the pen of the beloved disciple, who records this act of his blessed Master’s filial piety, which can by possibility be construed to imply, that our blessed Lord intended Mary to be held in such honour by his disciples, as would be shown in the offering of prayer and praise to her after her dissolution.  He who could by a word, rather by the mere motion of his will, have bidden the whole course of nature and of providence, so to proceed as that all its operations should provide for the health and safety, the support and comfort of his mother—­He, when He was on the cross, and when He was on the point of committing his soul into the hands of his Father, leaves her to the care of one whom He loved, and whose sincerity and devotedness to Him He had, humanly speaking, long experienced.  He bids him treat Mary as his own mother, He bids Mary look to John as to her own son for support and solace:  “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus, therefore, saw his mother and the disciple standing by whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son; then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother.” [John xix. 25.] And He added no more.  If Christ willed that his beloved mother should end her days in peace, removed equally {284} from want and the desolation of widowhood on the one hand, and from splendour and notoriety on the other, nothing could be more natural than such conduct in such a Being at such a time.  But if his purpose was to exalt her into an object of religious adoration, that nations should kneel before her, and all people do her homage, then the words and the conduct of our Lord at this hour seem altogether unaccountable:  and so would the words of the Evangelist also be, “And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.”

After this not another word falls from the pen of St. John which can be made to bear on the station, the character, the person, or circumstances of Mary.  After his resurrection our Saviour remained on earth forty days before He finally ascended into heaven.  Many of his interviews and conversations with his disciples during that interval are recorded in the Gospel.  Every one of the four Evangelists relates some act or some saying of our Lord on one or more of those occasions.  Mention is made by name of Mary Magdalene, of Mary [the mother] of Joses, of Mary [the mother] of James, of Salome, of Joanna, of Peter, of Cleophas, of the disciple whom Jesus loved, at whose house the mother of our Lord then was; of Thomas, of Nathanael.  The eleven also are mentioned generally.  But by no one of the Evangelists is reference made at all to Mary the mother of our Lord, as having been present at any one of those interviews; her name is not alluded to throughout.