ything which
impressively brings home to us His humanity, there always follows
something to remind us that He was greater than the sons of men. Thus
at His birth He was laid in a manger; yet out on the pastures of
Bethlehem angels sang His praise. Long afterwards He was asleep in the
end of the boat, and so overcome with fatigue that He needed to be
awakened to realise His danger; but immediately He rebuked the winds
and the waves, and there was a great calm. When He saw the grief of
Martha and Mary, "Jesus wept"; but only a few minutes afterwards He
cried, "Lazarus, come forth," and He was obeyed. So it was to the very
last. In studying the Second Word from the cross we saw Him opening
the gates of Paradise to the penitent thief; to-day the Third Word will
show Him to us as the Son of a woman, concerned in His dying hour for
her bodily sustenance.

I.

The eye of Jesus, roving over the multitude whose component parts have
been already described, lighted on His mother standing at the foot of
the cross. In the words of the great mediaeval hymn, which is known to
all by its opening words, _Stabat mater_, and from the fact that it has
been set to music by such masters as Palestrina, Haydn and Rossini,

"Beside the cross in tears
The woeful mother stood,
Bent 'neath the weight of years,
And viewed His flowing blood;
Her mind with grief was torn,
Her strength was ebbing fast,
And through her heart forlorn
The sword of anguish passed."

When she carried her Infant into the temple in the pride of young
motherhood, the venerable Simeon foretold that a sword would pierce
through her own soul also. Often perhaps had she wondered, in happy
days, what this mysterious prediction might mean. But now she knew,
for the sword was smiting her, stab after stab.

It is always hard for a mother to see her son die. She naturally
expects him to lay her head in the grave. Especially is this the case
with the first-born, the son of her strength. Jesus was only
thirty-three, and Mary must have reached the age when a mother most of
all leans for support on a strong and loving son.

Far worse, however, was the death He was dying--the death of a
criminal. Many mothers have had to suffer from the kind of death their
children have died, when it has been in great agony or in otherwise
distressing circumstances. But what mother's sufferings were ever
equal to Mary's? There He hung before her eyes; but