well as two Natures, and denying, consequently, that His Mother is the "Mother of God." Holy Scripture is confessedly appealed to both by those who assail and those who confess the Divinity of Christ. It is appealed to no less by those who assail and those who confess the greatness of Mary. As to the place assigned to others in the Scripturesto Moses, to David, to S. Paul, or S. John, there is no doubt. The Bible is only challenged on both sides in the case of those two whose position, though infinitely unequal, was alike exceptional the Creator Incarnate and the creature who was made the instrument of the Incarnation. An eminent prelate of the Irish Establishment, Dr. Jebb, Bishop of Limerick, who, with Mr. Alexander Knox, in some sort anticipated the High Church movement in England, made a striking remark in one of his works. The Roman Catholic Church, he said, despite the errors he attributed to it, had been preserved by a special Providence, because it alone was found to be the inexpugnable citadel of the doctrine of the Trinity; the various Protestant bodies having always betrayed a tendency to Arianism or Unitarianism. No wonder that it should be thus with them. Arguments strictly analogous to those urged against the greatness of Mary are used against the Divinity of her Son; and the same general objection is made, viz., that so great a mystery, if revealed at all, must needs have been revealed plainly. We meet, too, identically the same misconceptions. "What you give to Mary," one objector urges, "you take from Christ." "What you give to Christ," the Socinian adds, "you take from God."

The

What an estimate of the Bible have they formed who fancy that the greatness of Mary is nowhere to be found in it! They read it as superficially as the book of Nature is read by one who says, "I can see with my own eyes, and I see plainly that the earth does not move, and that the sun does move.' Bible would be a shallow book if every confident person could wade across its depths. The greatness of Mary is, indeed, to be found in it nowhere-unless it be found everywhere. The Sadducee could not find the doctrine of a Resurrection throughout the whole of the Old Testament: but our Blessed Lord showed him that it was implicitly confessed, not only in such texts as "I shall go to him," or "in my flesh I shall see God," but in the words most familiar to every child of Hebrew race, "the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob." Is the Old Testament the promise of the Messiah, and the New Testament the record of that Messiah, and do they yet report nothing of her greatness through whom the Mesiah came? It is in vain to say we cannot find it:" there are those who cannot

find God Himself throughout His whole creation; while there are others who recognize Him in every act of His Providence. In the Word, as in the works of God, there is light for those who can see, and darkness for those who will not.

Our Lord lived in solitude with His mother for thirty years; yet reading chiefly of the three years of His ministry many persons imagine that He had separated Himself from her who alone knew Him, and from whom only he had known the sympathy of one moment. He wrought His first miracle at her desire; yet she alone knew what was in His thought; and to the wedding guests His words probably seemed to refuse her petition. A woman in the crowd lifted up her voice in praise of one whom she deemed the mother of a prophet. Our Lord made answer that to do God's Will was a thing more blessed than such a privilege. A great writer* has remarked that all those who believe that Mary did the Will of God, find in those words her highest praise-a proof that in being "full of grace" she had a gift even more blessed than that of the Maternity for which it had prepared her. This is true; but no less true is that to the crowds He did not reveal either of these twin mysteries. He neither said that in Mary there existed the highest grace and sanctity of which a creature is capable; nor did He say that she was-not indeed one of the parents of a prophet-but the Mother of Incarnate God. To have revealed the former, would have been to have revealed the latter; and there are Christians now to whom His words mean but what they meant when first heard by the Jews. Such persons meet with other stumbling blocks also. Several passages, such as those which call the kinsmen of Jesus His Brethren, admit of misinterpretation on the part of those who do not know the genius of ancient languages.

The absence of Mary where mention of her might have been expected, has been yet more insisted on-and yet how she appears and re-appears successively at all the most critical junctures of God's Dispensation! In the primal prophecy another Pair-second in the order of time-first in that of Election-stand before the fallen Pair in the moment of their judgment:-the Woman and the promised Seed, her child. This is the beginning of the Dispensation. S. John beholds her again in those visions in which the fulness of the times passes before Him. She is the Woman pursued by the dragon's rage-the Woman whose Son rules in Heaven. Midwe between the beginning and the end is the Sacrifice etdeemed the world; and here again is

Mary. In assigning her as a Mother to His beloved disciple, the Fathers affirm that Christ mystically assigned her as a Mother to all those who by adoption are His Brethren, and that in this sense, though in it only, she too "brought forth. in sorrow." Yet in all these instances, with the light there is a shadow, and the veil is only raised for those who will see. In the Bible, it may well be confessed, Mary is both revealed and concealed. It is thus that, both in his mortal life and in his history, a Saint is at once a glory of God manifested, and a secret of God hidden from men. This heritage of the Saints is part of that reflex, both from Jesus and Mary, which we find to a lesser extent, in all good men. It exists most in the best and greatest-more in those who have preserved their first innocence than in the great penitents; more in the contemplatives than in those active orders whose labours lie among external things. We might pursue the same principle yet further. True virtue lacks a certain glitter that often belongs to false virtue-it has not its imposing gait, nor its fearless self-satisfaction. Again-the sincere, though very imperfect Christian often shows to less advantage than the mere man of the world. The former halts between divided aims: the latter has a perfect unity of purpose.

But what are lesser marvels compared with the true marvel, The God-man? Who would not have expected that His glory would have irradiated the world, even as in devout pictures a light proceeding from the new-born Saviour shines upon the dusky stable, the crib, and wondering beasts? Yet it was not so. The moral, like the material, glory was restrained. The light that invested Him during His Transfiguration, when the discourse was of that death which He was about to consummate at Jerusalem, this anointing for His grave was the sole token of that essential glory which he had refused to let forth during all the days of His earthly sojourn. That obscurity lasts still:-many who admit the heroic greatness of a Francis Xavier, and who claim the name of Christians, reject the Divinity of Christ! He walked among men, and to many He seemed less than man, "the scorn of men;" while to the rest He seemed man only. As He then hid His Divinity from the sensuous eye, so now in the Blessed Sacrament He hides His Humanity itself beneath its material symbols. Such is His mysterious Will! Those who saw Him pray did not know that God prayed in that human nature which He had assumed; those who saw Him sharing S. Joseph's toils, did not know that the Creator of the worlds was shaping the humblest appliances needed for man's estate :

His Divinity He was inspiring every wish of hers which was a law to Him in His Humanity—even as in His Divinity He was sustaining the universe, while in His Humanity a little spot of earth gave support to His feet. Those who stood by the Cross did not know that "the Blood of God" had been shed. It was not exclusively the blindness of sin, which wrapped the cloud around Him :—it was His Will also. Yet that cloud might have been deeper far. As the "outcast of the people" He was not so deeply veiled as He would have been, had He come as a Conquering King or National Deliverer. As such the people hailed Him; but even at that hour, ignorance was turning into self-willed error, and soon afterwards the Hosannas were changed into a cry of "Crucify Him." In all things He was like His Father; and even while in one sense He was that Father's manifestation to men, in another sense He remained secret like that Father Whom no man hath seen at any time. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." There is a twofold significance in this saying. All those whose eyes had rested on Christ had seen, whether they knew it or not, the Image of the Father. Yet again, among all those whose eyes had thus rested on Him there was not one who could truly see Him-see Him as God-except through the Spirit of God.

The obscurity of the God-man on earth had but one parallel-that of earth's highest creature. Hers was a part of His. In her Son alone the Divine was united to the Human-in her alone of creatures were united the two glories of Virginity and Motherhood. In His hand the sceptre of the Mediatorial Kingdom was invisible; and on her head the Creature-Crown was invisible. As soon as her Son allowed but glimpses of His glory to shine abroad, though but in powers accorded also to mortal men-miracles for example-there was stirred up out of the depths that hatred which made the Jews desire to slay Lazarus also whom Christ had raised from the dead. In part only He allowed His Apostles to be known, and they perished. Those who wonder why our Lord permitted the veil to rest upon His Mother while she remained on earth wonder why He had not destined Her to the martyr's death. The marvel of marvels is the dual obscurity in which the Incarnate God and the Queen of Creatures dwelt for those thirty years in the silent house. For the second Adam and the second Eve of a renewed creation an instinctive reverence may have existed even among those who knew them not-but little more. As the leopard or the lion drew nigh to our first parents in the sinless garden-eyed them for a moment-and then passed by to sport with its kind, or to slumber, so upon

Jesus and Mary may the wayfarer from Bethany, or the neighbour at Nazareth, have cast a casual regard. But they remained unknown. To the mind that judges by sense they must ever remain unknown.

ART. IV.-MINOR DOCTRINAL JUDGMENTS.

Idealism in Theology. A Review of Dr. WARD'S Scheme of Dogmatic Authority. By H. J. D. RYDER, of the Oratory. London: Longmans. A Letter to Rev. Father Ryder on his Recent Pamphlet. By WILLIAM GEORGE WARD, D. Ph. London: Burns & Oates.

"When does the Church Speak Infallibly?" BY THOMAS FRANCIS KNOX, of the Oratory. London: Burns & Oates.

Letters on Infallibility in the Westminster Gazette and The Tablet.

"WH

THY have you gentlemen of the DUBLIN REVIEW thought "fit wantonly to disturb the peace? Things were going on tranquilly and healthily, and real loyalty to the "Holy Father was everywhere on the increase, when you "began to undermine that loyalty by your exaggerated theories. "A Catholic, it may be, did not say in so many words that "doctrinal Encyclicals are infallible; but as a matter of course "he accepted their doctrine as if infallible. He no more "suspected them of error, than a child suspects his father's "instructions; and as you would only perplex a child by "trying to force down his throat some stringent theory "about the paternal authority, so also in the parallel "instance."

Such in effect is a remonstrance, which has been addressed to us by more than one person, for whom we feel deep respect and deference; and we are eager promptly to avow that if facts had been as the objection supposes, the course we have taken would be incapable of defence. But whatever may have been the case at an earlier period, we are confident that when first we called attention to this theme, such a supposition was extremely wide of the truth. At that time, as now, it was very far from being the universal habit of thinking Catholics in England, to study the contents of each successive Encyclical, and place it in absolute supremacy over their thoughts and convictions. On the contrary, many did and do think,