y ask, would He have given this turn to such an
address, had He not desired to check any such feeling towards her?

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