And Mary abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house.
And Mary abode with her about three months - that is, until there should be visible evidence of the fulfillment of the promise regarding her,
And returned to her own house - at Nazareth. She had not yet been taken home by Joseph; but that was the next, or fourth scene in this divine History. See the notes at Matthew 1:18-25, where alone it is recorded. Remarks:
(1) 'Only the meeting of saints in heaven,' as Dr. Hall well remarks, 'can parallel the meeting of these two cousins: the two wonders of the world are met under one roof, and congratulate their mutual happiness.'
(2) What an honoured roof was that which for the period of three months overarched those holy women, whose progeny-though the one was but the herald of the other-have made the world new! And yet not a trace of it is now to be seen, nor can it even be known, except by inference, what "city of Juda" is meant to which the Virgin hied her to visit her relative.
This remark, applicable to most of the so-called 'holy places,' not only rebukes the childish superstition of the Greek and Latin Churches, which have built convents at nearly all these places, and filled them with lazy monks, whose monotonous and dreary services are designed to commemorate the events of which they were the scenes, but may also suggest matter for useful reflection to a class of Protestants whose religion is not free from the same tincture.
(3) How beautiful does womanhood appear in the light of the foregoing scenes-the grace of God making the "spices" of modesty, simplicity, and religious susceptibility, which are the characteristics of the sex, so charmingly to "flow out!" And yet these are but premonitions of what we shall meet with throughout all this History of Him to whom woman owes not only the common salvation but the recovery of her proper relation to the other sex.
(4) 'How should our hearts leap within us,' to use again the words of Dr. Hall, 'when the Son of God vouchsafes to come into the secret of our souls, not to visit us, but to dwell with us, to dwell in us!'