/ THE DIVINE IDEAL. BY F. M. 1 y §2 % sante, “THE DIVINE SEQUENCE,” “ THE ETERNAL YEARS. BOSTON COTXFOE TJTWLR V. — gubliu: JAMES DUFFY AND SONS, ]5 Wellington Quay, And 1 Paternoster Row, London. 3>5“X |H'intctr bit Edmund Burke and Co., 01 & 02 Great Strand Street, Dublin. DrSicatton. -^- MARI/E VIRGINI ET MATRI PERDOLENTI, MATRI LABORUM NON IGNAR/E, CONTEMPLATIONS DOLORUM EIUS LEYAMEN IN ADVEIISIS EXPERTA GRATI ANIMI ERGO OPELLAM HANC SUAM INSCRIBIT AC DICAT. PREFACE. With this small volume we conclude the series we desired to lay before our readers. In “The Divine Sequence ’ 5 we endeavoured to trace the Hidden God, and the hidden life. In the “ Eternal Years , 55 the hopes and expectations of the Soul and of the Church. And in the “Divine Ideal 55 we have essayed to elucidate the position of Mary the Mother of God, in Creation and in Redemption ; showing the validity of her claim, equally in both ; and how through her posi¬ tion, are blended the old and the new, the past and / the future, the natural and the Divine ; making all “ holy unto the Lord . 55 Whatever we have written we submit un¬ reservedly to ecclesiastical authority, and the decisions of the Church. F. M. , . - r - H •• •* > r ' ' ' '• ' .. > * ' 1 - V ^ V , ■ • L X . -,-r '■ ' j i V^V- H 1 - . I 1 4 . • - • . - - v' - . '• - ' ' ' V , . - T> ■ ERRATA. Page 11, line 2— For “ being,” read “creature.” Page 32, line 17— After “hung,” insert “in the first instance. Page 32, line 22— For “ full off read “ constituted in.” Page 33, line 4— Delete “ sweet.” Page 36, line 6— For “train,” read “prepare.” Page 41, line 15— After “ creating Hand,” insert “ they.” Page 46, line 15— After “ they were, in a,” insert “limited,” Page 48, line 3— For “ His,” read “their.” Page 50, line 9— For “ lies in,” read “ is manifested by.” Page 51, line 14— For “ price to atone for our sins,” read “ penalty to give satisfaction for our sins.” Page 62, line 11— Delete “ The rest is all for her !” Page 77, line 15— For “herself,” read “ t her position.” Page 80, line 6 — After “ His public life,” insert “it was.” Page 96, line 14— For “depends,” read “wills to depend.” THE DIVINE IDEAL. CHAPTER I. \ “ Yergine bella, che di Sol vestita, Coronata di stelle, al sommo Sole Piacesti si, che in Te sua luce ascosce ; Amor mi spiuge a dir di Te parole.” —Petrarch. In the days of the old law there was one man of whom it was said that he “was after God’s own heart.” And that man, the royal David, proposed to build a temple to the Lord. The mystery of the promise lay like a shadow over the ancient world. From time to time there was born among the chosen race a man, an indivi¬ dual, with a seal upon him—a seal of divine origin ; and through his whole life, through sorrow arid joy, woven into his daily existence, mingled like wood in his bread, and like ashes in his water, he walked abroad the symbol and the type of the Son of God Who should come down from Heaven. The type was more or less legible, the seal was more or less distinct. There were intervals when A 2 THE DIVINE IDEAL. the mere human element obscured, and when human frailty overshadowed it. But underneath all, winding through the sinuosities of the free human will, and yet blindly obeying the Divine in¬ tention, the living symbol worked out his eternal destiny, the man breathed and moved as the shadow of the coming event cast before: and none knew save God, and perhaps the angels. From time to time, as so often happens in the designs of God, the symbol seemed to fail. Suddenly it was cut off by the death or by the delinquency of the individual. He fell away physi¬ cally or he fell away morally; and an interval would elapse before the living type reappeared, and ordinary men could guess that such an one was chosen to the Lord. David built no temple, “ because of the wars that were round about him.”* He had fulfilled the measure of his partially typical existence in other ways. He was allowed no more than the devout wish and holy intention of this Temple to the Lord. And then he “slept with his Fathers, and was buried in his own city/’t leaving it to his son to build the Lord’s house. The latter, again, was a further type of wisdom more * 3 Kings v. 3. t 3 Kiugs ii. 10. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 3 perfect than himself; and in his own person typified another and more mystic phase of the God Man. As the time of fulfilment approached the typical life grew more rare. The word of prophecy replaced in a measure the living prophecies. “And at last the Sun of justice arose with health in his wings another A Man was born who was supremely after God’s own heart: and a voice came from heaven saying, “ This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”! Now therefore shall all be fulfilled. The symbols have died out. The aspirations which % seemed to fall to the ground like untimely fruit will .here find their completion. And the Son after God’s own heart will build a Church as immeasurably surpassing Solomon’s temple, as flesh and blood, soul, spirit, and eternity surpass stone and marble, gold, and time. “ A glorious church not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that is holy and without blemish.”j So wide were to be the courts of this temple that all mankind could dwell in them. So perfect was to be its construction that hell should not prevail against it. The building of this temple commenced from the * Malachias iv. 2. + Matthew iii. 17. } Ephesians v. 27. 4 THE DIVINE IDEAL. first moment that “ the Bud of Justice began to spring forth unto David : “ He, the Son of Mary, who was to do judgment and justice in the earth.”* All that had preceded His advent had been but the needful scaffolding before the fair proportions of the edifice could be seen. But as every stone of that building had to be cemented with the most precious Blood of the great Architect Himself, so it could not be made visible to man until He had come to shed that blood, and thus to bring into actual existence in time, the divine plan which had been in the Eternal Mind before all ages. The beauty of every building lies in its durability, in its perfect adaptation to the purpose for which it is erected, in its harmonious proportions, and in the conformity of its ornamentation to the original idea, and to its ultimate purposes. The most grandly proportioned building would err against taste and art if the ornament were flung over it with want of method, and an absence of intrinsic meaning, by a rash and indeliberate hand. There should be a reason for all its parts, an intention in the least particle of its construction; so that as the eye gazes on it the mind may be * Jeremias xxiv. 15. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 5 conscious that every stone stands in its own place, and was fixed there by united wisdom and love. The Temple which the Redeemer of mankind has built is the Kingdom of God, and the Church of God, which are one and the same. It is that divine system perfect in all its parts, and perfect in their union and combination. It consists of certain persons, of various mysteries, many of them in connection with those persons; of many laws; of seven sacraments, and of numerous sacramentals. The whole is homogenous and perfect in its unity. The harmony is absolute and mirrors the harmony of God Himself. It is like that of the unshattered ray; its diversity is that same ray broken up into prismatic colours. Its science is the only one outside those called mathematical, (and which differ from it in nature), in which we know we can, in our degree, hold absolute truth without break or flaw, without doubt or hesitation; consequently it is the only science which in the measure in which we are able to receive it,, fills the mind with entire and perfect satisfaction. It satisfies, but it never satiates: it is new, yet older than creation. It is old, yet fresher than the dawn. It dates from the eternal years of God Himself, 6 THE DIVINE IDEAL. and is as the immutable tbrone of the Triune Deity. And yet it grows and blossoms as a flower; and from its own ever living heart is weaving an endless web of everlasting beauty and richness which forms the everlasting seamless garment of the divine Bridegroom. No human mind can take in the sense of its perfect beauty absolutely, and in all its parts. Each man is limited by his moral as well as his intellectual capacity. And as the life of each has its own special needs and idiosyncrasies so certain portions of this wonderful whole have a greater and special charm for individuals. And this with¬ out militating against each holding the truth in its entirety. Only that truth once held, a certain variety is seen to exist in the special devotion of different minds to different mysteries. This is not only allowable, but it is God’s own work; for as the action of the Holy Ghost is abso¬ lutely individual to the individual soul, He calls some one way and some another, according to their need and circumstances. And thus, like children, they wander through a garden of delights, and some gather roses, and others cull lilies. But amidst this beautiful variety there are certain devotions which must be common to all, and which, if wanting in any of us, the garden is hardly ours to wander in. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 7 Devotion to the cross of Christ; devotion to the Mother of God; and devotion to the Church as Christ’s kingdom upon earth, with His divinely ap¬ pointed Vicar at its head:—these three belong to all the children of the kingdom; partially perhaps, but more or less certainly. The only one we have now to treat of is the second here named. Devotion to the Mother of God. What is her place in the divine system ? Is devotion to her more or less of an ornament ? Or does it form a fundamental part, without the maintenance of which the integral character of the rest is destroyed, and the effect the same as if in a solid wall one abstracted every other stone, and left the wall honeycombed and unstable? In undertaking this task we have no intention of treating the subject specially from a devotional point of view. Outside the rigid lines of theo¬ logical demonstration there is a border land where blossom wild flowers of great beauty. Childlike souls may wander there safe from harm, innocent and happy. But though we may understand and sympathise we do not mean to go one step beyond what we hope to be able to prove. We turn “ to the law and to the testimony.” In these we find enough to satisfy all love, and to fire all imagina¬ tion with the vision of marvels which laid down in 8 THE DIVINE IDEAL. the most sober language are unfathomable in their i wonderful and translucid depths. But before we contemplate the Mother we must contemplate the Son. It is only by knowing Jesus that we can know Mary. The greater leads to the lesser ; and it is only by knowing Mary that we can truly know Jesus. It is certain that those who inadequately know the God Man, who undervalue His nature, who have low and troubled views about His personality, are precisely those who know nothing solid and nothing trustworthy about her through whom He made His first advent among us. It is the impression of those outside the Church that because we make much of Mary we fail to recognise the full and unique position of the Redeemer of mankind. Without pausing to ani¬ madvert upon the misconception out of which this accusation arises, we merely wish here to observe, that it is those, and only those, who give all the glory of the supreme Godhead to Jesus who are even capable of realizing the position of His Mother. So long as there is some sort of doubt in the mind as to the place held by Jesus, so long is it impossible to classify Mary in any way satisfactory even to common sense. Mary becomes a myth to THE DIVINE IDEAL. 9 those who do not receive in all its integrity the absolute and unbounded Divinity of Jesus. This by the way. We have nothing here to say to this side of the question. The Redeemer came into the world to found a kingdom of which He was the head: a system of which He was the logic, a Church of which He was the Spouse: a mystical Body derived from His real Body: children born of His Blood, from the shed¬ ding of which sprang for us that new tree of life that is the Life of God, maintained in us by the Sacraments which are the fruits of that tree. The Incarnate word was Himself King, Priest, and Legislator; Author and sole Source of the Sacraments; Founder and supreme Head of the Priesthood elect. That He might be all this He took flesh. That from His real Body we might become His spiritual children He had chosen from all ages a maiden \ Mother. That He might become a son of Adam He hid Himself in the bosom of a naturally begotten daughter of Adam. He came to save humanity; and He would not do it without a human agent. That human agent must accept the office and con¬ dition, freely, knowingly, and absolutely. It must be in the power of that agent to say yes, or no, as shall please her best. God respects the free will of 10 THE DIVINE IDEAL. His creature whether for good or evil. And the most perfect of His creatures had necessarily the most absolute use of her own free will. Un¬ reservedly, untrammelled, unhindered, the question is answered as soon as asked; and Mary consents to become the Mother of her God. From that freedom of will in a sinless heart;— from that alacrity of response from a long yearning heart, and from the simultaneous overshadowing of the Holy Ghost through whose action Mary instan¬ taneously conceived her Divine Son, must neces¬ sarily flow all the myster}^ of Mary’s future position in the Church of God; and which dates back to her position in creation, and in the eternal decrees. We behold Mary thus uniting in her own person the natural and the supernatural. She was the earthly vessel into which the great God poured the Person of the Divine Word. She gave Him a natural body, but she conceived Him by super¬ natural means. She had been full of grace from the moment of her conception. She was undefiled from first to last. Her faith was as colossal as her grace, and her obedience equalled both. But this was not enough. This was no more than the pure material. The leaven was the power of the Holy Ghost which leavened the whole; that man might henceforth be nourished by Bread from heaven. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 11 In Mary all perfections had to culminate, for she was the first among the elect, the one perfect being according to the antecedent will of God, which she had never for a second contravened. She had flowed like a pellucid stream in the eternal decrees through the dark ages of man’s iniquity, until the moment came when her pure desires and her per¬ fect humility drew down the Dove to brood upon the waters ; and she became physically, and in her flesh the real and true Mother of God. Thus was established the holiest relationship between God and Mary. She is the Mother of the God Man: and as such she becomes the Mother of the mystical and spiritual Body of Christ. The union is perfect between Jesus and Mary. The union is perfect between Jesus and His Church. And thus Mary also enters into that union; and her maternity extends from the natural Body of Christ to His mystical Body the Church. You cannot divide Christ from His mystical Body, for He came into the world expressly that it might be formed. Neither can you divide Mary who is indissolubly united to Christ, from her maternity towards that mystical Body, which He has won to Himself through the material Body with which Mary provided Him. It was not as God alone that He redeemed humanity. It was, and is, as 12 THE DIVINE IDEAL. God and man. This He became through Mary. She was His true Mother, and as such has become our spiritual Mother. The gifts of God are without repentance. The mark of the finger of God is indelible. There is not a sacrament has passed over our souls but has left there an additional light or an additional brand, that will for ever brighten in heaven or deepen in hell. Not only is this the case with the sacraments, but it is so with every increase of grace which has distilled into our hearts from the countless showers that God rains on the just and the unjust. Even of those who are responding to grace there is pro¬ bably not one whose memory could count up at the close of an ordinary day the multitude of half articulate suggestions, of faint hints, of gentle im¬ pulses, of tentatives from an unseen propelling or repelling Hand, that have come and gone through that wonderful world which is shut in with each of us by walls of flesh; and which literally no eye penetrates but that of God, and ourselves. The history of any twenty-four hours as we could not write it, but as our Guardian Angel might, would be the most extraordinary page that was ever penned. And though more marvellous in cases of great sanc¬ tity, or the reverse, the history of one inner day of the most common-place life of the least remarkable THE DIVINE IDEAL. 13 human being would teem with interest, and fill us with wonder. Why it does not more impress our¬ selves is first because the events are generally so exceedingly evanescent, and secondly because we are forgetful. But God does not forget, and we have some¬ times questioned whether eternity itself will seem long enough for us to read the simple history of our own souls when the awful scroll is opened before us. Science has asserted that when an idle child casts a pebble into the ocean the whole world is conscious of the act. First there is a little splash, and then a strongly marked but diminutive circle. But the circle spreads wider and wider; until finally it is lost to our coarse sight. But not so to the sensitive bosom of the ocean, or the delicate ear of the circumambient air. The elements are linked in harmony. The touch that affects one affects all; and the tiny hand that threw a stone has sent a shock through all creation. This is the law of nature and of time. A thousand-fold more inde¬ lible is the law of grace and of eternity. When God chose Mary to be His Mother He cast the foundation stone of the temple to the Lord into the boundless ocean of His divine love, and from that moment the fact of her maternity has permeated all, has governed the entire system; has 14 THE DIVINE IDEAL. ruled the whole Church. It spread from the material maternity,supernaturally effected, of Christ’s natural Body, to the spiritual maternity of His mystical body the Church. Her maternity was the first great institute of God in the scheme of redemption. It was the first shock given to the powers of darkness. It was the principle of maternity in the law of grace, even as creation is the principle of paternity in the vast cosmos. Mary is a hierarchy in herself, surpassing all others in the extent of her appointed position. Her maternity, divinely produced, did not begin with Lady-day and end with that Christmas night. It did not dry up when the Divine Infant eat of the butter and honey of the land, and ceased to draw his nourishment from that sinless bosom. It survived the days of swaddling clothes. It outlived the thirty years of subjection of the God Man to the human Mother at Nazareth. The obedience ceased not in the three years of active life, for the miracles of that life only com¬ menced at her bidding, at the marriage feast. And when at length that bitter Friday, the ever obedient Divine Son, obedient to Father and Mother both, « was about to give up His soul by His own voluntary act, out of the torn and lacerated lineaments of His beautiful Body, then did He solemnly and as a last THE DIVINE IDEAL. 15 act signify to Mary, and through the beloved dis¬ ciple, the only one of the apostles present, to all mankind, that her maternity had a fuller meaning, and a larger sense; and that in making her the Mother of the Disciple of the Sacred Heart He constituted her the Mother of us all. The least act of God is not only infinite in its duration, it is also incalculable in its effects. We, on the contrary, do a thing and let it pass. Except as regards their relation to the just judgment of God, that is as regards their moral character, our actions remain for the most part truncated or abortive. We make use of persons for a time being. We drop them, and see them no more. We form a scheme, and only partially put it in execution. All our acts partake of our own fatuity, and are evanescent like ourselves. But nothing of this applies to the works, and de¬ signs, and decrees of God. They mean all they can mean, and more than we can fathom. They are made for eternity, far beyond the limit of time. This applies to the maternity of Mary. It is governed by the same eternal law as the Sacred Humanity Itself, of which it is the source. She became His Mother not only in that she supplied Him with a perfect Body, but also by the eternal desires of her most pure soul. The measure of the 16 THE DIVINE IDEAL. grace accorded her was the measure of her recep¬ tive aptitude; and that again was the guage of her intense and consuming desire that the Messiah should be born into the world. Nor was her de¬ sire only on her own account. She looked with her frank, far seeing gaze on all the nations of the world; on past ages, on the actual time, with her own nation fallen into partial servitude; and on the distant city on seven hills, the resort of every false deity, the arsenal of abomination and wickedness, glittering with newly decorated palaces, and pass¬ ing with giant strides into the rapidly developed horrors of the great empire. And in her heart she yearned over the perishing immortal souls there and every where; until her very yearning forced the laws of nature, and she gave birth to her Divine Infant some days before the appointed time of women. She longed for His coming also for herself, for she knew that it was to the prospective shed¬ ding of His most precious Blood that she owed the transcendent grace of her own immaculate concep¬ tion. And as amid the thorns and briers of this evil world she grew up a lily ever fairer as years slipped by, she knew to Whose redeeming love she was indebted for her perfect immunity from all the evil and concupiscence that was rife around her. As night after night she lay down in her little bed THE DIVINE IDEAL. 17 and composed her gentle limbs to rest, from what an abyss of humility the glad tears must have sprung to her closing eyes as she found no stain, not ever so small, so transient, on the conscience that God held in His own keeping as a sealed fountain. How she must have pined to see Him upon earth, in the flesh wherewith He had prospectively deli¬ vered her from evil; that she might kneel at his feet, and bless Him for having kept His handmaid ! She did not know then that it was she who was to be His Mother. She did not suppose that it was from her own innocent flesh He would take that which was her redemption. She did not know that she, as the second Eve, would more than repay to the second Adam what the first man gave to the formation of the first woman; and that her imma¬ culate heart was to be the human mould in which the Sacred Heart was cast. But already by her desires is she outstripping this her natural maternity, and is labouring in yearning and pain for the spiritual members of the Divine Head. And from the first moment that her material maternity was accomplished her spiritual maternity was effected. In one flash of light she found herself the Mother of God, and the Mother of God’s Church. By her desires and will, for ever united to those of Jesus, she became the spiritual Mother of His spiritual B THE DIVINE IDEAL. i3 progeny; and thus the Church is said to have been conceived in the womb of Mary spiritually at the same instant that materially its divine Head was conceived; as says Saint Bernard, in her “ viscercilis et maternalis ajfectus ” We have said that the creation is the outpouring of the paternity of God. It is the representation and evidence of the principle of paternity as ex- ponated by the supreme Father. Mary as the Mother of the God Man and the spiritual matrix of the Church, is the demonstra¬ tion of the material principle, and of fecundity and reproduction. To her, above all others, does it appertain to fulfil the original law that ushered in creation, the law of increase, and multiply, she is the flower, the culmination, and (second only to the Sacred Humanity which is immeasurably more in kind as well as in degree) the blossoming out of all creation. The material world is the type of the spiritual. The supernatural is laid on the lines of the natural. The law of our being is the palpable interpretation of a higher law. It is true that the fall of man has so blurred the unwritten law of nature that we have lost sight of the old fact that it is correlative with the law of grace. We should have understood this always if THE DIVINE IDEAL. 19 Adam had not sinned; and now only in proportion to the degree in which we guess at it again, and recognise the hand of God, and the presence and intention of God, alike in creation and in redemp¬ tion, do we catch glimpses down long vistas of light, of the harmony of the whole, and of the glory of the end. But we fail entirely in this if we fail to understand the place that is occupied by Mary in the law of creation and in the law of grace. The maternity is as much an eternal and integral element in God’s scheme of redemption as it is in the scheme of creation. Were this not so there would be a some¬ thing of radical and cumulative importance existing in the law of creation which had not its primal root and supreme cause of being in the spiritual world. It would be a baseless law; a caprice, an accident; not to be accounted for in the Eternal Idea of the Supreme Being, from whom all other being, with its laws, is alone derived. If then the maternity be an eternal element in God’s scheme of redemption, we shall find it pari passu with the life of Jesus upon earth; and with the reign of Jesus as Head of the Church in heaven. We shall find it recognised in the laws, devotions, and whole status of the Church; and also we shall find t it growing with its growth and “ striking root in an honourable people.” We shall find that the sacred 20 THE DIVINE IDEAL. maternity once established, it follows Jesus in the great work of our redemption, it works with Him and for Him; His acts are tinged with its presence. It labours with Him, it suffers with Him; and now it reigns with Him. Mary was as much in the designs of God at the cross as she was at the cradle. Nor did her maternity then die out. She continued the work of Jesus after His glorious resurrection, and since her assumption she is still united with Him in all His dealings with the Church of which she is the spiritual Mother. The theories of modern heresy treat the mater¬ nity of Mary as a fact past and gone. According to these it died out with the circumstance which necessitated it. Protestants admit the Incarnation and the scriptural account thereof. But that over, in the birth of Christ, Mary is no more than a venerable relic, laid aside as a sort of sentimental memory of the past, a picturesque and Raphael- esque image; but having no living power; forming no present and future important part of the Divine scheme. Honourable and blessed it may be, but only with reference to the past. And as regards that past they look upon the part Mary played therein almost as a fortuitous event, a something she could hardly help; and to the consequences of which, though she gave her consent, she was THE DIVINE IDEAL. 21 only partially awake. Her obedience and humility were no doubt admirable; but hardly exceeded what might have been expected of any other holy maiden; and at any rate they do not generally suppose her to have been conscious of all it in¬ volved. Thus they wipe out the principle of maternity from the Divine scheme, and leave it something little better than an accident, or a touching casualty. Some limit it to the cave and the cradle; admitting that it reappeared at intervals, according to the Gospel. Some consider her presence at the cross as a merely natural incident. But, as Pro¬ testants, they all believe that Mary’s maternity ended with its first passive act; and that her “ blessedness ” which she herself proclaims, was confined to Bethlehem. She was a sort of Dea ex machina necessary to the Incarnation, and then put aside as superfluous. The old pagan and Egyptian creeds had a deeper and far nobler notion of the principle of maternity as forming part of the Divine pro¬ gramme! Thus those outside the Church ignore the plan of God; the dignity of Mary; the liberty, intelligence, and sanctity of the Mother; as well as her ap¬ pointed place as the ministerial combatant in union with the second Adam, against Satan, to repair 22 — 1 THE DIVINE IDEAL. the fall of the first. “ She shall crush thy head” was God’s sentence on the serpent in the garden of Eden. And whether she (ipsa) applied directly to the woman, Mary, or to her seed Jesus, her divine, conscious maternity of the latter equally makes her His ally in that crushing of the serpent by which we were to be ransomed. The Divine Being loses no time, if we may use the expression, in putting forward Mary as the channel of our salvation—channel, but not primary cause. . The great evil is done. Error has penetrated the gates of Paradise. Eve has committed the first sin, that of curiosity, and disobedience as its consequence. Adam has listened, and fallen. And we all in our day and generation are virtually implicated. “ The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” Imme¬ diately Mary appears. From the arcana of the Divine intentions the Virgin Mother, the opposite and supplanter of Eve, is announced and hailed. The whisper of the first Ave was awakened in the remorseful hearts of our fallen parents; and the serpent with his doom on his head slinks away, to watch for the coming daughter of Eve, who will crush his power, and more than repair all that has been lost. Having now endeavoured to prove the enduring THE DIVINE IDEAL. 23 maternity of Mary upon general and fundamental principles, we will attempt to trace the evidences through the life of Christ and the history of the Church. In the Eternal Qui Est —the everlasting pure Being of God, there is neither past nor future, but all is the one Eternal Now. We are there* fore not surprised to find that when God reveals Himself in any way to His creatures there should be a blending of the past and future as we know them; and that many of the types and symbols by which He has condescended to instruct us should span over the ages of humanity, and rest like the two ends of the single arch of a bridge, on the eternity before, and the eternity after—to use human expressions— with the stream of time flowing between. ♦ It is with this knowledge of the way in which God teaches His Church that we must read that remarkable vision described in the 12th chapter of the Apocalypse; and which like most passages in Scripture of the same character, namely such as allude to a woman in the divine decrees, is referred to the Church as well as to Mary. But in the present instance the passage bears a far more direct re¬ ference to the latter, and in quite a secondary way represents the former, and only in so far as the former is the spiritual offspring of the latter. 24 THE DIVINE IDEAL. A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. The woman was with child, and “ the great red dragon waited to devour her offspring”—and u she was in pain to be delivered,” and “ the tail of the dragon drew the third part of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth ” In this vision we have the fact of the original divine intention of the Incarna¬ tion ; the woman who was to be the Mother of the God Man, placed before Lucifer and his angels, the “ stars of heaven,” of whom he was the chief, that they might recognise and adore the designs of God. But the pride of Lucifer revolted at the fact that a race inferior to himself, as was that of man* should be the chosen medium of the « incarnation, and should, as an ultimate fact, so far exceed himself in dignity. With his own fall he draws down a third of the angelic host. The woman is delivered of her Son, and the Son “ ascends to heaven to God and to his throne,” and this passage can only apply to the Son of Mary. But the woman remains upon earth. At this part the vision takes a bend backward * “ Thou hast made him a little less than the angels. Thon hast crowned him with honour and glory.” (Ps. viii. 6.) THE DIVINE IDEAL. 25 in time; and relates that the Archangel Michael had fought with the dragon (in consequence of his opposition to the woman), and that the dragon was vanquished with his angels; “Neither was their place found any more in heaven;” that he was “ cast upon the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him ” In a modified sense this applies to the Church, inasmuch as the lineaments of the daughter resem¬ ble those of the mother. But its literal sense can only apply to Mary. Mary alone brought forth the Son who returned to His throne in heaven. “ She was in pain to be delivered”—not of that divine Son however, whose miraculous and painless birth left her virginity intact, but of those children whose spiritual birth was to cost her Firstborn His precious Blood; and for whose sake she bore the sevenfold sword in her heart; sharing in His suffer¬ ings and yearning with Him who “is straitened till all be accomplished” for the salvation of our fallen race. “ And the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God.” Now the vision melts from Mary to the Church. And again in the 10th, Iith, and 12th verses, the past, present, and future are grandly brought together in one magnificent sweep, in the final triumph of 26 THE DIVINE IDEAL. the Church, and of those “who loved not their lives.” The 13th verse identifies the woman with Mary, who alone brought forth the Man-child, and not with the Church. And the 17th verse renews this identification by the statement that the dragon was angry against the woman (Mary) and went to make war with “ the rest of her seed (the Church) who keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” (See Apocalypse 12th chapter.) In this wonderful and comprehensive vision we have first, Mary in the eternal decrees of God, known as such to the angels before their fall, one third part of whom object to her exalted position; and by this their rebellion prove that a denial of the true position of Mary (which necessarily involves false views of the Incarnation, and of the Church as her spiritual progeny) is the first among heresies in date, and the first in error; and which fact is further corroborated by the words of the Church addressing Mary as “ Tu sola cunctas here - ses interemisti .” We have secondly, Mary as the revealed true human Mother of the divine Son, and as the spiritual Mother by the desires of her “ visceralis et maternalis affectus” of the Church. And thirdly, THE DIVINE IDEAL. 27 we have Mary with her God-appointed place in the desert where the dragon persecutes her seed—“ the rest of her seed,” that is the Church. “ The dragon casts a river of iniquity to cause her to be carried away.” But the earth, that owes all to her as the Flower of Creation and the Great Mother, “ opens her mouth,” and helps the woman. This vision has an all but unlimited scope. It dates from before the creation and the fall of the angels; and spreads itself over the whole history of heaven and earth, down to the moment of the In¬ carnation. And from that again covers the whole history of the Church militant. The first and prin¬ cipal figure in the vision is incontestably Mary. It gives us the fact of her primary position in the eternal decrees; her precedence in the minds of the Ancient of Days when “ the Lord possessed her in the beginning of His ways before He made anything, from the beginning.” “ I was set up from eternity,” says Wisdom in the person of Mary—“ I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was con¬ ceived, neither had the fountains of water already sprung out; the mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established: before the hills I was brought forth; He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world. When He 2 8 THE DIVINE IDEAL. prepared the heavens [the local habitation of those future angels who were to form her court, and one third part of whom became her foes] I was present: when with a certain law and compass He enclosed the depths: when He established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters: when He com¬ passed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when He balanced the foundations of the earth, I was with Him forming all things.”* In this passage we see Mary, as the embodiment of the reproduc¬ tive principle. Then comes, in the order of time, the creation of the angels, and the localisation of heaven; and before the bright phalanx of celestial beings with the impenetrable infused science of the cherubim, and the burning love of the seraphim, suddenly there appears the great sign in heaven of the woman clothed with the sun, and carrying in her virgin bosom the God Man. But there is heresy among the serried ranks of her future ministers, and one-third of the first re¬ splendent beings of God’s creation will never see the Beatific Vision. Their brief probation is past, and for them there is no repentance. The work of creation proceeds, and with the * Proverbs viii. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 29 woman ever before Him the divine Creator builds up the mountains and the hills, and the earth with her rivers, the sky above, and the fountains of waters. Through the whole the Incarnation of the Logos is the ultimate end in view. “ For Him were all things made that are made and as the means to the end, Mary the Mother “ plays before Him at all times.” The creation is completed. The mys¬ terious cycles called of “seven days” close in the wonderful operations of the Creator. And in the garden of Paradise dwell the one perfectly blissful pair. Then follows the fall, through the woman’s influence; and immediately that other Woman appears, as a preceding intention and as a coming fact. The woman had appeared as a sign in heaven travailing in birth. The same woman and her seed are foretold as the remedy of the dire calamity which Eve has entailed upon herself and her children. There is to be a woman who is to escape the penalty attached to the seed of Eve, the original stain, and its consequent concupiscence: and who, with her seed, is to crush the serpent’s head. By the merits of that divine Son Who was to be born of the woman, the angels had been victorious over Satan or Lucifer, and his followers. And by the same merits of the same Child was Satan to be I 30 THE DIVINE IDEAL. \ again conquered upon the earth to which he had been banished, where “ he makes war with the rest of her seed,”—that is her spiritual children in the Church of God. There is a sign in heaven and a sign upon earth; and it is the same woman. It is Mary, and Mary always. It is the Virgin of the Imma¬ culate Conception. “ Sanctissima Virgo arctissimo et indissolubile vinculo cum Christo conjuncta, una cum illo et per ilium sempiternas contra venenosum serpentem inimicitias exercens, ac de ipso plenis- sime triumphans, illius caput immaculato pede con- trivit.” (Pius IX, Const: “ Inefifabilis.” Dec. 8, 1854.) The ruin is great, but the redemption is greater. A woman caused the fall, but the woman shall bring the reparation. The children of Eve come into the world with the mark of Satan upon them because they are born in sin. But the Child of the woman shall buy them back again with His own Blood. What the woman has lost the woman shall gain, and a thousandfold more. The conceptions of the woman are multiplied that the spiritual pro¬ geny of the woman may be as the sands of the sea in multitude. And Adam who knows that he and his descendants are to return to the earth from whence he was taken, nevertheless does not hesitate to call his wife “ Eve, because she is the mother of THE DIVINE IDEAL. 31 all the living. 1 * Through the very sentence of death he sees far off into the promise of eternal life. A woman brought death and sin into the world, but the woman who sprang from the loins of Adam without an inherited share in Adam’s concupiscence, was to bring forth Him Who is our life, and by whom we inherit life; our elder Brother, our newer Father, through whom we escape from the penalty inherited from our forefather, while our natural mother Eve is less our mother than our spiritual Mother Mary, who was so decreed by God before the creation, and when the lost paradise of pleasure was yet unplanted. Only by the woman could Adam people the world, only by the woman will God redeem the world. Eve when she conceives is no more virgin: she loses a portion of herself; she is no longer intact, she is in a certain sense lessened, and has become subject. But the woman through whom salvation shall come wears the white w T reath of virginity as well as the crown of maternity. Both honours cul¬ minate in her who is the source of all the honour due to the personality of humanity. The peace of virginity and the joy of maternity are hers equally. Eve’s sin was unknown to Adam at the time she committed it. It was her secret with the serpent 32 THE DIVINE IDEAL. Not till after did her husband learn her fall, and fall with her. Equally no one knew of that mid¬ night scene in the humble house at Nazareth. It was Mary’s secret with the Holy Ghost; and only a special revelation could communicate it to the bewildered and trembling Joseph. The one was a secret of sin unto death : the other of Love unto 9 • Life. The contrast is in every respect complete between the woman who brought death and the woman who brought life. And for ever the juxta¬ position of facts and of principles is maintained throughout the history of redemption. We have derived our natural life from Eve, followed by death. We receive Jesus who is our spiritual life, from Mary, followed by eternal life. When the serpent came to Eve in the groves of Paradise it hung upon her word whether the race of man was to be lost. At the annunciation an angel comes to Mary with a divine message: and it hangs upon her word whether mankind shall be saved. Both were free agents. Both, equally so at the respective dates, were sinless; both were full of grace, though the second was in all respects higher, nobler, and greater than the first. Both accept:—the one to damnation, the other to salvation. And from that moment when by her gentle “ fiat” the scales are turned, Mary’s work begins. \ THE DIVINE IDEAL. 33 t A precursor was ordained for the coming Christ: but it is through Mary he is to be filled with the Holy Ghost; and leaping at the sound of her sweet voice while he lies in his mother’s womb, three months before his birth, he recognises his God, and his spiritual Mother. It is always Mary who brings Jesus, even when we fail through infirmity or ignorance to recognise her. It is the elemental principle of God’s original decree. Nor does He ever alter it or shift it, because He is always con¬ sistent with Himself; and the principle which He impressed upon the beginning will govern the whole progress, and bring us round to itself again in the perfect sphere of truth. The Creator might have caused the Incarnation to take place in another mode. He might have formed another body out of the red earth as He formed that of Adam, and the unfallen Lucifer might have been deputed to accompany the human soul of Jesus that was to animate that body, fresh from the Hands of the Creator; and the Hypostatic Union might thus have ensued in a mysterious way unknown to us. Perhaps this might have been; and the Queenless angels might have accep¬ ted this version of the Incarnation and been in bliss at this hour. The whole contrast between Eve and her glorious daughter would then have been C 34 the divine ideal. * / wanting. Jesus would have worn flesh: but not the flesh of Adam. Perhaps this cold ungenial mode might in some, to us uncertain, sense have sufficed to our re¬ demption. But in that case the primary law of “increase and multiply,” the divine recognition of the reproductive principle in the whole cosmic system would have been wanting. The maternity would have vanished from the plan: at least it would have been wanting in its underlying base and purport. That which is at the root of the # natural world would have found no cause of being in the spiritual world, and consequently would have had no consecration and no sacred character. . The silver thread would have dropped out of the silken web of God’s decrees. And the great prin¬ ciple of transmitted life would have lost its rooted¬ ness in the Being of God: as though a link in the golden chain had suddenly given way. These schemes of redemption are imaginable. We dare not presume to say they are possible. Sufficient is it for us that it was not so ordainedthat the maternity in God’s scheme was the larger love that grew out of the larger need, and that the plan the Eternal Godhead adopted in ineffable wisdom was the one which bears the same stamp throughout; and which is harmonious from the first note to the last. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 35 It starts with the woman, the mother, and the law—namely Eve and her conceptions, the law according to “ increase and multiply.” It starts again with the woman, the mother, and the law. Mary of the apocalyptic vision. The Mother of the Divine Son divinely conceived, and who is confirmed to us as the Mother of the countless Church, the multitude that cannot be numbered, at the foot of the life-giving Cross. The second has eclipsed the first. And whereas the eldest son of the first is the murderer of his brother, the elder Son of the second is the Saviour of His brethren. And Mary who / has bruised the head of Lucifer becomes the true bearer of the light of the world, then and for ever. First she shows Him to the shepherds, because it is to the poor and the humble that the Gospel is preached. Then it is Mary who shows Him to the Magi, for she is herself the sedes sapiential. She brings Him to the learned and the unlearned alike. Again Mary takes Him to the temple, the Sanctuary of that law which He had come to fulfil, and every part of which in construction and in ornament was typical of Him and of her. It is Mary who carries Him into Egypt, which means darkness, she herself being the bearer of light and realising in her own 36 THE DIVINE IDEAL. person the title of the enemy whose head she had crushed. In all these events she is inseparable from her Son, and her Son from her. Nor does His infancy suffice; but He must spend thirty years in privacy with her that He may train her for the moment when she shall stand beneath the cross on which He hangs, showing by this her attitude that she is one with Him in intention; suffering with Him, but never sinking, never fainting: standing upright and firm with the sword through her heart. She has been co-combatant with Him in the conflict with Satan. And she is co-redemptress with Him by her full, and perfectly harmonious, and undivided intention on the cross. She brought Him into the world for that hour. She has accompanied Him up to that hour. And at that hour she stands by Him. And when all is about to be accomplished, He turns His face to her, and crowns her work which is supremely His work, by giving her to us in the person of the beloved Disciple: as though He had said to her, “ Mary, thou hast done well. Thou gavest me the Body by whose passion I have saved thee. In thy bosom I lay,and there was I nourished. Thy lap was the throne on which I sat to receive the first homage of my subjects. Thy home was my home; thy converse my sole companionship. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 37 At thy word I began the long line of miracles by which I attested my divine mission. Thou hast watched my agony, and counted the very drops of my Blood with an anguish surpassing that of women. Mary, thou hast done well, and now be¬ hold I leave thee all the world for thine inheritance ; all mankind for whom I die; and especially thy children and mine born to us on this bed of anguish, and now present in the person of my beloved Disciple.” Those who are outside the Church cannot recog¬ nise this harmony. To their untutored ears it is a jargon of confused sounds. They accept, in a sense, the leading events of the Gospels: but they cannot follow up the logical inferences indicated by the concomitant circumstances. To them these appear but unimportant adjuncts. To them it is little more than accident that Mary nursed the Infant Son of God, that Mary showed Him to His first worshippers, that He spent thirty unchronicled years alone with Mary, and that Mary stood through the three hours’ agony. They regard these incidents as though God were subject to circumstances in the same sense in which we are. To them these facts are casualties, the natural but not necessary accessories of the drama, a series of incidents partially left to chance:—instead of being as they 38 THE DIVINE IDEAL. most truly are, mysteries co-existing with the first divine intention of the woman clothed with the sun, and with the moon beneath her feet; and a crown of twelve stars upon her head. The woman clothed with the rays of her Son’s divinity; with all the past as her standing point represented by the spent world of the barren moon, and crowned with the twelve apostles, the pillars of the Church of which she is the Mother. These are not accidents. They are intentions. They are not imaginations. They are facts. The facts God has used to build up the spiritual world on the foregone type of the natural world. They are eternally foreseen events by which He reveals Himself to us, and through which He maintains in His revelation of Himself that perfect harmony between the visible and the invisible which is the key-note given by His own absolutely harmonious Being. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 39 CHAPTER II. “ Vergine pura, d’ogni parte intera, Del tuo parte gentil figliuola, e madre, Ch’ allumi questa vita, et i’altra adorni.” Petrarch. In designating the Blessed Virgin “Queen of Angels,” the Church is not merely employing a graceful or devotional phrase. She is shadowing forth a great truth which falls back upon the antecedent law of God in prehistoric times. St- Paul in speaking of the Son of God, after stating that He took a nature a little lower than the angels, says, in allusion to the whole creation: “For Him are all things.”* It follows from this that the angels, as forming part of the “ all things,” enter into the scheme of the Incarnation; and as Mary enters into that scheme as the first foundation stone thereof, the representative of the primary law of creation, and the medium of its spiritual realisation —the law of “increase and multiply;” therefore necessarily Mary is above the angels ; and they who are all “ ministering spirits” are her subjects. Jesus, insomuch as He was man, was made a little lower * Heb. ii. 40 THE DIVINE IDEAL. than the angels. Mary, insomuch as she was the Mother of God, was made their superior, and through her it is that man rises into a position above the angelic host, for which, as the adopted brother of the only begotten Son of God, he was always destined. It becomes therefore certain to demonstration that Mary was the stumbling-block to the angels Avho fell. They were out of harmony with the will of God revealed to them in the sign of the woman in the Apocalypse. Their pride was staggered, not so much at the lower nature being united to the Godhead, as at the woman being the source of that nature. They would not have her to reign over them ; and they fell: as all have done since who have resisted the sweet dominion of Mary. However much the consciousness of their own glorious and radiant being may have filled them with arrogance, it is hardly to be imagined that the view of the Second Person of the ever blessed Trinity clothing Himself in flesh, could have shaken their fidelity in itself. Unbelieving men are staggered at it because they look at the great fact through the medium of their own fallen nature, and with the degrading knowledge pressing upon them of what they and their fellows are. But the angelic hosts who knew the Son of God as He is in the bosom of the Father (not that they at that time THE DIVINE IDEAL. 41 enjoyed the beatific vision, for in that case they could not have fallen); and who from the first must have penetrated the mystery of the coming Hypostatic Union, and have known with all the profound depth of their infused science, how im¬ possible it was that though the Divinity might touch the humanity, the humanity could in any way impinge upon the Divinity, could have been troubled with no doubts respecting the nature or the Person of the God-Man. It is difficult to suppose that when they had revealed to them the designs of God, and that they saw the exquisite beauty and harmony of matter with its unborn laws and forces as it escaped from the creating Hand, could have had any repugnance to its serving the purpose for which it was created, of a garment for the Divine Son in the Hypostatic Union. The unutterable charm and exquisite tenderness of the Divine thought would have filled them with astonishment and admiration. Moreover they knew that they themselves would not have been called into being but for the general scheme of creation, which contained that of the Incarnation. Therefore the prophetic history of creation must have had all the intense interest to them of the explanation of their own existence. They must have argued, “ We are, because the Hypostatic 42 THE DIVINE IDEAL. Union is to be.” So far well. But with the prescience that the first intention of creation would undergo a dire change through the baneful exercise of the free will of Adam leading to the ruin of himself and his race; when they foresaw not only the Hypostatic Union, not only the divine adora¬ tion to be given to a nature inferior to their own, but that it was from a daughter of this accursed race, albeit herself preserved from the curse, that Jesus was to have a “ Body fitted to Him,” and that she, as' a necessary consequence of her being the Mother of the Son of God, was to be their Mistress and their Queen, then they revolted—not against the Hypostatic Union in itself; for the mystery of that they penetrated as probably no saint has done upon earth, but against the Immaculate Concep¬ tion of Mary, the pure Flower derived physically from the impure root—the lily from among thorns, the honey from the coarse carcase of the lion.* The depth of the humiliation of Jesus and the height of the elevation of Mary troubled their unloving temperaments; and turning their bright disdainful eyes from the woman clothed with the sun, they fell from their allegiance. Since that hour all heretics have done the same. The highest worship, that of latria, which is * Judges xiv. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 43 supreme absolute adoration, admitting of no rights in the worshipper and confessing supreme irrespon¬ sible Godhead in the object, we, as Christians, offer to the Sacred Humanity of the Incarnate Word; as being due to that Divine Person Who was in the beginning with God, and Who was God, and ever is God. He is the word spoken from all eter¬ nity, in the intercommunion which God holds with Himself in the fathomless solitude of pure Being: and which Word is now for our sake clothed but not obscured in Humanity—“ The word made flesh, and dwelling among men.” He has come down to us, and yet He has never left the Bosom of the Father. He is here in the blessed Eucharist, and yet He is for ever there. He is Jesus, the Word spoken to us. But He is also the Logos , the Word by which God expresses Himself co-equally, co-extensively, and co-eternally—God Who thus begot, and is ever begettingHis consubstantial, co-equal,and co-eternal Son. The walls of flesh have caused no rupture, no intermission in the Divine Essence. God has become Jesus. But Jesus is still God. There are still no limits to the Godhead. The Bosom of the Father has parted with nothing in order that the bosom of Mary should be filled ; and yet filled it is, leaving the wealth of the illimitable Godhead all that it ever was, and is, and will be. 44 THE DIVINE IDEAL. In becoming man Jesus has in no degree, in no faintest shadow ceased to be the Eternal Second Person of the Trinity. There is no rift between the Eternal Logos and the God-Man Jesus. God i is not lesser because man is greater. Mary gave what Mary could; and since that hour what God gave, namely Himself, is never disunited from what Mary gave—the “ body fitted to Him.” This is what the Hypostatic Union means, and this is what all heresies have attacked since the angels began the war. The Arians divided Jesus from God, admitting Him to be only the Son of Mary, though never going to the length of making Him the Son of Joseph. The Nestorians took a more subtle' view of the question. They divided God and Mary in the generation of the Son, and so made two Christs : the one a real man, the other a sort of spiritual presence which hovered around the first. i The Eutychians confused both, reducing the sacred humanity to a myth, and the sufferings of Christ to a semblance. Practically, Protestants are the same as Nestorians; their views of the Hypostatic Union being, to say the least, confused and inaccurate. They divide the unity of the Son of Man by dividing God and Mary as joint generators of the Incarnate Word. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 45 They take the overshadowing of the Holy Ghost to have been little more than a pious influence, the sort of inspiration in prayer that any holy soul might be subject to, only more in degree, and a great deal more in result. They allow that Mary’s conception of her Son was miraculous, but they fail to realise that it was divine. The Catholic Church alone recognises the Paternity of the Father (in His own Bosom and from all eternity), and the maternity of the Mother of the same divine Son (in time and on earth). Consequently Protestants are unable to grasp the idea of Mary’s true position, and in point of fact the Ritualists who pay her a certain honour are as far from the truth as the rest. They may make her the first among women. But they fail to under¬ stand that she is an entire hierarchy, apart in herself; and that she is so, first in her Immaculate Conception, and Secondly by her position in the Divine scheme. And from the moment that any soul appreciates the position of Mary it becomes impossible for that soul to remain outside the pale of the Church. But also is it rare for any soul to be brought into the fold by a special light upon this truth. It belongs to the inner arcana of the Faith. We are saved by the merits of Jesus culminating in the merits of His blood-shedding. But the 4 6 THE DIVINE IDEAL. humanity which enabled Him to merit is derived from His Mother. God does not merit. That there might be merit, to redeem our demerit, there had to be a God-Man, and that necessitated a Mother, and a divine conception. In Mary’s merit lay the possibility of God becoming meritorious, by becoming man. From the instant she gave her pure bosom for the mysterious formation and nine months’ growth of the Divine Infant, she became united to Him by the strongest tie of nature, of intention, and of ministry. From the first moment of His conception the Divine Infant began to merit; % and through all that unspeakably precious interval Mary’s merits were so intimately united to His that they were, in a sense, one with His, even as her substance was one with His. The redemption of our race began in the bosom of Mary, and made her our co-redemptrix, as her pulses beat for His, and her blood filled two hearts. Maiy was the altar on which the Divine Infant offered all His sacrifices to His Father in heaven, during His nine months’ ante-natal imprisonment, in which He was in a special sense the hidden God. Mary also was as the Priest who carried Him whom the priesthood* alone may carry, when they elevate * A deacon inay carry the Blessed Sacrament. St. Joseph is therefore sometimes compared to a deacon : but never to a priest. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 47 Him in the sacred species in the sacrifice of the Mass, at Benediction, or to the sick. It was therefore during those nine months that the foundations of Mary’s status in the Church were being laid; never to alter, never to diminish, but ever to increase. For the foundations, though all essential, are the minor part; the edifice is higher, grander, and in all respects nobler; and it is in her relations to the Church and to all humanity that Mary takes her real proportions. God does nothing in vain. He does not sketch out a plan and leave it incomplete. He does not make use of means loftier and more full of promise than the ends into which they are to develop. If Mary was all this to Him at the beginning of His incarnation it was because she was to be all this for ever. He has not since then let her down from a once nobler height to a lower level. Mary has not to look back upon her extraordinary eminence during those nine months, and think of it as some glorious prerogative past and gone; like a ruined heiress or a dethroned queen. The facts are past, but the eminence remains. She has forfeited nothing; and with God there is no repentance of His gifts. Men sometimes seem to open their hands very wide, as though they were going to endow all around them with untold wealth in a burst of 48 THE DIVINE IDEAL. beneficence. And then the hand slowly closes on its treasures, and the thin stream of benevolence is checked. His thoughts are greater than his deeds. It is not so with the Divine Giver of all good. “ He giveth liberally and upbraideth not,” and when all seems poured out, there is still some sweeter drop at the bottom of the cup. Mary can look back with no sentiment that the past was in any way greater, more intimate, more powerful, more redolent of a sweet and gracious importance than the present, as all mere human mothers must do. The accidents of her maternal position are passed. But the position she gained by her maternity can never diminish in the faintest degree. It may increase in our eyes ; inasmuch as it may further develop to us, even as it has already done by the definition of the Immaculate Conception, that becoming an article of faith which had previously been known only as an universal belief. This may happen, as the Church brings out of her treasures “ things new and old.” But even as Jesus is clothed with His all glorious flesh, and wears His five beauteous wounds indelible in heaven, so does Mary wear her maternal crown without one ewel the less than when she wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and laid Him in the manger. Mary’s spiritual maternity of the Church is the THE DIVINE IDEAL. 49 reflex of her real maternity of Christ, and is no less real because it is spiritual, if by real we mean certain and absolute. Her spiritual maternity is a fruit intrinsic to the fruit of her womb. It follows from it as the necessary result. It is the spiritual correlative of the natural law of increase and multiply. The Church also is a spiritual mother, as she is also spiritually virgin. Some of her members are virgin (to Christ). Some are mothers (but not of Christ). But Mary is spiritually the Mother equally of each member of the Church, as says St. Augus¬ tine : “ Spiritu quidem mater membrorum ejus quia co-operata est caritate ut fideles nascerentur in Ecclesia.”* But Mary takes precedence of the Church in this spiritual maternity, for she first gave to the mystical members their mystical Head. This the Church does not do. She generates members to the Head, but not in the Head. Mary alone generates them in the Head, in Whom she conceived all the mystical Body; and that she may not be behindhand in anything, she also generates them to the Head, by virtue of which Head she was adapted to become the Mother of the members. The maternity of the Church is the fruit of the fruit of * St. Augustine de Virginitate. D 50 THE DIVINE IDEAL. Mary, that is, an irradiation of her maternity in regard to Jesus the Head. “Sola Maria et spiritu et corpore mater et virgo, et mater Christi et Virgo Christi.”* The maternity of Mary is the spiritual correlative of that which was both spiritual and material—of that which was the spiritual and most real union of spirit aad matter; God-head and Manhood, in the Hypostatic Union. The glory of the Son lies in the virginity of the Mother, preserved to her by the subtle essence of the Divinity. The glory of the Mother lies in the divinity of the Son, inasmuch as she, a mere woman, was chosen to bring forth the Son of God; and through her Divine offspring received the crown of maternity without forfeiture of the crown of virginity: so that she might remain for ever the perfect type of woman, perfect in both relations: and that thus she might replace the lost position of the first woman, who was created a woman (not a child), but fell; and who only became a mother and bore sons, after her fall. Mary never fell, and in her perfect integrity was virgin and mother both. In the divine scheme of the rehabilitation of fallen man, two great mysteries are thus blended. That of the Hypostatic Union, and that of the * St. Augustine. THE DIVINE IDEAL. 51 divine maternity. The first creates the> second. The Hypostatic Union is the direct cause of Mary’s fertility. It was a necessity in the divine scheme, the very essence of which lay in the Son of God taking the flesh of Adam. We have already glanced at the hypothesis that the Almighty might have redeemed mankind by some other means. He might have accepted a lesser sacrifice. He might have been content with such penance as man, urged by grace, could offer: or have accepted the meritorious life of Christ without His meritorious sufferings. He might have chosen to count our human sufferings, such as we all endure, a sufficient price to atone for our sins* Theologians agree that such was possible; and that outside the means adopted by the Almighty for the remission of sin there may be a thousand others from which He might have made His free selection. But from the moment that God chose to clothe Himself not only *