That the Divine Being, in choosing a woman to be the mother, the educator, and for thirty years the most intimate friend, of his son, should have selected one of rare and peculiar excellences seems only probable. It was from her that the holy child, who was to increase in wisdom and in stature, was to learn from day to day the constant and needed lessons of inexperienced infancy and childhood. Her lips taught him human language; her lessons taught him to read the sacred records of the law and the prophets, and the sacred poetry of the psalms; to her he was "subject," when the ardor of childhood expanding into youth led him to quit her side and spend his time in the temple at the feet of the Doctors of the Law; with her he lived in constant communion during those silent and hidden years of his youth that preceded his mission. A woman so near to Christ, so identified with him in the largest part of his life, cannot but be a subject of the deepest and most absorbing study to the Christian heart. And yet there is in regard to this most interesting subject an utter silence of any authentic tradition, so far as we have studied, of the first two or three centuries. There is nothing related by St. John, with whom Mary lived as with a son after the Saviour's death, except the very brief notices in his Gospel. Upon this subject, as upon that other topic so exciting to the mere human heart, the personal appearance of Jesus, there is a reticence that impresses us like a divine decree of secrecy. In all that concerns the peculiarly human relations of Jesus, the principle that animated his apostles after the descent of the Holy Spirit was, "Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now, henceforth, know we him no more." His family life with his mother would doubtless have opened lovely pages; but it must remain sealed up among those many things spoken of by St. John, which, if they were recorded, the "world itself could not contain the books that should be written." All that we have, then, to build upon is the brief account given in the Gospels. The first two chapters of St. Matthew and the first two chapters of St. Luke are our only data, except one or two very brief notices in St. John, and one slight mention in the Acts.