Over all was poured the soft light of the paschal moon,
hanging low in the western heavens, as if it were the light escaped from Mary’s
heart which was making all the scene so deeply sad, so sadly beautiful! Slowly
they went, and in silence as soft as the foot of midnight itself. If they had
sung psalms, the restless city might have heard. But in truth what psalms were
there which they could sing? Not even the inspired harp of David could have
shed sweet sounds fit for a dirge for such a funeral. No one spoke in all that
company. What should they say? What words could have expressed their thoughts?
“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” But there are times when
the heart is over full, and then it cannot speak. So was it with that
procession. A deeper shadow of sorrow had never fallen upon men, than the gloom
which fell on those who now were wending from the top of Calvary to the garden
tomb.
There was grief enough to have darkened a whole world in
Mary’s singular heart. Human suffering is not infinite, but it is near upon it,
and she had come now to its very uttermost extremity. There was only one
sacrifice she could make now, and she was in the very act of making it. She was
going to put away from herself and out of her own power, to hide in a rocky
tomb and let Roman soldiers come and keep watch over it, that Body which though
it was dead, was more than life to her. Then, indeed, she would stand upon the
highest pinnacle of evangelical poverty, to which God had promised such mighty
things. She would only keep for herself that which she could not part with, and
would not have parted with if she could, a broken heart utterly submerged in
such waters of bitterness as had never flowed round any living creature
heretofore. There never would have been joy on this planet again, if her accumulated
woe had been divided into little parcels, and distributed to each child of Adam
as he comes into the world.
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