Now I have said all I mean to say on what I have called the rudimental teaching of antiquity about the Blessed Virgin; but, after all, I have not insisted on the highest view of her prerogatives which the fathers have taught us. You, my dear friend, who know so well the ancient controversies and councils, may have been surprised why I should not have yet spoken of her as the Theotocos; but I wished to show on how broad a basis her greatness rests, independent of that wonderful title; and again, I have been loth to enlarge upon the force of a word, which is rather matter for devotional thought than for polemical dispute. However, I might as well not {70} write on my subject at all as altogether be silent upon it.

It is, then, an integral portion of the faith fixed by ecumenical council, a portion of it which you hold as well as I, that the Blessed Virgin is Theotocos, Deipara, or Mother of God; and this word, when thus used, carries with it no admixture of rhetoric, no taint of extravagant affection; it has nothing else but a well-weighed, grave, dogmatic sense, which corresponds and is adequate to its sound. It intends to express that God is her Son, as truly as any one of us is the son of his own mother. If this be so, what can be said of any creature whatever which may not be said of her? what can be said too much, so that it does not compromise the attributes of the Creator? He, indeed, might have created a being more perfect, more admirable, than she is; he might have endued that being, so created, with a richer grant of grace, of power, of blessedness; but in one respect she surpasses all even possible creations, viz., that she is Mother of her Creator. It is this awful title, which both illustrates and connects together the two prerogatives of Mary, on which I have been lately enlarging, her sanctity and her greatness. It is the issue of her sanctity; it is the source of her greatness. What dignity can be too great to attribute to her who is as closely bound up, as intimately one, with the Eternal Word, as a mother is with a son? What outfit of sanctity, what fulness and redundance of grace, what exuberance of merits must have been hers, on the supposition, which the fathers justify, that her Maker regarded them at all, and took them into account, when he condescended "not to abhor the Virgin's womb?" Is it surprising, then, that on the one hand she should be immaculate in her conception? or on the other that she should be exalted as a queen, with a crown of twelve stars? Men sometimes wonder that we call her mother of life, of mercy, of salvation; what are all these titles compared to that one name, Mother of God?

I shall say no more about this title here. It is scarcely possible to write of it without diverging into a style of composition unsuited to a letter; so I proceed to the history of its use.

The title of Theotocos [Footnote 15] begins with ecclesiastical writers of a date hardly later than that at which we read of her as the second Eve. It first occurs in the works of Origen (185-254); but he, witnessing for Egypt and Palestine, witnesses also that it was in use before his time; for, as Socrates informs us, he "interpreted how it was to be used, and discussed the question at length" (Hist. vii. 32). Within two centuries (431), in the general council held against Nestorius, it was made part of the formal dogmatic teaching of the church. At that time Theodoret, who from his party connections might have been supposed disinclined to its solemn recognition, owned that "the ancient and more than ancient heralds of the orthodox faith taught the use of the term according to the apostolic tradition." At the same date John of Antioch, who for a while sheltered Nestorius, whose heresy lay in the rejection of the term, said, "This title no ecclesiastical teacher has put aside. Those who have used it are many and eminent, and those who have not used it have not attacked those who did." Alexander again, one of the fiercest partisans of Nestorius, allows the use of the word, though he considers it dangerous. "That in festive solemnities," he says, "or in preaching or teaching, theotocos should be unguardedly said by the orthodox without explanation is no blame, because such statements were not dogmatic, nor said with evil meaning." If we look for those, in the interval between Origen and the council, to whom Alexander refers, we find it used again and again by the fathers in such of their works as are extant: by {71} Archelans of Mesopotamia, Eusebius of Palestine, Alexander of Egypt, in the third century; in the fourth, by Athanasius many times with emphasis, by Cyril of Palestine, Gregory Nyssen of Cappadocia, Gregory Nazianzen of Cappadocia, Antiochus of Syria, and Ammonius of Thrace; not to speak of the Emperor Julian, who, having no local or ecclesiastical domicile, speaks for the whole of Christendom. Another and earlier emperor, Constantine, in his speech before the assembled bishops at Nicaea, uses the still more explicit title of "the Virgin Mother of God;" which is also used by Ambrose of Milan, and by Vincent and Cassian in the south of France, and then by St. Leo.

[Footnote 15: Vid. "translation of St. Athanasius," pp. 420, 440, 447.]

So much for the term; it would be tedious to produce the passages of authors who, using or not using the term, convey the idea. "Our God was carried in the womb of Mary," says Ignatius, who was martyred A.D. 106. "The word of God," says Hippolytus, "was carried in that virgin frame." "The Maker of all," says Amphilochius, "is born of a virgin." "She did compass without circumscribing the Sun of justice--the Everlasting is born," says Chrysostom. "God dwelt in the womb," says Proclus. "When thou hearest that God speaks from the bush," asks Theodotus, "in the bush seest thou not the Virgin?" Cassian says, "Mary bore her Author." "The one God only-begotten," says Hilary, "is introduced into the womb of a virgin." "The Everlasting," says Ambrose, "came into the Virgin him." "The closed gate," says Jerome, "by which alone the Lord God of Israel enters, is the Virgin Mary." "That man from heaven," says Capriolus, "is God conceived in the womb." "He is made in thee," says Augustine, "who made thee."

This being the faith of the fathers about the Blessed Virgin, we need not wonder that it should in no long time be transmuted into devotion. No wonder if their language should be unmeasured, when so great a term as "Mother of God" had been formally set down as the safe limit of it. No wonder if it became stronger and stronger as time went on, since only in a long period could the fulness of its import be exhausted. And in matter of fact, and as might be anticipated (with the few exceptions which I have noted above, and which I am to treat of below), the current of thought in those early ages did uniformly tend to make much of the Blessed Virgin and to increase her honors, not to circumscribe them. Little jealousy was shown of her in those times; but, when any such niggardness of devotion occurred, then one father or other fell upon the offender, with zeal, not to say with fierceness. Thus St. Jerome inveighs against Helvidius; thus St. Epiphanius denounces Apollinaris, St. Cyril Nestorius, and St. Ambrose Bonosus; on the other hand, each successive insult offered to her by individual adversaries did but bring out more fully the intimate sacred affection with which Christendom regarded her. "She was alone, and wrought the world's salvation and conceived the redemption of all," says Ambrose; [Footnote 16] "she had so great grace, as not only to preserve virginity herself, but to confer it upon those whom she visited." "The rod out of the stem of Jesse," says Jerome, "and the eastern gate through which the high priest alone goes in and out, yet is ever shut" "The wise woman," says Nilus, who "hath clad believers, from the fleece of the Lamb born of her, with the clothing of incorruption, and delivered them from their spiritual nakedness." "The mother of life, of beauty, of majesty, the morning star," according to Antiochus. "The mystical new heavens," "the heavens carrying the Divinity," "the fruitful vine," "by whom we are translated from death to life," according to St. Ephrem. "The manna which is delicate, bright, sweet, and virgin, {72} which, as though coming from heaven, has poured down on all the people of the churches a food pleasanter than honey," according to St. Maximus.

[Footnote 16: "Essay on Doctr. Dev.," p. 408]

Proclus calls her "the unsullied shell which contains the pearl of price," "the church's diadem," "the expression of orthodoxy." "Run through all creation in your thought," he says, "and see if there be one equal or superior to the Holy Virgin, Mother of God." "Hail, mother, clad in light, of the light which sets not," says Theodotus, or some one else at Ephesus--"hail, all-undefiled mother of holiness; hail, most pellucid fountain of the life-giving stream." And St. Cyril too at Ephesus, "Hail, Mary, Mother of God, majestic common-treasure of the whole world, the lamp unquenchable, the crown of virginity, the staff of orthodoxy, the indissoluble temple, the dwelling of the illimitable, mother and virgin, through whom he in the holy gospels is called blessed who cometh in the name of the Lord, .... through whom the Holy Trinity is sanctified, through whom angels and archangels rejoice, devils are put to flight, .... and the fallen creature is received up into the heavens, etc, etc." [Footnote 17] Such is but a portion of the panegyrical language which St. Cyril used in the third ecumenical council.

[Footnote 17: Opp., t. 6, p. 355. ]

I must not close my review of the Catholic doctrine concerning the Blessed Virgin without directly speaking of her intercessory power, though I have incidentally made mention of it already. It is the immediate result of two truths, neither of which you dispute: first, that "it is good and useful," as the Council of Trent says, "suppliantly to invoke the saints and to have recourse to their prayers;" and secondly, that the Blessed Mary is singularly dear to her Son and singularly exalted in sanctity and glory. However, at the risk of becoming didactic, I will state somewhat more fully the grounds on which it rests.

To a candid pagan it must have been one of the most remarkable points of Christianity, on its first appearance, that the observance of prayer formed so vital a part of its organization; and that, though its members were scattered all over the world, and its rulers and subjects had so little opportunity of correlative action, yet they, one and all, found the solace of a spiritual intercourse, and a real bond of union, in the practice of mutual intercession. Prayer, indeed, is the very essence of religion; but in the heathen religions it was either public or personal; it was a state ordinance, or a selfish expedient, for the attainment of certain tangible, temporal goods. Very different from this was its exercise among Christians, who were thereby knit together in one body, different as they were in races, ranks, and habits, distant from each other in country, and helpless amid hostile populations. Yet it proved sufficient for its purpose. Christians could not correspond; they could not combine; but they could pray one for another. Even their public prayers partook of this character of intercession; for to pray for the welfare of the whole church was really a prayer for all classes of men, and all the individuals of which it was composed. It was in prayer that the church was founded. For ten days all the apostles "persevered with one mind in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the Mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." Then again at Pentecost "they were all with one mind in one place;" and the converts then made are said to have "persevered in prayer." And when, after a while, St. Peter was seized and put in prison with a view to his being put to death, "prayer was made without ceasing" by the church of God for him; and, when the angel released him, he took refuge in a house "where many were gathered together in prayer."

We are so accustomed to these passages as hardly to be able to do justice to their singular significance; and they are followed up by various passages of the apostolic epistles. St. Paul enjoins his brethren to '"pray with all prayer and supplication at all times in the Spirit, with all instance and supplication for all saints," to "pray in every place," "to make supplication, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks for all men." And in his own person he "ceases not to give thanks for them, commemorating them in his prayers," and "always in all his prayers making supplication for them all with joy."

Now, was this spiritual bond to cease with life? or had Christians similar duties to their brethren departed? From the witness of the early ages of the church, it appears that they had; and you, and those who agree with you, would be the last to deny that they were then in the practice of praying, as for the living, so for those also who had passed into the intermediate state between earth and heaven. Did the sacred communion extend further still, on to the inhabitants of heaven itself? Here too you agree with us, for you have adopted in your volume the words of the Council of Trent which I have quoted above. But now we are brought to a higher order of thoughts.

It would be preposterous to pray for those who are already in glory; but at least they can pray for us, and we can ask their prayers, and in the Apocalypse at least angels are introduced both sending us their blessing and presenting our prayers before the divine Presence. We read there of an angel who "came and stood before the altar, having a golden censer;" and "there was given to him much incense, that he should offer of the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which is before the throne of God." On this occasion, surely, the angel Michael, as the prayer in mass considers him, performed the part of a great intercessor or mediator above for the children of the church militant below. Again, in the beginning of the same book, the sacred writer goes so far as to speak of "grace and peace" being sent us, not only from the Almighty, but "from the seven spirits that are before his throne," thus associating the Eternal with the ministers of his mercies; and this carries us on to the remarkable passage of St. Justin, one of the earliest fathers, who, in his "Apology," says, "To him (God), and his Son who came from him, and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels who follow and resemble them, and the prophetic Spirit, we pay veneration and homage." Further, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Paul introduces, not only angels, but "the spirits of the just" into the sacred communion: "Ye have come to Mount Sion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to myriads of angels, to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the just made perfect, and to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Testament." What can be meant by having "come to the spirits of the just," unless in some way or other they do us good, whether by blessing or by aiding us? that is, in a word, to speak correctly, by praying for us; for it is by prayer alone that the creature above can bless or aid the creature below.

Intercession thus being the first principle of the church's life, next it is certain again that the vital principle of that intercession, as an availing power, is, according to the will of God, sanctity. This seems to be suggested by a passage of St. Paul, in which the supreme intercessor is said to be "the Spirit:" "The Spirit himself maketh intercession for us; he maketh intercession for the saints according to God." However, the truth thus implied is expressly brought out in other parts of Scripture, in the form both of doctrine and of example. The words of the man born blind speak the common sense of nature: "If any man be a worshipper of God, him he heareth." {74} And apostles confirm them: "The prayer of a just man availeth much," and "whatever we ask we receive, because we keep his commandments." Then, as for examples, we read of Abraham and Moses as having the divine purpose of judgment revealed to them beforehand, in order that they might deprecate its execution. To the friends of Job it was said, "My servant Job shall pray for you; his face I will accept." Elias by his prayer shut and opened the heavens. Elsewhere we read of "Jeremias, Moses, and Samuel," and of "Noe, Daniel, and Job," as being great mediators between God and his people. One instance is given us, which testifies the continuance of so high an office beyond this life. Lazarus, in the parable, is seen in Abraham's bosom. It is usual to pass over this striking passage with the remark that it is a Jewish expression; whereas, Jewish belief or not, it is recognized and sanctioned by our Lord himself. What do we teach about the Blessed Virgin more wonderful than this? Let us suppose that, at the hour of death, the faithful are committed to her arms; but if Abraham, not yet ascended on high, had charge of Lazarus, what offence is it to affirm the like of her, who was not merely "the friend," but the very "Mother of God?"

It may be added that, though it availed nothing for influence with our Lord to be one of his company if sanctity was wanting, still, as the gospel shows, he on various occasions allowed those who were near him to be the means by which supplicants were brought to him, or miracles gained from him, as in the instance of the miracle of the loaves; and if on one occasion he seems to repel his mother when she told him that wine was wanting for the guests at the marriage feast, it is obvious to remark on it that, by saying that she was then separated from him because his hour was not yet come, he implied that, when that hour was come, such separation would be at an end. Moreover, in fact, he did, at her intercession, work the miracle which she desired.

I consider it impossible, then, for those who believe the church to be one vast body in heaven and on earth, in which every holy creature of God has his place, and of which prayer is the life, when once they recognize the sanctity and greatness of the Blessed Virgin, not to perceive immediately that her office above is one of perpetual intercession for the faithful militant, and that our very relation to her must be that of clients to a patron, and that, in the eternal enmity which exists between the woman and the serpent, while the serpent's strength is that of being the tempter, the weapon of the second Eve and Mother of God is prayer.

As then these ideas of her sanctity and greatness gradually penetrated the mind of Christendom, so did her intercessory power follow close upon and with them. From the earliest times that mediation is symbolized in those representations of her with uplifted hands, which, whether in plaster or in glass, are still extant in Rome--that church, as St. Irenaeus says, with which "every church, that is, the faithful from every side, must agree, because of its more powerful principality;" "into which," as Tertullian adds, "the apostles poured out, together with their blood, their whole doctrines." As far, indeed, as existing documents are concerned, I know of no instance to my purpose earlier than A.D. 234, but it is a very remarkable one; and, though it has been often quoted in the controversy, an argument is not the weaker for frequent use.

St. Gregory Nyssen, [Footnote 18] a native of Cappadocia in the fourth century, relates that his namesake, Bishop of Neo-Caesarea, surnamed Thaumaturgus, in the century preceding, shortly before he was called to the priesthood, received in a vision a creed, which is still extant, from the Blessed Mary at the hands of St. John.

[Footnote 18: Vid. "Essay on Doctr. Dev." p. 386.]

The account runs thus: He was deeply pondering theological doctrine, which the heretics of the day depraved. "In such thoughts," says his namesake of Nyssa, "he was passing the night, when one appeared, as if in human form, aged in appearance, saintly in the fashion of his garments, and very venerable both in grace of countenance and general mien. Amazed at the sight, he started from his bed, and asked who it was, and why he came; but, on the other calming the perturbation of his mind with his gentle voice, and saying he had appeared to him by divine command on account of his doubts, in order that the truth of the orthodox faith might be revealed to him, he took courage at the word, and regarded him with a mixture of joy and fright. Then, on his stretching his hand straight forward and pointing with his fingers at something on one side, he followed with his eyes the extended hand, and saw another appearance opposite to the former, in the shape of a woman, but more than human. . . . When his eyes could not, bear the apparition, he heard them conversing together on the subject of his doubts; and thereby not only gained a true knowledge of the faith, but learned their names, as they addressed each other by their respective appellations. And thus he is said to have heard the person in woman's shape bid 'John the Evangelist' disclose to the young man the mystery of godliness; and he answered that he was ready to comply in this matter with the wish of 'the Mother of the Lord,' and enunciated a formulary, well turned and complete, and so vanished. He, on the other hand, immediately committed to writing that divine teaching of his mystagogue, and henceforth preached in the church according to that form, and bequeathed to posterity, as an inheritance, that heavenly teaching, by means of which his people are instructed down to this day, being preserved from all heretical evil." He proceeds to rehearse the creed thus given, "There is one God, father of a living Word," etc. Bull, after quoting it in his work upon the Nicene faith, alludes to this history of its origin, and adds, "No one should think it incredible that such a providence should befal a man whose whole life was conspicuous for revelations and miracles, as all ecclesiastical writers who have mentioned him (and who has not?) witness with one voice."

Here she is represented as rescuing a holy soul from intellectual error. This leads me to a further reflection. You seem, in one place in your volume, to object to the antiphon, in which it is said of her, "All heresies thou hast destroyed alone." Surely the truth of it is verified in this age, as in former times, and especially by the doctrine concerning her on which I have been dwelling. She is the great exemplar of prayer in a generation which emphatically denies the power of prayer in toto, which determines that fatal laws govern the universe, that there cannot be any direct communication between earth and heaven, that God cannot visit his earth, and that man cannot influence his providence.

I cannot help hoping that your own reading of the fathers will on the whole bear me out in the above account of their teaching concerning the Blessed Virgin. Anglicans seem to me to overlook the strength of the argument adducible from their works in our favor, and they open the attack upon our mediaeval and modern writers, careless of leaving a host of primitive opponents in their rear. I do not include you among such Anglicans; you know what the fathers assert; but, if so, have you not, my dear friend, been unjust to yourself in your recent volume, and made far too much of the differences which exist between Anglicans and us on this particular point? It is the office of an Irenicon to smooth difficulties; I shall be pleased if I succeed in removing some of yours. Let the public judge between us here. Had you {76} happened in your volume to introduce your notice of our teaching about the Blessed Virgin with a notice of the teaching of the fathers concerning her, ordinary men would have considered that there was not much to choose between you and us. Though you appealed ever so much to the authority of the "undivided church," they certainly would have said that you, who had such high notions of the Blessed Mary, were one of the last men who had a right to accuse us of quasi-idolatry. When they found you calling her by the titles of Mother of God, Second Eve, and Mother of all Living, the Mother of life, the Morning Star, the Stay of Believers, the Expression of Orthodoxy, the All-undefiled Mother of Holiness, and the like, they would have deemed it a poor compensation for such language that you protested against her being called a co-redemptress or a priestess. And, if they were violent Protestants, they would not have read you with that relish and gratitude with which, as it is, they have perhaps accepted your testimony against us. Not that they would have been altogether right in their view of you;--on the contrary, I think there is a real difference between what you protest against and what with the fathers you hold; but unread men and men of the world form a broad practical judgment of the things which come before them, and they would have felt in this case that they had the same right to be shocked at you as you have to be shocked at us;--and further, which is the point to which I am coming, they would have said that, granting some of our modern writers go beyond the fathers in this matter, still the line cannot be logically drawn between the teaching of the fathers concerning the Blessed Virgin and our own. This view of the matter seems to me true and important; I do not think the line can be satisfactorily drawn, and to this point I shall now direct my attention. It is impossible, I say, in a doctrine like this, to draw the line cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. This is ever the case in concrete matters, which have life. Life in this world is motion, and involves a continual process of change. Living things grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. No rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law, whether in the material world or in the human mind. We can indeed encounter disorders, when they occur, by external antagonisms and remedies; but we cannot eradicate the process itself out of which they arise. Life has the same right to decay as it has to wax strong. This is specially the case with great ideas. You may stifle them; or you may refuse them elbow-room; or you may torment them with your continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range, and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to expose and restrain those excesses after they have occurred. But you have only this alternative; and for myself, I prefer much, wherever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account when abused.

If what I have been saying be true of energetic ideas generally, much more is it the case in matters of religion. Religion acts on the affections; who is to hinder these, when once roused, from gathering in their strength and running wild? They are not gifted with any connatural principle within them which renders them self-governing and self-adjusting. They hurry right on to their object, and often in their case it is, more haste and worse speed. Their object engrosses them, and they see nothing else. And of all passions love is the most unmanageable; nay, more, I would not give much for that love which is never extravagant, which always observes the proprieties, and can move about in perfect good taste, under all emergencies. What mother, what husband or wife, what youth or maiden in love, {77} but says a thousand foolish things, in the way of endearment, which the speaker would be sorry for strangers to hear; yet they were not on that account unwelcome to the parties to whom they are addressed. Sometimes by bad luck they are written down, sometimes they get into the newspapers; and what might be even graceful, when it was fresh from the heart, and interpreted by the voice and the countenance, presents but a melancholy exhibition when served up cold for the public eye. So it is with devotional feelings. Burning thoughts and words are as open to criticism as they are beyond it. What is abstractedly extravagant, may in religions persons be becoming and beautiful, and only fall under blame when it is found in others who imitate them. When it is formalized into meditations or exercises, it is as repulsive as love-letters in a police report. Moreover, even holy minds readily adopt and become familiar with language which they would never have originated themselves, when it proceeds from a writer who has the same objects of devotion as they have; and, if they find a stranger ridicule or reprobate supplication or praise which has come to them so recommended, they feel as keenly as if a direct insult were offered to those to whom that homage is addressed. In the next place, what has power to stir holy and refined souls is potent also with the multitude; and the religion of the multitude is ever vulgar and abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and superstition while men are what they are. A people's religion is ever a corrupt religion. If you are to have a Catholic Church, you must put up with fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth. You may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their excesses will take a different direction; but if you make use of religion to improve them, they will make use of religion to corrupt it. And then you will have effected that compromise of which our countrymen report so unfavorably from abroad:--a high grand faith and worship which compel their admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people which excite their contempt.

Nor is it any safeguard against these excesses in a religious system that the religion is based upon reason, and develops into a theology. Theology both uses logic and baffles it; and thus logic acts both as a protection and as the perversion of religion. Theology is occupied with supernatural matters, and is ever running into mysteries which reason can neither explain nor adjust. Its lines of thought come to an abrupt termination, and to pursue them or to complete them is to plunge down the abyss. But logic blunders on, forcing its way, as it can, through thick darkness and ethereal mediums. The Arians went ahead with logic for their directing principle, and so lost the truth; on the other hand, St. Augustine, in his treatise on the Holy Trinity, seems to show that, if we attempt to find and tie together the ends of lines which run into infinity, we shall only succeed in contradicting ourselves; that for instance it is difficult to find the logical reason for not speaking of three Gods as well as of one, and of one person in the Godhead as well as of three. I do not mean to say that logic cannot be used to set right its own error, or that in the hands of an able disputant the balance of truth may not be restored. This was done at the Councils of Antioch and Nicaea, in the instances of Paulus and Arius. But such a process is circuitous and elaborate; and is conducted by means of minute subtleties which will give it the appearance of a game of skill in the case of matters too grave and practical to deserve a mere scholastic treatment. Accordingly, St. Augustine simply lays it down that the statements in question are heretical, for the former is trltheism and the latter Sabellianism. That is, good sense and a large {78} view of truth are the correctives of his logic. And thus we have arrived at the final resolution of the whole matter; for good sense and a large view of truth are rare gifts; whereas all men are bound to be devout, and most men think they can argue and conclude.

Now let me apply what I have been saying to the teaching of the church on the subject of the Blessed Virgin. I have to recur to a subject of so sacred a nature, that, writing as I am for publication, I need the apology of my object for venturing to pursue it. I say then, when once we have mastered the idea that Mary bore, suckled, and handled the Eternal in the form of a child, what limit is conceivable to the rush and flood of thoughts which such a doctrine involves? What awe and surprise must attend upon the knowledge that a creature has been brought so close to the Divine Essence? It was the creation of a new idea and a new sympathy, a new faith and worship, when the holy apostles announced that God bad become incarnate; and a supreme love and devotion to him became possible which seemed hopeless before that revelation. But beside this, a second range of thoughts was opened on mankind, unknown before, and unlike any other, as soon as it was understood that that incarnate God had a mother. The second idea is perfectly distinct from the former, the one does not interfere with the other. He is God made low, she is a woman made high. I scarcely like to use a familiar illustration on such a subject, but it will serve to explain what I mean when I ask you to consider the difference of feeling with which we read the respective histories of Maria Theresa and the Maid of Orleans; or with which the middle and lower classes of a nation regard a first minister of the day who has come of an aristocratic house and one who has risen from the ranks. May God's mercy keep me from the shadow of a thought dimming the light or blunting the keenness of that love of him which is our sole happiness and our sole salvation! But surely, when he became man he brought home to us his incommunicable attributes with a distinctiveness which precludes the possibility of our lowering him by exalting a creature. He alone has an entrance into our soul, reads our secret thoughts, speaks to our heart, applies to us spiritual pardon and strength. On him we solely depend. He alone is our inward life; he not only regenerates us, but (to allude to a higher mystery) semper gignit; he is ever renewing our new birth and our heavenly sonship. In this sense he may be called, as in nature, so in grace, our real father. Mary is only our adopted mother, given us from the cross; her presence is above, not on earth; her office is external, not within us. Her name is not heard in the administration of the sacraments. Her work is not one of ministration toward us; her power is indirect. It is her prayers that avail, and they are effectual by the fiat of him who is our all in all. Nor does she hear us by any innate power, or any personal gift; but by his manifestation to her of the prayers which we make her. When Moses was on the Mount, the Almighty told him of the idolatry of his people at the foot of it, in order that he might intercede for them; and thus it is the Divine presence which is the intermediating power by which we reach her and she reaches us.

Woe is me, if even by a breath I sully these ineffable truths! but still, without prejudice to them, there is, I say, another range of thought quite distinct from them, incommensurate with them, of which the Blessed Virgin is the centre. If we placed our Lord in that centre, we should only be degrading him from his throne, and making him an Arian kind of a God; that is, no God at all. He who charges us with marking Mary a divinity, is thereby denying the divinity of Jesus. Such a man does not know what divinity is. Our Lord cannot {79} pray for us, as a creature, as Mary prays; he cannot inspire those feelings which a creature inspires. To her belongs, as being a creature, a natural claim on our sympathy and familiarity, in that she is nothing else than our fellow. She is our pride,--in the poet's words, "Our tainted nature's solitary boast." We look to her without any fear, any remorse, any consciousness that she is able to read us, judge us, punish us. Our heart yearns toward that pure virgin, that gentle mother, and our congratulations follow her, as she rises from Nazareth and Ephesus, through the choirs of angels, to her throne on high. So weak, yet so strong; so delicate, yet so glory-laden; so modest, yet so mighty. She has sketched for us her own portrait in the magnificat. "He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaid; for behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. He hath put down the mighty from their seat; and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away." I recollect the strange emotion which took by surprise men and women, young and old, when, at the coronation of our present queen, they gazed on the figure of one so like a child, so small, so tender, so shrinking, who had been exalted to so great an inheritance and so vast a rule, who was such a contrast in her own person to the solemn pageant which centred in her. Could it be otherwise with the spectators, if they had human affection? And did not the All-wise know the human heart when he took to himself a mother? did he not anticipate our emotion at the sight of such an exaltation? If he had not meant her to exert that wonderful influence in his church which she has in the event exerted, I will use a bold word, he it is who has perverted us. If she is not to attract our homage, why did he make her solitary in her greatness amid his vast creation? If it be idolatry in us to let our affections respond to our faith, he would not have made her what she is, or he would not have told us that he had so made her; but, far from this, he has sent his prophet to announce to us, "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel," and we have the same warrant for hailing her as God's Mother, as we have for adoring him as God.

Christianity is eminently an objective religion. For the most part it tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared to receive it. This at least is its general character; and Butler recognizes it as such in his "Analogy" when speaking of the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity: "The internal worship," he says, "to the Son and Holy Ghost is no further matter of pure revealed command than as the relations they stand in to us are matters of pure revelation; for the relations being known, the obligations to such internal worship are obligations of reason arising out of those relations themselves. " [Footnote 19]

[Footnote 19: Vid. "Essay on Doctr. Dev.," p. 50.]

It is in this way that the revealed doctrine of the incarnation exerted a stronger and a broader influence on Christians, as they more and more apprehended and mastered its meaning and its bearings. It is contained in the brief and simple declaration of St John, "The Word was made flesh;" but it required century after century to spread it out in its fulness and to imprint it energetically on the worship and practice of the Catholic people as well as on their faith. Athanasius was the first and the great teacher of it. He collected together the inspired notices scattered through David, Isaias, St. Paul, and St. John, and he engraved indelibly upon the imaginations of the faithful, as had never been before, that man is God, and God is man, that in Mary they meet, and that in this sense Mary {80} is the centre of all things. He added nothing to what was known before, nothing to the popular and zealous faith that her Son was God; he has left behind him in his works no such definite passages about her as those of St. Irenaeus or St. Epiphanius; but he brought the circumstances of the incarnation home to men's minds by the manifold evolutions of his analysis, and secured it for ever from perversion. Still, however, there was much to be done; we have no proof that Athanasius himself had any special devotion to the Blessed Virgin; but he laid the foundations on which that devotion was to rest, and thus noiselessly and without strife, as the first temple in the holy city, she grew up into her inheritance, and was "established in Sion and her power was in Jerusalem." Such was the origin of that august cultus which has been paid to the Blessed Mary for so many centuries in the East and in the West. That in times and places it has fallen into abuse, that it has even become a superstition, I do not care to deny; for, as I have said above, the same process which brings to maturity carries on to decay, and things that do not admit of abuse have very little life in them. This of course does not excuse such excesses, or justify us in making light of them, when they occur. I have no intention of doing so as regards the particular instances which you bring against us, though but a few words will suffice for what I need say about them:--before doing so, however, I am obliged to make three or four introductory remarks.

1. I have almost anticipated my first remark already. It is this: that the height of our offending in our devotion to the Blessed Virgin would not look so great in your volume as it does, had you not placed yourself on lower ground than your own feelings toward her would have spontaneously prompted you to take. I have no doubt you had some good reason for adopting this course, but I do not know it. What I do know is that, for the fathers' sake, who so exalt her, you really do love and venerate her, though you do not evidence it in your book. I am glad, then, in this place, to insist on a fact which will lead those among us who know you not to love you from their love of her, in spite of what you refuse to give her; and Anglicans, on the other hand, who do know you, to think better of us, who refuse her nothing, when they reflect that you do not actually go against us, but merely come short of us in your devotion to her.

2. As you revere the fathers, so you revere the Greek Church; and here again we have a witness on our behalf of which you must be aware as fully as we are, and of which you must really mean to give us the benefit. In proportion as this remarkable fact is understood, it will take off the edge of the surprise of Anglicans at the sight of our devotions to our Lady. It must weigh with them when they discover that we can enlist on our side in this controversy those seventy millions (I think they so consider them) of Orientals who are separated from our communion. Is it not a very pregnant fact that the Eastern churches, so independent of us, so long separated from the West, so jealous of antiquity, should even surpass us in their exaltation of the Blessed Virgin? That they go further than we do is sometimes denied, on the ground that the Western devotion toward her is brought out into system, and the Eastern is not; yet this only means really that the Latins have more mental activity, more strength of intellect, less of routine, less of mechanical worship among them, than the Greeks. We are able, better than they, to give an account of what we do; and we seem to be more extreme merely because we are more definite. But, after all, what have the Latins done so bold as that substitution of the name of Mary for the name of Jesus at the end of the collects and petitions in the breviary, nay, in the ritual and liturgy? Not {81} merely in local or popular, and in semi-authorized devotions, which are the kind of sources that supplies you with your matter of accusation against us, but in the formal prayers of the Greek eucharistic service, petitions are offered, not "in the name of Jesus Christ," but "of the Theotocos." Such a phenomenon, in such a quarter, I think, ought to make Anglicans merciful toward those writers among ourselves who have been excessive in singing the praises of the Deipara. To make a rule of substituting Mary with all saints for Jesus in the public service, has more "Mariolatry" in it than to alter the Te Deum to her honor in private devotion.

3. And thus I am brought to a third remark supplemental to your accusation of us. Two large views, as I have said above, are opened upon our devotional thoughts in Christianity; the one centring in the Son of Mary, the other in the Mother of Jesus. Neither need obscure the other; and in the Catholic Church, as a matter of fact, neither does. I wish you had either frankly allowed this in your volume, or proved the contrary. I wish, when you report that "a certain proportion, it has been ascertained by those who have inquired, do stop short in her," p. 107, that you had added your belief, that the case was far otherwise with the great bulk of Catholics. Might I not have expected it? May I not, without sensitiveness, be somewhat pained at the omission? From mere Protestants, indeed, I expect nothing better. They content themselves with saying that our devotions to our Lady must necessarily throw our Lord into the shade, and thereby they relieve themselves of a great deal of trouble. Then they catch at any stray fact which countenances or seems to countenance their prejudice. Now I say plainly I never will defend or screen any one from your just rebuke who, through false devotion to Mary, forgets Jesus. But I should like the fact to be proved first; I cannot hastily admit it. There is this broad fact the other way: that if we look through Europe we shall find, on the whole, that just those nations and countries have lost their faith in the divinity of Christ who have given up devotion to his Mother, and that those, on the other hand, who have been foremost in her honor, have retained their orthodoxy. Contrast, for instance, the Calvinists with the Greeks, or France with the north of Germany, or the Protestant and Catholic communions in Ireland. As to England, it is scarcely doubtful what would be the state of its Established Church if the Liturgy and Articles were not an integral part of its establishment; and when men bring so grave a charge against us as is implied in your volume, they cannot be surprised if we in turn say hard things of Anglicanism. [Footnote 20] In the Catholic Church Mary has shown herself, not the rival, but the minister of her Son. She has protected him, as in his infancy, so in the whole history of the religion. There is, then, a plain historical truth in Dr. Fisher's words which you quote to condemn: "Jesus is obscured, because Mary is kept in the background."

[Footnote 20: I have spoken more more on this subject in my "Essay on Development," p. 438. "Nor does it avail to object, that, in this contrast of devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the divine, from the infirmity of out nature; for, I repeat, the question is one of fact, whether it has done so. And next, it must be asked, whether the character of Protestant devotion toward our Lord has been that of worship at all: and not rather such as we pay to an excellent human being? . . . Carnal minds will ever create a carnal worship for themselves; and to forbid them the service of the saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of God. Moreover. . . . great and constant as is the devotion which the Catholic pays to St. Mary, it has a special province, and has far more connection with the public services and the festive aspect of Christianity, and with certain extraordinary offices which she holds, than with what is strictly personal and primary in religion." Our late cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me this last sentence for the expression of his especial approbation.]

This truth, exemplified in history, might also be abundantly illustrated, did my space admit, from the lives and writings of holy men in modern times. Two of them, St. Alfonso Liguori and the Blessed Paul of the Cross, for all their notorious devotion {82} to the Mother, have shown their supreme love of her divine Son in the names which a have given to their respective congregations, viz, "of the Redeemer," and "of the Cross and Passion." However, I will do no more than refer to an apposite passage in the Italian translation of the work of a French Jesuit, Fr. Nepveu, "Christian Thoughts for every Day in the Year," which was recommended to the friend who went with me to Rome by the same Jesuit father there with whom, as I have already said, I stood myself in such intimate relations; I believe it is a fair specimen of the teaching of our spiritual books:

"The love of Jesus Christ is the most sure pledge of our future happiness, and the most infallible token of our predestination. Mercy toward the poor, devotion to the Holy Virgin, are very sensible tokens of predestination; nevertheless they are not absolutely infallible; but one cannot have a sincere and constant love of Jesus Christ without being predestinated. . . . The destroying angel which bereaved the houses of the Egyptians of their first-born, had respect to all the houses which were marked with the blood of the Lamb."

And it is also exemplified, as I verily believe, not only in formal and distinctive confessions, not only in books intended for the educated class, but also in the personal religion of the Catholic populations. When strangers are so unfavorably impressed with us, because they see images of our Lady in our churches, and crowds flocking about her, they forget that there is a Presence within the sacred walls, infinitely more awful, which claims and obtains from us a worship transcendently different from any devotion we pay to her. That devotion might indeed tend to idolatry if it were encouraged in Protestant churches, where there is nothing higher than it to attract the worshipper; but all the images that a Catholic church ever contained, all the crucifixes at its altars brought together, do not so affect its frequenters as the lamp which betokens the presence or absence there of the blessed sacrament. Is not this so certain, so notorious, that on some occasions it has been even brought as a charge against us, that we are irreverent in church, when what seemed to the objector to be irreverence was but the necessary change of feeling which came over those who were there on their knowing that their Lord was away?

The mass again conveys to us the same lesson of the sovereignty of the incarnate Son; it is a return to Calvary, and Mary is scarcely named in it. Hostile visitors enter our churches on Sunday at mid-day, the time of the Anglican service. They are surprised to see the high mass perhaps poorly attended, and a body of worshippers leaving the music and the mixed multitude who may be lazily fulfilling their obligation, for the silent or the informal devotions which are offered at an image of the Blessed Virgin. They may be tempted, with one of your informants, to call such a temple not a "Jesus Church," but a "Mary Church." But, if they understood our ways, they would know that we begin the day with our Lord and then go on to his mother. It is early in the morning that religious persons go to mass and communion. The high mass, on the other hand, is the festive celebration of the day, not the special devotional service; nor is there any reason why those who have been at a low mass already, should not at that hour proceed to ask the intercession of the Blessed Virgin for themselves and all that is dear to them.

Communion, again, which is given in the morning, is a solemn, unequivocal act of faith in the incarnate God, if any can be such; and the most gracious of admonitions, did we need one, of his sovereign and sole right to possess us. I knew a lady who on her death-bed was visited by an excellent Protestant friend. She, with great tenderness for her soul's welfare, asked her whether her prayers to the {83} Blessed Virgin did not, at that awful hour, lead to forgetfulness of her Saviour. "Forget him!" she replied with surprise; "why, he has just been here." She had been receiving him in communion. When, then, my dear Pusey, you read anything extravagant in praise of our Lady, is it not charitable to ask, even while you condemn it in itself, did the author write nothing else? Did he write on the blessed sacrament? Had he given up "all for Jesus?" I recollect some lines, the happiest, I think, which that author wrote, which bring out strikingly the reciprocity, which I am dwelling on, of the respective devotions to Mother and Son: