The Magnificat
Bishop Wm. Alexander. Luke 1:46-55 And Mary said, My soul does magnify the Lord,… Every burst of true religious life is accompanied by its burst of religious poetry. This is marked in our own most popular hymn-books by the names of Luther, Wesley and Whitfield, Keble and Newman. St. Luke's Gospel shows us that it was so just before our Lord's appearance. All through that Gospel, indeed, an attentive ear can catch choral vibrations. Its close is anthem-like. But more especially is this the case with its opening chapter. The air is full of song. The whole field is in flower. I. LET US LOOK AT THE HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK IN WHICH THE MAGNIFICAT IS SET. Mary was misconstrued by the world. She was called upon to bear the cross which is heaviest for the purest souls — a cross of shame. In Nazareth she could not remain. She turned to the spot towards which she seemed to be invited by an angel's lips, and pointed by an angel's finger. A light twinkled for her among the hills. If, as seems most probable, Elisabeth lived at Hebron, the journey would be, for a traveller supplied with the best horses of the country, one of seven or eight hours; for one unable to procure such help, about twice that length of time. The journey lies through one of the sternest and wildest routes in Palestine. The solitude is the most desperate which travellers of experience have ever traversed. The scenery is so stern that the very mountains of Moab, touched as they are with a beautiful rosy tint, present a contrast which is almost a relief. At the end of her second or third day's journey — probably late on the third — lines of blue smoke, piercing a sky touched by the twilight shadows, told the Virgin that she was drawing near to Hebron. The softer and more humanised character of the landscape might insensibly communicate a measure of relief to that aching heart. Yet Hebron was a spot which could scarcely be entered without solemn associations, by one whose spirit habitually breathed and moved in the atmosphere of the Old Testament Scriptures. It not only included the grotto of Machpelah, the last resting-place of Sarah, of Abraham, of Isaac, Rebekah, Leah, Jacob. Its foundation ascended to an antiquity which just exceeded that of Tanis, in Egypt. Long before the Canaanites came, the gigantic shapes of Anakim and Rephaim moved through the primaeval forests by which it was surrounded. The Canaanites gave it the name of Arba, a great warrior of the Anaks (Kirjath-arba). These distant and marvellous recollections must impress the least susceptible imagination. However this may have been, there must have beer a pathos in the quiet worn of the gentle maiden as she saluted Elisabeth. Elisabeth, for her part, knew her cousin's voice, even before she saw her pale and suffering face. And in the power of the Holy Spirit, the babe within her quickening, and seeming to leap into joyous life, she spoke with a thrilling and exultant voice, that swelled and rang out in ecstatic welcome to the mysterious incarnation into whose presence she was brought. Two thoughts here naturally occur. 1. It was nothing but a brief, unrecorded salutation, probably of one or two words, which drew out the amazing and magnificent acknowledgment, that came home to Elisabeth with the power of the Holy Ghost, and, for a while, stirred her very frame, elevated her spirit, ennobled and transformed the tones of her voice into a rich and stately music. Here, as is so often the case, God's work is done by an unconscious influence going forth from His servants. Even handkerchiefs and aprons lead to high manifestations of the powers that are lodged in the gospel. When souls are steeped, day by day, in prayer and prolonged realization of the presence of God, more especially when they are in sorrow, or bearing the cross, a sweet contagion goes forth from them. A mere act of common courtesy and affection perhaps, as in the case of Mary's salutation, touches the deepest spiritual chords in other hearts. 2. It certainly should not be overlooked that, in the presence of the incarnate Lord, Elisabeth's child leaped and quickened beneath her leaping heart. It is strange, then, that believing people should assume that very young children are necessarily insusceptible of grace. Such an assumption is not reasonable. "The first springs of thought," said a great philosopher, "like those of the Nile, are veiled in obscurity." What influences may be made to stir those unknown springs, what elements may be mingled with those obscure waters, we cannot tell, and therefore we are not in a position to deny, in the presence of a counter-affirmation of the Word of God. II. WE NOW PROCEED TO THE MAGNIFICAT ITSELF. After the prominence given to the loud ecstatic utterance of Elisabeth (ver. 42), it seems certain that the delicate pencil of St. Luke presents us with a real contrast in a single word. "And Mary said." Elisabeth's utterance and supernatural possession by the Holy Ghost was instantaneous; it was a single and exceptional burst, a momentary elevation. But, during those months, when her very frame was the shrine of the Christ of God, Mary was habitually steeped in the Spirit, habitually absorbed in the great Presence by which she was inhabited. There is a noble quiet in the one word said. But that quiet does not exclude a great and special joy, which gushed up within her soul and spirit at the words of Elisabeth. For those words are pervaded not only by enthusiastic acknowledgment of Mary's purity, but by enthusiastic recognition of the secret in her soul, of the truth of which she was the favoured depositary. Every one who is possessed by a great unpopular truth, finds that unpopularity one of the severest of trials. He may, indeed, and he must bring it forth to others; but he will be plied with sarcasms in the world, with texts and anathemas even in the Church. There is a joy of the purest and rarest kind, when some one at last says, "The truth which possesses you has taken possession of me also. I understand you." Such was Mary's joy when she said, in the rhyme-thought of Hebrew poetry, the second rhythm at once repeating and passing beyond the first — "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit did exalt upon that God who is my Saviour." Let us examine the personal traits, and the general religious principles, by which the Magnificat is pervaded. 1. Of these personal traits, humility is, no doubt, the chief. Mary, in the Magnificat, does not profess humility; she practises it. Favoured, indeed, she is. Yet (as the word so translated implies) she has no thought of that which she is — only of that which, in God's free grace, she has received. In the second line she counts herself among the lost whom He has brought into a state of salvation. Her joy and exultation repose upon that God who is her Saviour. Her woman's heart does, indeed, throb as it thinks of the cry which arises from the heart of redeemed humanity, as it turns to the grace which she has received — "For lo! from hence on, all the generations shall call me blessed." But why? "For He that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is His name." "He who hath a gift," writes an excellent old divine, "and is puffed up by it, is doubly a thief; for he steals the gift, and the glory of it also; and both are God's." 2. The religious principles by which the Magnificat is pervaded are these. Mary's soul is full of faith in the tenderness and power of God — in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. And she believes intensely in the victory of that Incarnation: in the sure triumph of God. With the instinct of a prophetess, she sees an outline of all history, and compresses and crushes the vast drama into four strong rugged words — still as the rocks, obscure as the mists or troubled sunlights that veil them, the secrets of God, whose meaning men see when a great revolution is over, and which then goes back into silence for centuries again. "He hath put down the lords of dynasties from thrones." That dethronement includes not Herod only, though it may have begun from the Idumaean usurper. Scribes and Pharisees, men of action and science; pontiffs, powerful with a power not of God; men of action which is not heavenly, and science which is not true; Mary sees them sink, or their thrones stand untenanted, if they stand at all. Not always by the earthquake of war and revolution. In an old Greek city, a modern engineer once remarked a mass of stone, many tons in weight, lifted up for several feet from the ground, and hanging, as if suspended in the air. On looking more closely, he saw that the root of a huge fig-tree had performed this achievement. By exercising an even, continued pressure, every moment of the twenty-four hours, for about three centuries, it had fairly lifted off this stupendous weight. Something of this strong, yet gentle and gradual work is done by the influence of Christianity. A miracle of lifting is performed. The tyrant is hurled from his throne, "not by might, not by power." III. WE MAY PROCEED TO DRAW SOME LESSONS, ECCLESIASTICAL AND PERSONAL, FROM THE MAGNIFICAT. 1. It will not, we think, offend those earnest Christians who object upon principle to parts of the English Liturgy, or even to liturgies in general, if we venture — surely in no spirit of offence or controversy — to give expression to the reasons which probably induced our Reformers to retain this poem in the Reformed Prayer-book. A manual of public prayer, they doubtless thought, would scarcely be complete without the Magnificat, and other poems of the New Testament. A Scriptural service should reproduce the Bible essentially. In the Old Testament it should incorporate the Psalms. In the New Testament there are but few Divine songs. But there are some, and surely they are there for good reasons. We can scarcely fail to remark that there is much caprice in the taste for hymns. It is, in the midst of fluctuation and mutability, a great thing to have some hymns in public service whose permanence is insured by their being strictly scriptural. 2. Not without propriety is the Magnificat placed in the public service. It comes after the Old Testament lesson. Now the Magnificat was breathed by Mary with the Old Testament promise fully before the gaze of her soul. "In remembrance of His mercy," she exclaims, "as He spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever." She stood, as her song stands with us, between the two Testaments. 3. By using the Magnificat we fulfil her own prophecy, "All generations shall call me blessed." Some, in a superstitious horror of superstition, forget this. She is blessed. Blessed because chosen out from all the mothers of Israel, and of the earth, to an inconceivable privilege. Blessed, because consecrated as a temple for the Eternal Word; by ineffable conjunction, uniting to Himself that human nature which was conceived and born from her. 4. Personal lessons. We may well apply Mary's words to ourselves for a mercy common to all. Jesus Himself teaches us that her blessedness is ours; that so there is a strange family likeness between us and her (Matthew 12:48-50). In a family which possesses some one specially gifted member, we often see looks of him in others. So the likeness of Christ is reproduced, generation after generation, in all the children of God. Again, praise should be our work. The brute rolling in the dust of our roads is said to have inherited associations of the free desert sands. The dog, scraping and turning before he lies down to rest, similarly acts from a blind reminiscence of progenitors in the prairie grass. Much more do men inherit the instinct of that praise, of which the Magnificat is the purest expression. Once more, joy and peace are part of our purchased inheritance. When we read or join in the Magnificat, let us see to it, that that peace is ours which will make its words true for us. (Bishop Wm. Alexander.) Parallel Verses KJV: And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, WEB: Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord.