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!