We see spiritual ideals a.s.similated, and sympathy with the work of G.o.d generated, until we feel that that work has gained a firm and enduring ground in humanity from which it can act. G.o.d is able to consummate His purpose, and men begin to understand in some measure the nature of the future deliverance and to look forward to the coming of One Who should be the embodiment of the divine action and the Representative of G.o.d Himself with a completeness which no previous messenger of G.o.d had ever attained.

It we would understand the Old Testament we must find that its intimate note is preparation, just as the intimate note of the New Testament is accomplishment. G.o.d is working to a foreseen end, and is working as fast as men will consent to co-operate and become the instruments of His purpose. The purpose is not one that can be achieved by the exercise of power; it is a purpose of love and can be effected only through co-operating love. And as we watch the final unfolding of that purpose in the Incarnation of G.o.d, we more and more become conscious of the preparation of all the instruments of the purpose which are working in harmony for the revelation of the meaning of G.o.d.

Of all the instruments of this divine purpose, one figure has preeminently fascinated the devout imagination because of her unique beauty, and has been the object of profound speculation because of the intimacy of her relation to G.o.d,--Mary of Nazareth. The vocabulary of love and reverence has exhausted itself in the attempt to express our estimate of her. The literature of Mariology is immense. And no one who has at all entered into the meaning of the Incarnation, of what is involved in eternal G.o.d taking human flesh, can wonder at this. Here at the crisis of the divine redeeming action, when the crowning mystery which angels desire to look into is being accomplished, we find the figure of a village maiden of Israel as the surprising instrument of the advent of G.o.d. We wonder: and we instinctively feel, that as all the other steps and instruments in G.o.d's redemption of man had from the beginning been carefully prepared, so shall we find preparation here. We understand that as G.o.d could not come in the flesh at any time, but only when the "fulness of time" had come; so He could not come of any woman, but only of such an one as He had prepared to be the instrument of His Incarnation.

It is involved in the very intimacy of the relation which exists between our Lord and His blessed Mother that she should be unique in the human race. We feel that we are right in saying that the Incarnation which waited for the preparation of the world socially and spiritually, must also be thought of as waiting for the coming of the woman who would so completely surrender herself to the divine will that in her obedience could be founded the antidote to the disobedience which was founded in Eve. The race waited for the coming of the new mother who should be the instrument in the abolishing of the evil of which the first mother was the instrument. And from the very beginning of the thought of the Church about blessed Mary there was no doubt that it was implied in her office in bearing the G.o.d-Man that she should be without sin--sinless in the sense of never having in any least degree consented to evil the thought of the Church has ever held her to be. It was held incredible that she who by G.o.d's election bore in the sanctuary of her womb during the months of her child-bearing Him who was Lord and Creator and was come to save the world from all the stain and penalty of sin should herself be a sinner. Without actual sin, therefore, was Mary held to be from the time that the thought of the Church was turned upon her relation to our Blessed Lord[6].

[Footnote 6: It is true that a few writers among the Fathers see in blessed Mary traces of venial sin; who think of her intervention at Cana as presumptuous &c. But such notices are not of sufficient frequency or importance to break the general tradition.]

For some time this seemed enough. It was not felt that any further thought about her sinlessness was needed. But as the uniqueness of Mary forced itself more and more upon the brooding thought of theologians and saints they were compelled to face the fact that her freedom from actual sin was not a full appreciation of her purity, was not an exhaustive treatment of her relation to our Lord. The doctrine of the nature of sin itself had been becoming clearer to the minds of Christian thinkers. All men are conceived and born in sin, it was seen. After S. Paul's teaching, the problem of _sin_ was not the problem of sins but the problem of sinfulness. The matter could not be left with the statement that all men do sin; the reason of their sinning must be traced out. And it was traced out, under S. Paul's guidance, to a ground of sin in nature itself, to a defect in man as he is born into the world. He does not become a sinner when he commits his first sin: he is born a sinner.

In other words, the problem of man's sinfulness is the problem of original sin.

What then do we mean by original sin? Briefly, we mean this. At his creation man was not only created innocent, but he was created in union with G.o.d, a union which conferred on him many supernatural gifts, gifts, that is, which were not a part of his nature, but were in the way of an addition to his nature. "By created nature man is endowed with moral sense, and is thus made responsible for righteousness; but he is unequal to its fulfilment. The all-righteous Creator could be trusted to complete His work. He endowed primitive man with superadded gifts of grace, especially the supernatural gift, _donum supernaturale_, of the Holy Spirit[7]."

[Footnote 7: Hall, Dogmatic Theology, V, 263.]

Our purpose does not require us further to particularize these gifts and our time does not permit it. We are concerned with this: the effect of man's sin was, what the effect of sin always is, to separate man from G.o.d. To sin, man has to put his will in opposition to the will of G.o.d.

This our first parents did; and the result of their act was the destruction of their union with G.o.d and the loss of their supernatural endowments. They lapsed into a state of nature, only it was a state in which they had forfeited what had been conferred upon them at their creation. This state of man, with only his natural endowments, is the state into which all men, the descendants of Adam, have been born. This is the state of original sin. "Original sin means in Catholic theology a state inherited from our first human parents in which we are deprived of the supernatural grace and original righteousness with which they were endowed before they sinned, and are naturally p.r.o.ne to sin." (Hall, Dogmatic Theology, Vol. V, p. 281.) We can state the same fact otherwise, and more simply for our present purposes, by saying that by sin was forfeited the grace of union or sanctifying grace; and when we say that a child is born in sin we mean that it is born out of union with G.o.d, or without the supernatural gift of sanctifying grace. You will note here no implication of original sin as an active poison handed on from generation to generation. It will be important to remember this presently.

When, therefore, the thought of the Church began to follow out what was involved in its belief in the actual sinlessness of blessed Mary, in its holding to the fact that her relation to G.o.d was of such a close and indeed unique character that her actual sinfulness would be incomprehensible; it was at length compelled to ask, What, in that case are we to think of original sin? If the first Eve was created in innocence and endowed with supernatural gifts, are we to think that she whom the Fathers of the Church from the earliest times have constantly called the second Eve, she whom G.o.d chose to be the Mother of His Son, should be less endowed? Is it a fact any more conceivable that the virgin Mother of G.o.d should be born in original sin than that she should be the victim of actual sin? If by the special grace of G.o.d she was kept from sin from the time that she was able to know good and evil, is it not probable that the freedom from sin goes further back than that, and is a freedom from original as well as from actual sin? What is the meaning of the Angelic Salutation, "Hail, thou that art _full of grace_," unless it refer to a superadded grace, to such _donum supernaturale_ as the first Eve received? There is indeed no precedent to guide in the case: the prophet Jeremiah and S. John Baptist had been preserved from sin from the womb, but this did not involve freedom from original sin. Still the fact that there was no precedent was not in anywise fatal; the point of the situation was just that there was no precedent for the relation to G.o.d into which Blessed Mary had been called. It was precisely this uniqueness of vocation which was leading theological thought to the conclusion of the uniqueness of her privilege: and this uniqueness of privilege seemed to call for nothing less than an exemption from sin in any and all forms. So a belief in the Immaculate Conception grew up despite a good deal of opposition while its implications were being thought out, but was found more and more congenial to the mind of the Church. She whose wonderful t.i.tle for centuries had been Mother of G.o.d could never at any moment of her existence have been separate from G.o.d. She must, so it was felt, have been united to G.o.d from the very first moment of her existence.

But what does this exemption from the common lot of men actually mean? I think that the simplest way of getting at it is to ask ourselves what it is that happens to a child at baptism. Every human child that is born into the world is born in original sin, that is, is born out of union with G.o.d, without sanctifying grace. It is then brought to the font and by baptism regenerated, born again, put in a relation to G.o.d that we describe as union, made a partaker of the divine nature. This varying description of the effect of baptism means that the soul of the child has become a partaker of sanctifying grace, the grace of union with G.o.d.

Original sin, we say, is forgiven: that is, the soul is placed in the relation to G.o.d that it would have had had sin not come into existence, save that there remains a certain weakness of nature due to its sinful heredity. This that happens to children when they are baptised is what is held to have happened to Blessed Mary at her creation. Her soul instead of being restored to G.o.d by grace after her birth, was by G.o.d's special grace or favour created in union with Him, and in that union always continued. The uniqueness of S. Mary's privilege was that she never had to be restored to union with G.o.d because from the moment of her existence she had been one with Him. This would have been the common lot of all men if sin had not come into the world.

In view of much criticism of this belief it is perhaps necessary to emphasize the fact that a belief in Mary's exemption from original sin does not imply a belief that she was exempt from the need of redemption.

She is a creature of G.o.d, only the highest of His creatures: and like all human beings she needed to be redeemed by the Blood of Christ. The privileges which are our Lord's Mother's, are her's through the foreseen merits of her Son--she, as all others, is redeemed by the sacrifice and death of Christ. There is in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception no shadow of encroachment on the doctrine of universal redemption in Christ; there is simply the belief that for the merits of the Son the Mother was spared any moment of separation from the Father.

It will, of course, be said that this doctrine is but the relatively late and newly formulated doctrine of the Latin Church and is of no obligation elsewhere; that we are in no wise bound to receive it. In regard to which there are one or two things to be said. That we are not formally bound to believe a doctrine is not at all the same thing as to say that we are formally bound not to believe it. I am afraid that the latter is a not uncommon att.i.tude. There is no obligation upon us to disbelieve the Immaculate Conception of blessed Mary; there is an obligation upon us to understand it and to appreciate its meaning and value. We must remember that a doctrine that is not embodied in our Creed may nevertheless have the authority of the Church back of it. The doctrine of the Real Presence is not stated in the Creed; yet it is and always has been the teaching of the Church everywhere in all its liturgies. Though any particular statement of the Real Presence is not binding, the fact itself is binding on all Christians, and may not be doubted.

In much the same way it will be found that theological doctrines of relatively late creedal formulation yet have behind the formulation a long history of actual acceptance in the teaching of the Church. They are theologically certain long before they are embodied in authoritative formulae. What the individual Christian has to do is to try to a.s.similate the meaning of theological teaching and to find a place for it in his devotional practice and experience. His best att.i.tude is not one of doubt and scepticism, but of meditation and experiment. It is through this latter att.i.tude that each one is helping to form the mind of the Church, and aiding its progressive appreciation of revealed truth.

I do not see how any one who has entered into the meaning of the Incarnation can feel otherwise than that the uniqueness of the event carries with it the uniqueness of the instrument. It can of course be said that truth is not a matter of feeling but of revelation. But is it not true that G.o.d reveals Himself in many ways, and that our feelings as well as our intellects are involved in our perception of the truth revealed? Do we not often feel that something must be true far in advance of our ability to prove it so? And in truths of a certain order is there not an intuitive perception, a perception growing out of a sense of fitness, of congruity, which outruns the slow advance of the intellect? Love and sympathy often far outrun intellectual process. This is not to say that feeling is all; that a sense of fitness and conformity is a sufficient basis of doctrine. There is always need of the verification of the conclusions of the affections by the intellect; and the intellect in the last resort will have to be the determining factor.

And I think it can be said without hesitation that the intellectual work of theological students has quite justified the course that the affections of Christendom have taken in their spontaneous appreciation of Mary, the Ever-Virgin Mother of Our Lord. What the heart of Christendom has discovered, the mind of Christendom has justified. But here more than in any other doctrinal development it is love that has led the way, often with an eagerness, an _elan_, with which theology has found it difficult to keep up.

And as we to-day try to appreciate the place of Blessed Mary in the life of the Church of G.o.d must we not feel it to be our misfortune that our past has been so wrapped in clouds of controversy that we have been unable to see her meaning at all clearly? Must we not feel deep sadness at the thought that the very mention of Mary's name, so often stirs, not love and grat.i.tude, but the spirit of suspicion and dislike? We no doubt have pa.s.sed beyond such feelings, but the traces of their evil work through the centuries still persist. They persist in certain feelings of reserve and hesitation when we find that our convictions are leading us to the adoption of the att.i.tude toward her which is the common att.i.tude of all Catholicity, both East and West. When we feel that the time has actually come to abandon the narrowness and barrenness of devotional practice which is a part of our tradition, we nevertheless feel as though we were launching out on strange seas and that our next sight of land might be of strange regions where we should not feel at home. If such be our instinctive att.i.tude, it is well to remember that progress, spiritual as well as other, is conquest of the (to us) new; but that the acquisition of the new does not necessarily mean the abandonment of the old. We shall in fact lose nothing of our hold on the unique work of our Lord because we recognise that His Blessed Mother's a.s.sociation with it implies a certain preparation on her part, a certain uniqueness of privilege. There is one G.o.d, and one Mediator between G.o.d and man, the Man Christ Jesus; and all who come to G.o.d, come through Him. But they come also in the unity of the Body of many members and of many offices.

And the office of her who in G.o.d's providence was called to be the Mother of the Incarnate is surely as unique as is her vocation. She surely is ent.i.tled to receive from us the deep affection of our hearts and the highest honour that may be given to any creature.

THE GARLAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARIE.

Here are five letters in this blessed name, Which, changed, a five-fold mystery design, The M the Myrtle, A the Almonds claim, R Rose, I Ivy, E sweet Eglantine.

These form thy garland, when of Myrtle green The gladdest ground to all the numbered five, Is so implexed fine and laid in, between, As love here studied to keep grace alive.

Thy second string is the sweet Almond bloom Mounted high upon Selines' crest: As it alone (and only it) had room, To knit thy crown, and glorify the rest.

The third is from the garden culled, the Rose, The eye of flowers, worthy for her scent, To top the fairest lily now, that grows With wonder on the th.o.r.n.y regiment.

The fourth is the humble Ivy intersert But lowly laid, as on the earth asleep, Preserved in her antique bed of vert, No faiths more firm or flat, then, where't doth creep.

But that, which sums all, is the Eglantine, Which of the field is cleped the sweetest briar, Inflamed with ardour to that mystic shine, In Moses' bush unwasted in the fire.

Thus love, and hope, and burning charity, (Divinest graces) are so intermixt With odorous sweets and soft humility, As if they adored the head, whereon they are fixed.

PART TWO

CHAPTER II

THE ANNUNCIATION I

And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women.

S. Luke, I. 28

Oh G.o.d, whose will it was that thy Word should take flesh, at the message of the Angel, in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary, grant to us thy suppliants that, we who believe her to be truly the Mother of G.o.d, may be a.s.sisted by her intercession with thee. Through &c.

ROMAN.

When we attempt to reconstruct imaginatively any scene of Holy Scripture it is almost inevitable that we see it through the eyes of some great artist of the past. The Crucifixion comes to us as Durer or Guido Reni saw it; the Presentation or the Visitation presents itself to us in terms of the imagination of Raphael; we see the Nativity as a composition of Corregio. So the Annunciation rises before us when we close our eyes and attempt to make "the composition of place" in a familiar grouping of the actors: a startled maiden who has arisen hurriedly from work or prayer, looking with wonder at the apparition of an angel who has all the eagerness of one who has come hastily upon an urgent mission. The surroundings differ, but artists of the Renaissance like to think of a sumptuous background as a worthy setting for so great an event.

We keep close to the meaning of Scripture if we set the Annunciation in a room in a cottage of a Palestinian working man. And I like to think of S. Mary at her accustomed work when Gabriel appeared, not with a rush of wings, but as a silent and hardly felt presence standing before her whom the Lord has chosen to be the instrument of His coming. Wonder there would have been, the kind of awe-struck wonder with which the supernatural always fills men; and yet only for a moment, for how could she who was daily living so close to G.o.d fear the messenger of G.o.d? The thought of angels and divine messengers would be wholly familiar to her.

They had been the frequent agents of G.o.d in many a crisis of her people's history, and appeared again and again in the story of her ancestors on whose details she had often meditated. Yet in her humility she could but think it strange that an angel should have any message to bear to her.

It is a striking enough scene, as the artists have felt when they tried to put it before us. But no artist has ever been able to go below the surface and by any hint lead us to an appreciation of the vast implications of the moment. This moment of the Annunciation is in fact the central moment of the world's history. No moment before or since has equalled it in its unspeakable wonder, in its revelation of the meaning of G.o.d. Not the moment of the creation when all the Sons of G.o.d sang together at the vision of the unfolding purpose of G.o.d; not the morning of the Resurrection when the empty tomb told of the accomplished overthrow of death and h.e.l.l. This is the moment toward which all preceding time had moved, and to which all succeeding ages will look back--the moment of the Incarnation of G.o.d.

It is well to ask ourselves at this point what the Incarnation means, because our estimate of Blessed Mary as the chosen instrument of G.o.d's grace will be influenced by our estimate of that which she was chosen to do. One feels the failure to grasp her position in the work of our redemption often displays a weak hold upon that which is the very heart of G.o.d's work--the fact of G.o.d made man. The moment of the Annunciation is the moment of the Incarnation: G.o.d in His infinite love for mankind is sending forth His Son to be born of a woman in the likeness of our flesh. G.o.d the Son, the second Person of the ever adorable Trinity, is entering the womb of this maiden, there to wrap Himself in her flesh and to pa.s.s through the common course of a human child's development till He shall reach the hour of the Nativity. When we try to grasp the reach of the divine Love, its depth, its self-forgetfulness, we must stand in the cottage in Nazareth and hear the angelic salutation. And then surely our own hearts cannot fail to respond to the revelation of the divine love; and something of our love that goes out to our hidden Lord, goes out too to the maiden-mother who so willingly became G.o.d's instrument in His work for our redemption. In imagination I see S. Gabriel kneeling before her who has become a living Tabernacle of G.o.d Most High, and repeating his "Hail, thou that art highly favoured," with the deepest reverence.

"Hail, thou that art full of grace." We linger over this Ave of S.

Gabriel, and often it rises to our lips. Perhaps it is with S. Luke's narrative, almost naked in its simplicity, in our hands as we try once more to push our thought deep into the meaning of the scene, that we may understand a little better what has resulted in our experience from the Incarnation of G.o.d, and our thought turns to S. Mary whom G.o.d chose and brought so near to Himself. Perhaps it is when, with chaplet in hand, we try to imagine S. Mary's feelings at this first of the Joyful Mysteries when the meaning of her vocation comes clearly before her.

Hail! thou that art full of grace, of the Living Grace, the very Presence of the divinity itself. The plummet of our thought fails always to reach the depth of that mystery of Mary's Child. It was indeed centuries before the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit thought out and fully stated the meaning of this Child; it was centuries before it fully grasped the meaning of Mary herself in her relation to her divine Son: and after all the centuries of Spirit-guided statement and saintly meditation it still remains that many fail to understand and to make energetic in life the fact of the Incarnation of G.o.d in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

And what was S. Mary's own att.i.tude toward the announcement of the Angel? Her first instinctive word--the word called out by her imperfect grasp of the meaning of the message of S. Gabriel, is: How can this be seeing I know not a man? Are we to infer from these words, as many have inferred, that in her secret thoughts S. Mary had resolved always to remain a virgin, that she had so offered herself to G.o.d in the virgin state? Possibly when we remember that such was G.o.d's will for her it is not going too far to a.s.sume that she had been prompted thus to meet and offer herself to the divine will. Be that as it may there is an obvious and instantaneous a.s.sumption that the child-bearing which is predicted to her lies outside the normal and accustomed way of marriage. She clearly does not think that the archangel's words look to her approaching union with S. Joseph, even if the nominal nature of that marriage were not agreed upon. It is clear that her instantaneous feeling is that as the message is supernatural in character, so will its fulfilment be, and the wondering _how_ arises to her lips.

The answer to the how is that what is worked in her is by the power of the Holy Spirit: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of G.o.d."

As so often in the dealing of G.o.d with us, that which is put forward as an explanation actually deepens the mystery. It was no abatement of Mary's wonder, nor did it really put away her _how_ when she was told that the Holy Ghost should come upon her and that the child should be the Son of the Highest. And yet this was the only answer to such a question that was possible. Our questions may be met in two ways: either by a detailed explanation, or by the answer that the only explanation is G.o.d--that what we are concerned with is a direct working of G.o.d outside the accustomed order of nature and therefore outside the reach of our understanding. Such acts have no doubt their laws, but they are not the laws in terms of which we are wont to think.

The question of S. Mary was not a question which implied doubt. It is therefore the proper question with which to approach all G.o.d's works.

There is a stress with which such questions may be asked which implies on our part unbelief or at least hesitation in belief. It is a not uncommon accent to hear to-day in questions as to divine mysteries. Our recitation of the creed is not rarely invaded by restlessness, shadows of doubt, which perhaps we brush aside, or perhaps let linger in our minds with the feeling that it is safer for our religion not to follow these out. I am afraid that there are not a few who still adhere to the Church who do so with the feeling that it is better for them to go on repeating words that they have become used to rather than to raise questions as to their actual truth; who feel that the faith of the Church rests on foundations which in the course of the centuries have been badly shaken, but that it is safer not to disturb them lest they incontinently fall to pieces.

In other words there is a wide-spread feeling that such stories as this of the Annunciation and of the Virgin birth of our Lord are fables. When we ask, why is there such a feeling? the only answer is that the modern man has become suspicious of the supernatural. Has there anything been found in the way of evidence, we ask, which reflects upon the truth of the story in S. Luke? No, we are told; the story stands where it always did, its evidence is what it always was. What has changed is not the story or the evidence for it but the human att.i.tude toward that and all such stories. The modern mind does not attempt to disprove them, it just disapproves of them, and therefore declines to believe them. It sets them aside as belonging to an order of ideas with which it no longer has any sympathy.

It is no doubt true that we reach many of our conclusions, especially those which govern our practical att.i.tude towards life, from the ground of certain hardly recognised presuppositions, rather than from the basis of thought out principles. The thought of to-day is pervaded by the denial of the supernatural. It insists that all that we know or can know is the natural world about us. It rules out the possibility of any invasions of the natural order and declines to accept such on any evidence whatsoever. All that one has time to say now of such an att.i.tude is that it makes all religion impossible, and sets aside as untrustworthy all the deepest experiences of the human soul. If I were going to argue against this att.i.tude (as I am not able to now) I should simply oppose to it the past experience of the race as embodied in its best religious thought. I should stress the fact that what is n.o.blest and best in the past of humanity is wholly meaningless unless humanity's supposition of a life beyond this life, and of the existence of spiritual powers and beings to whom we are related, holds good. No nation has ever conducted its life on the basis of pure materialism, save in those last stages of its decadence which preluded its downfall.

But without going so far as to reject the supernatural and reject the truth of the immediate intervention of G.o.d in life, there are mult.i.tudes of men and women whose whole life never moves beyond the natural order.

They have no materialistic theory; if you ask them, they think that they are, in some sense not very well defined, Christians. But they have no Christian interests, no spiritual activities of any sort. For all practical purposes G.o.d and the spiritual order do not exist for them.