devout virgin, full of childlike innocence, purity, and humility ; and the few traces we have of her later life, especially the touching scene at the cross,* confii-m this impression. But, on the other hand, it is equally unquestionable, that she is nowhere in the ISTew Testa- ment excepted from the universal sinfulness and the universal need of redemption, and represented as immaculately holy, or as in any way an object of divine veneration. On the con- trary, true to the genuine female character, she modestly stands back throughout the gospel history, and in the Acts and the Epistles she is mentioned barely once, and then simply as the " mother of Jesus ; " ° even her birth and her death are miknown. Her glory fades in holy humility before the higher glory of her Son. In truth, there are plain indications that ■ the Lord, with prophetic reference to the future apotheosis of His mother according to the flesh, from the first gave warning against it. At the wedding in Cana He administered to her, though leniently and respectfully, a rebuke for premature zeal mingled perhaps with maternal vanity.* On a subsequent * Luke i. 43 : 'H ij-^ttip tov Kvpiov fxov. ^ Luke i. 28 : XnTpe, Kexap'TajyueVTj • o Kvpios ihto, aov, ev\oy7)ix(VT] av iv yvvat^iv. So Elizabeth, Luke i. 42 : Ev\oyTiiJ.fV7] av if ywut^i, koJ eliXoyrifMfi'os 6 Kap-whs rrjs KoiXias (TOV. ^ Luke i. 48 : 'Airh tov vvv /xaKapioviri yue ircttrai al yeveai. * John xix. 25-27. ^ Acts i. 14."~) * John ii. 4 : T/ iixo) koI ffoi, yvvai ; Comp. the commentators on the passage. The expression '■^ woman'''' is entirely respectful, comp. John xix. 21; xx. 13, 15. But the " What have I to do with thee? " is, like the Hebrew "bl "'^"n^ (Josh. xxii. 24 ; 2 Sam. xvi. 10 ; xix. 22 ; 1 Kings xvii. 18 ; 2 Kings iii. 13 ; 2 Chron. xxxv. 21), a rebuke and censure of undue interference ; comp. Matt. viii. 29 ; Luke viii. 28 ; Mark i. 24 (also the classics). Meyer, the best grammatical expositor, ob- serves on yxjvai : " That Jesus did not say /xrirfp, flowed involuntarily from the / y|/fe M^Ty^^ "^w^ crM^^ ^^^--^ ^ ^ § 81. THE WORSHIP OF MARY. MARIOLOGY. 413 occasion he put her on a level with other female disciples, and made the carnal consanguinity subordinate to the spiritual kinship of the doing of the will of God.' The well-meant and in itself quite innocent benediction of an unknown woman upon His mother He did not indeed censure, but He corrected it Avith a benediction upon all who hear the word of God and keep it, and thus forestalled the deification of Mary by confining the ascription within the bounds of modera- tion," In striking contrast with this healthful and sober represen- tation of Mary in the canonical Gospels are the numerous apo- cryphal Gospels of the