Two things will not fail to arrest the attention in Mary’s song. First, that she ascribes everything to God, and that, taking the place of nothingness, she celebrates His grace. Concerning these points we cannot refrain from citing the following words, “She acknowledges God her Saviour in the grace that has filled her with such joy, while, at the same time, she owns her utter littleness. For whatever might be the holiness of the instrument that God might employ— and that was found really in Mary—yet she was only great so long as she hid herself, for then God was everything. By making something of herself she would have lost her place, but this she did not. God kept her, in order that His grace might be fully manifested.” May we all give heed to this blessed instruction, inasmuch as it is impossible that grace can have its full sway in our souls if we are not in our true place of nothingness before God.
Entering into these thoughts, the reader will readily understand the language of this song of praise. Whenever there is a real work of the Spirit of God in the souls of His people, their hearts ascend to the source whence their blessing has come. So with Mary; her first thought is the Lord who had visited her with such ineffable grace. “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” Her individuality was merged for the moment, under the mighty action of the Holy Spirit, in Israel, and thus she rejoices in Israel’s God and Saviour. It is true that she speaks of herself in the next verse, and says that God has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden (bonds-maid), and that all generations will henceforth call her blessed; but even so it is only as the chosen instrument of the blessing which was coming upon Israel. It was the thought of Israel’s salvation out of their low estate which filled her soul when she said, “He that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is His name.” For she immediately adds, “And His mercy is on them that fear Him from generation to generation,” showing, moreover, that it was God’s elect Israel that occupied her mind—the Israel that Balaam was constrained to speak of when he said God had not beheld iniquity in Jacob nor seen perverseness in Israel—the Israel, in a word, of God’s purpose and according to His thoughts.