That most truly affecting and edifying incident recorded by St. John as having taken place whilst Jesus was hanging in his agony on the cross, an incident which speaks to every one who has a mind to understand and a heart to feel, presents to us the last occasion on which the name of the Virgin Mother of our Lord occurs in the Gospels. No paraphrase could add force, or clearness, or beauty to the simple narrative of the Evangelist; no exposition could bring out its parts more prominently or {283} affectingly. The calmness and authority of our blessed Lord, his tenderness and affection, his filial love in the very midst of his agony, it is impossible to describe with more heart-stirring and heart-soothing pathos than is conveyed in the simple language of him whom the Saviour at that awful hour addressed, as He committed his mother to him of especial trust. But not one syllable falls from the lips of Christ, or from 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."