rt is pierced with anguish on account of a son's
illness, or misfortunes, or early death; but she can bear it if she is
not pierced with the poisoned sword. What is that? It is when she has
to be ashamed of her child--when he is brought to ruin by his own
misdeeds. This is a sorrow far worse than death.

How beautiful it is to see a mother wearing as her chief ornament the
good name and the honourable success of a son! You who still have a
mother or a father, let this be to you both a spur to exertion and a
talisman against temptation. To some is accorded the rarer privilege
of being able to support their parents in old age. And surely there is
no sweeter memory in the world than the recollection of having been
allowed to do this. "If any widow have children or nephews, let them
learn first to show piety at home and to requite their parents; for
that is good and acceptable before God. . . . But if any provide not
for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied
the faith, and is worse than an infidel." [5]

But this sermon, delivered from the pulpit of the cross, has a wider
range. It informs us that our Saviour has a concern for our temporal
as well as for our eternal interests. Even on the cross, where He was
expiating the sin of the world, He was thinking of the comfort of His
widowed mother. Let the needy and the deserted take courage from this,
and cast all their care upon Him, for He careth for them. It is often
an astonishment to see how widows especially are helped through. When
they are left, with perhaps a number of little children, it seems
incomprehensible how they can get on. Yet not infrequently their
families turn out better than those where the father has been spared.
One reason is, perhaps, that their children feel from the first that
they must take a share of the responsibility, and this makes men and
women of them. But the chief reason undoubtedly is that God fulfils
His own promise to be a Father to the fatherless and a Husband to the
widow, and that they have not been forgotten by Him who in the hour of
His absorbing agony remembered Mary.

[1] "Woman, behold thy son . . . Behold thy mother."

[2] It is not certain whether John xix. 25 describes three women or
four. Is the second Salome, John's mother?

[3] Chrysostom.

[4] "Woman" may mean sadly (proleptically), "Thou hast no son now."

[5] 1 Tim. v. 6, 8.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE FOURTH WORD FR