Of all the wonderful deeds and wonderful words not one escaped Mary's eye or failed to stir her thought and hope. In the first of these exercises she stands in contrast with others. Mary heard the report of the shepherds about the vision of “the angel of the Lord,” and the song of the attendant host announcing the Lord Christ the Saviour. Mary witnessed their wonder. But she did far more: she stored away in her heart all the incidents and sayings for future frequent and abiding consideration. She revolved them again and again; placed them in array, side by side, together; so “casting them about” to ascertain and appreciate all their force and worth. To her spirit the birth scenes and ceremonies, the prophecies and testimonies of Simeon and Anna, supplied richest material for reflection while the Babe was growing to the Boy of twelve; while that Boy was passing on “in wisdom and in stature,” “in favour with God and man,” up to manhood; aye, and while that “man Christ Jesus” was so marvellously fulfilling His sublime service and suffering as the world's Redeemer.
The life of our Lord Jesus Christ is so full and deep, its relations are so varied and vital that it takes much “pondering” to comprehend it. Mary did not grudge that care. Mysterious as were many of its scenes, and many of His words and acts; unutterably distressing as was its soul-piercing close, she never ceased to follow and wait. She shared the first revelations of the resurrection morn; she waited with the holy company in the Upper Room; she received of the first gifts of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and then was able to piece together in sweetest harmony and completeness the sayings and doings she had stored from the first. Mystery vanished in light, and the light was ineffable glory. Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth, Egypt; the manger, the ministry, the cross, the sepulchre; angels and men-all became clear, radiant. There was never a thought in that mother's mind, never an affection in her heart, that failed of blessed satisfaction.
But Mary's thoughtfulness is seen more clearly in the long years of waiting. Think of what it means that all at once the wonderful and abnormal is exchanged for the purely commonplace and normal. We hear no more of angel choirs, of strange stars that kindle hope and expectation, of hostile governors, and miraculous escapes. No one appears to have sought out the Child whose birth had evoked such tumult and such marvels. No pilgrim comes to Nazareth inquiring for Him to whom kings had paid obeisance. All these happenings, on whose significance faith and hope could feed, fade into a myth, a legend, which the world forgets. Silence falls upon the scene, impenetrable silence. The Child grows as other children grow, learns His Shema, or His Hebrew catechism, at His mother's knee; plays with other children, unrecognized as the Christ; grows up to take a part in Joseph's trade; lives a simple life, varied only by visits to His kinsfolk or to Jerusalem; and shows no sign of His Messiahship. Can we comprehend what Mary thought in those days? Can we imagine with what weariness of heart she watched the years pass, the uneventful years, and knew her own life passing with them? Was not hers the hope deferred that makes the heart sick? At times no doubt it was; she would not have been human if it were not. Thirty years-it is a lifetime, and oh to think,
So many worlds, so much to do,
So little done, such things to be.
Thirty years, during which the world seems settling into deeper sleep, and the times pass without a sign! But through all those years Mary pondered in her heart the things the angel had spoken, and her life was nourished at the springs of faith. Perhaps at times from that sweet childhood, from that full and gracious manhood, there flashed a light that comforted and startled her. We know it was so concerning that journey to Jerusalem, when she found the Boy of twelve disputing with the doctors in the Temple, for we are told that “his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.” How full of homely truth that touch. What mother does not cherish in her heart the sayings of her child, which to her, and perhaps to her alone, seem full of wisdom and significance? And we know by another sign also that her faith had not failed. When the marriage feast was held in Cana of Galilee, it was Mary who said to the wondering servants, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” She had subjugated herself already to her Son, as only mothers can; she had a kind of faith in Him possible only to mothers. But how hard the test! How easy to have thought herself deceived, to have relapsed into quiet sad negation of all that had once seemed so miraculous, to have become immersed in ordinary household cares and duties, to have let the light lighted in that secret shrine go out for want of vigilance! The young Christ passed in and out of that simple house; silent, apparently content, seeking no publicity, giving no sign that He was aware of His own great destiny, and yet of Him the angel said, “He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” What but faith could hold that message true, and ponder it in the heart, and still believe amid a life so barren of event, amid the passing of the years that gave no credibility to her dream, amid the silence of God Himself, who seemed to have forgotten His beloved Son?
Ah! knew'st thou of the end, when first
That Babe was on thy bosom nurs'd?-
Or when He tottered round thy knee
Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee?-
And through His boyhood, year by year
Eating with Him the Passover,
Didst thou discern confusedly
That holier sacrament, when He,
The bitter cup about to quaff,
Should break the bread and eat thereof?-
Or came not yet the knowledge, even
Till on some day forecast in Heaven
His feet passed through thy door to press
Upon His Father's business?-
Or still was God's high secret kept?
Nay, but I think the whisper crept
Like growth through childhood. Work and play,
Things common to the course of day,
Awed thee with meanings unfulfill'd;
And all through girlhood, something still'd
Thy senses like the birth of light,
When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night
Or washed thy garments in the stream;
To whose white bed had come the dream
That He was thine and thou wast His
Who feeds among the field-lilies.
O solemn shadow of the end
In that wise spirit long contain'd!
O awful end! and those unsaid
Long years when It was Finished!1 [Note: D. G. Rossetti, Poetical Works, 245.]
