strongly, – the power which Jesus had to touch the divinest capabilities in the unlikeliest subjects. He struck at once and directly for what was highest and noblest in souls where it lay most hidden. As physician of souls he appealed directly to the vital moral force, and it acted under his touch. He saw the higher nature in this woman, and as one might draw a magnet over a heap of rubbish and bring out pure metal, so he from this careless, light-minded, good-natured, unprincipled creature, brought out the suppressed and hidden yearning for a better and higher life. She had no prejudices to keep, no station to preserve; she was even to her own low moral sense consciously a sinner, and she was ready at the kind and powerful appeal to leave all and follow him.
We have no further history of her. She is living now somewhere; but wherever she may be, we may be quite sure she never has forgotten the conversation at the well in Samaria, and the man who "told her all that ever she did."
MARY MAGDALENE
One of the most splendid ornaments of the Dresden Gallery is the Magdalen of Batoni. The subject has been a favorite among artists, and one sees, in a tour of the various collections of Europe, Magdalens by every painter, in every conceivable style. By far the greater part of them deal only with the material aspects of the subject. The exquisite pathos of the story, the passionate anguish and despair of the penitent, the refinement and dignity of Divine tenderness, are often lost sight of in mere physical accessories. Many artists seem to have seen in the subject only a chance to paint a voluptuously beautiful woman in tears. Titian appears to have felt in this wonderful story nothing but the beauty of the woman's hair, and gives us a picture of the most glorious tresses that heart could conceive, perfectly veiling and clothing a very common-place weeping woman. Correggio made of the study only a charming effect of light and shade and color. A fat, pretty, comfortable little body lying on the ground reading, is about the whole that he sees in the subject.
Batoni, on the contrary, seems, by some strange inspiration, to set before us one of the highest, noblest class of women, – a creature so calm, so high, so pure, that we ask involuntarily, How could such a woman ever have fallen? The answer is ready. There is a class of women who fall through what is highest in them, through the noblest capability of a human being, – utter self-sacrificing love. True, we cannot flatter ourselves that these instances are universal, but they do exist. Many women fall through the weakness of self-indulgent passion, many from love of luxury, many from vanity and pride, too many from the mere coercion of hard necessity; but among the sad, unblest crowd there is a class who are the victims of sovereign power to forgive sins and dispense favors. The repentant Magdalene became henceforth one of the characteristic figures in the history of the Christian Church. Mary Magdalene became eventually a prominent figure in the mythic legends of the mediæval mythology. A long history of missionary labors and enthusiastic preaching of the gospel in distant regions of the earth is ascribed to her. Churches arose that bore her name, hymns were addressed to her. Even the reforming Savonarola addresses one of his spiritual canticles to St. Mary Magdalene. The various pictures of her which occur in every part of Europe are a proof of the interest which these legends inspired. The most of them are wild and poetic, and exhibit a striking contrast to the concise brevity and simplicity of the New Testament story.
The mythic legends make up a romance in which Mary the sister of Martha and Mary Magdalene the sinner are oddly considered as the same person. It is sufficient to read the chapter in St. John which gives an account of the raising of Lazarus, to perceive that such a confusion is absurd. Mary and Martha there appear as belonging to a family in good standing, to which many flocked with expressions of condolence and respect in time of affliction. And afterwards, in that grateful feast made for the restoration of their brother, we read that so many flocked to the house that the jealousy of the chief priests was excited. All these incidents, representing a family of respectability, are entirely inconsistent with any such supposition. But while we repudiate this extravagance of the tradition, there does seem ground for identifying the Mary Magdalene, who was one of the most devoted followers of our Lord, with the forgiven sinner of this narrative. We read of a company of women who followed Jesus and ministered to him. In the eighth chapter of Luke he is said to be accompanied by "certain women which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities," among whom is mentioned "Mary called Magdalene," as having been a victim of demoniacal possession. Some women of rank and fortune also are mentioned as members of the same company: "Joanna the wife of Chusa, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others who ministered to him of their substance." A modern commentator thinks it improbable that Mary Magdalene could be identified with the "sinner" spoken of by St. Luke, because women of standing like Joanna and Susanna would not have received one of her class to their company. We ask why not? If Jesus had received her, had forgiven and saved her; if he acknowledged previously her grateful ministrations, – is it likely that they would reject her? It was the very peculiarity and glory of the new kingdom that it had a better future for sinners, and for sinful woman as well as sinful man. Jesus did not hesitate to say to the proud and prejudiced religious aristocracy of his day, "The publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you." We cannot doubt that the loving Christian women who ministered to Jesus received this penitent sister as a soul absolved and purified by the sovereign word of their Lord, and henceforth there was for her a full scope for that ardent, self-devoting power of her nature which had been her ruin, and was now to become her salvation.