version. But there is nothing whatever on record in the history to give the slightest coloring to this supposition. It is doing as much injustice to the truth of history as to suppose that the Virgin Mary was this sinner. The name of this penitent sinner is strictly withheld. There is nothing in the history of Mary of Magdala to justify this aspersion of her fair fame; on the contrary, we shall see how she came into greatest intimacy with the purest followers of Jesus, devoted herself to him, and came to be controlled by a powerful yet pure passion for Jesus,-the Virgin Mary and the Magdalan Mary being his most devoted friends, and this latter Mary loving him quite as warmly as the Blessed Virgin, but with an ardor which certainly was not mother-love.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SECOND TOUR OF GALILEE AND RETURN TO CAPERNAUM.

IMMEDIATELY after this, Jesus began another circuit of preaching and miracle-working, going from village to village and from Luke viii. 1-3. Ac city to city, preaching the happy news of God's companied by women. kingdom. On this tour he was accompanied by his twelve chosen Apostles, and by many women whom he had cured of evil spirits and other infirmities. This companionship with Jesus was not out of the usual order of things, since it was customary for women of means, especially for widows, to contribute of their substance to the support of rabbis whom they reverenced. Three are mentioned as being in this company, namely, Mary called Magdalene, and Joanna, and Susanna. The first of these so devoted herself to Jesus that she became his chief friend among women, and it may be worth while to make a summary of what we can learn concerning her.

In the first place, it should be repeated that there does not appear the slightest reason for believing that she had been an extraordinary bad woman, particularly that she was a prostitute, but quite the contrary. Here is one of those unhappy cases in history in which some misapprehension has occurred which has suc ceeded in branding a name with an undeserved infamy and perpetuating it through generations. Let us see what is said

about her.

Magdala.

El-Mejdel is the name of a "miserable little Muslim village," as Robinson calls it, which is most probably the representative of the town on the western shore of the lake of Gennesaret, known as Magadan in the days of Jesus, and so called in the chief MSS., although in the authorized English version, and in the usually received Greek text of Matthew (xv. 39) it is written Magdala.† It was one of the many

* See Jerome on 1 Cor. ix. 5.

embrace every point worth notice. + Prof. Stanley's description seems to Of all the numerous towns and vil

Migdols (watch-towers) which existed in Palestine. The unfortunate identification of the saintly and loving friend of Jesus with the sinner who bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears, has made Magdala, this Mary's birthplace, familiar to all modern languages.

She comes before us first in this passage in St. Luke, associated with women of great respectability. These ladies were Joanna and Susanna. The former was the wife of Chuza,

Mary Magdalene.

the steward of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee. It is not to be supposed that this lady of the court would associate herself with a "woman of the city," a streetwalker, a prostitute, or probably even with one who had had that reputation. Moreover, the fact that Mary was engaged with these ladies in ministering to the personal wants of Jesus, shows that she, as well as each of the others, had means at her own disposal. She was not a woman of the lower ranks, in point either of prop erty or of reputation.

Her "seven devils.”

In this passage, and in Mark xvi. 9, the fact is stated that out of her Jesus had cast seven devils. Modern thought has been accustomed to associate demoniac possession with the idea of bad moral character in the possessed, which, however, is a very great error. Children, women of good repute, people in any class of society, had been liable to this terrible disease. It is a very proper remark, therefore, that we must think of her "as having had, in their most aggravated forms, some of the phenomena of mental and spiritual disease which we meet with in other demoniacs, the wretchedness of despair, the divided consciousness, the preternatural phrensy, the long-continued fits of silence." Her case had been so marked and painful that the contrast it afforded with the serenity of her condition after the great Healer had restored her, made such an impression upon those who were familiar with the circle of Jesus,

lages in what must have been the most, trance to the plain. A large solitary thickly peopled district of Palestine, thorn-tree stands beside it. The situaone only remains. A collection of a tion, otherwise unmarked, is dignified few hovels stands at the south-east cor- by the high limestone rock which overner of the plain of Gennesaret, its hangs it on the south-west, perforated name hardly altered from the ancient with caves, recalling, by a curious Magdala or Migdol, so called probably though doubtless unintentional coincifrom a watch-tower, of which ruins ap- dence, the scene of Correggio's celepear to remain, that guarded the en- brated picture."

and who afterwards chronicled their movements, that repeated mention is made of the fact.

Her devotion to Jesus.

It seems probable from the whole history that other women came and went, and did for Jesus all their love prompted and their means allowed, but Mary Magdalene never forsook him. Joanna and Susanna were not with him in his last moments. Mary Magdalene was. She was then accompanied by the wife of Alphæus and the wife of Zebedee. She remained even after Mary, the mother of Jesus, had left the sight of horror.* Her love never faltered. The other women stood afar off. She stood close to the cross, where she heard all his last words and groans. She endured the sight of the death of him whom her heart adored. She was present, perhaps tenderly aiding, when the body was taken down and when it was wrapped in fine linen, and probably assisted in depositing it in the sepulchre, and then, with her friend Mary the mother of Joses, she sat down over against the sepulchre. All her attentions were such as the daintiest love gives to the most honorable and dearly beloved. She had regarded him as a man; but as the holiest, most gifted, most charming of all the sons of men. She saw him buried, and had no hope, nor even thought, of his resurrection. She wrapped her heart up with her lord in the linen cloth they wound about the precious limbs. The next day was a sorrowful Sabbath, and on the morning following she went to the sepulchre and found it empty. She saw angels there but one Jesus was to her worth more than a thousand angels. She flew with anguish to Peter and John, and ran back with them to the sepulchre, crying, "They have taken away my lord, and I know not where they have laid him." And then she sank down almost to the verge of that horrible pit of mental disease from which she had

* From reading all the accounts in the four historians, it would seem that there was a crowd of women sorrow fully present at the execution, but all “standing afar off." Some sign from Jesus, or the promptings of nature, sent his mother Mary, and his aunt, and his friend Mary Magdalene, and his disciple John up near the cross. When Jesus had committed his mother to this disciple, the latter drew her away to the city. The aunt seems to have accom

panied the mother, so that only Mary Magdalene was present. Mary the mother of Jesus joined her, probably coming up from the crowd which stood at a distance, and sat down with her beside the sepulchre. But the whole story puts Mary Magdalene forward. This much of the history we have been compelled to anticipate to make clear the case of Mary of Magdala, the sweet and suffering saint.

been lifted. When Jesus came she did not perceive that it was he. He spoke. He said "Mary." Probably it was the one tone in which he had always spoken to her. It thrilled her back to widest consciousness, and she rushed forward to clasp his feet. Can there be anything more beautiful than this? Every great man-great in purity as well as power-has some special, honored friend among women, which friend is not his kins

The relation of Jesus

Woman. Such Jesus had, and that nearest and to her. dearest friend was Mary called Magdalene. It was not fitting that he should marry. His mission was too awful. He was to stand in sublime solitariness. He had no earthly father; he was never to have bodily descendant. But he had a human heart, and must have had craving for human love. He was the incarnation of goodness, and had no fierce words of denunciation for fallen women, whom he raised as well as forgave; but his whole record is so spotless that it shocks us to think that such a being could have found his best beloved friend in a former prostitute, and that she who had been so morally degraded could have had more than any other woman the fineness of soul to have been able to appre ciate Jesus and to attach herself to such a man with such adherent love. She was a beautiful character. She had been a great sufferer. Jesus had healed her. She was all the finer for what she had endured. She was the watchful attendant of his footsteps. Hers were probably the last human eyes into which the dying eyes of Jesus looked, and hers the first human eyes he is represented to have shown himself unto when he came back from the grave. This is all that is told.

It is most exquisite. The utmost delicacy is here. It is the sweetness, not the words of the narrative, which betrays the holy love. And after that last interview in which Jesus The most beautiful showed her how her mortal affection must be lifted of loves.

into religious worship, there is nothing more said of Mary. And then history takes this beautifullest love of all the world and mars it, and blotches her name, and associates her with all the fallen of her sex. It is to us one of the most awful problems of human biography. Hers was a bitterly beautiful lot. She had suffered. She had recovered. She loved her healer. She never could be asked to cross a certain line. But there she was met, more than any other woman, by the confidence and affection of the most exceptional of all marvellously fine characters. He died looking at