real rank. She holds and always will hold the relation of Mother of God, and, as her Son is universal King, of universal Queen-Mother. She is by the very fact of that relation placed above every other creature, above all the sons and daughters of men, above all the choirs, thrones, dominions, angels, and archangels of heaven, and can be below none but God himself. This is no exaggeration, but sober reason and literal truth, when once it is conceded that the "Word was made flesh." Weak men and sciolists, wicked men and devils, may rage or cavil at it, but so it is, and so it cannot not be. Exclaim as you will against it, nothing can alter it; nothing can prevent it from being true that eternal justice imposes upon us the duty of recognizing that relation, of acknowledging her exalted rank, and of rendering her the honor, the love, and veneration due to it. Fine Christians we should be, if we refused her the honor that is her due, and great honor and respect should we show to Him who has given her that exalted rank above every creature in heaven, on earth, and under the earth! It is not Catholics worshipping Mary as the Mother of God and Queen of heaven, who need to defend themselves, but Protestants who refuse her the honor that is her due, and will not conform to the real relations which God himself has established between Mary and her Son,--Protestants, who think they maintain truth by rejecting it, and that they show their respect for the Son by refusing to honor his Mother for what she is, and He by being born of her has made her. Let them defend themselves, if they can, but forbear to accuse us.

Protestants for the most part, at the present day at least, fail to recognize the office of the Sacred Flesh in our redemption and salvation. In losing the sense of the Mystery of the Incarnation they have lost the sense of salvation by an Incarnate God. The redemption in which as Christians we believe is not merely satisfaction made by the Incarnate God for our sins, original or actual, and the purification of the soul or spirit, but also a redemption and sanctification of the flesh. The Word was made flesh, Verbum caro factum est, and it was not merely the spirit, the soul, or immaterial part of man that God assumed to be his nature, but also the flesh, the body no less than the soul of man. It was our nature, and our whole nature,—

perfect man"-that he assumed, and made his nature; and the flesh as well as the soul is elevated to union with God, in the Incarnation, deified, or made the nature of God. Here opens a view we all too seldom appreciate. The heathen believed in the immortality of the soul, and the return of the spirit to God who gave it, but they had no conception of the resurrection or future life of the flesh. The distinctive doctrine preached by the Apostles was not the immortality of the soul, as some sectarians contend, but the resurrection of the dead, therefore, the resurrection of the flesh, for only the flesh dies. Yet we apprehend that the Protestant world has virtually lost or is rapidly losing all belief in the resurrection of the fleshcarnis resurrectionem-and confound belief in the natural immortality of the soul, with belief in the resurrection of the body. Hence, placing no belief in the resurrection, or attaching no importance to the resurrection of the flesh, they fail to perceive the significance of the mystery of the Word made flesh.

But whoever reflects a moment will see that the redemption of the flesh and its elevation to union with God, could by no possibility be effected, save by the Incarnation of the Word; and as its redemption and elevation were in the design of God from all eternity, theologians of no mean repute maintain that the Word would have been incarnated, even if man had not sinned. But be this as it may, certain it is, that where sin abounded, grace superabounded, and that the Word was made flesh, not merely to repair the damage done by sin, as Protestantism would fain have us believe, but over and above repairing that damage, to elevate us to a union by nature with God himself, and therefore of making man in both soul and body one with God. Hence the reason why the Word assumed our nature. Had he assumed the nature of animals he would not have redeemed us or elevated us, for we are above them; had he assumed the nature of angels he would not have redeemed or elevated the flesh, since that enters not into the nature of angels; or if he had assumed our nature only in its angelic or spiritual part. But by assuming flesh, and becoming perfect man as he was perfect God, he elevated our whole nature to himself, and made it his nature. As the human nature he assumed was complete human nature, soul and

body, for man is not soul alone, or body alone, but the union of the two,-and identical with our nature, he elevates us by nature, soul and body, to the nature of God. Our nature, if we may use the expression of St. Leo, is by the Incarnation deified, made as truly the nature of God as the Divine nature itself. As this includes the flesh as well as the soul, it is evident that the Catholic doctrine of fasts, mortifications, and chastisements of the flesh, has its foundation in the Mystery of the Incarnation. They are not merely lacerations of the flesh for the good of the soul, but are chastisements of the flesh for its own good, to fit it to be the temple of the Holy Ghost. The flesh itself is to live for ever, and its discipline is as necessary to prepare it for practical union with God hereafter as the discipline of the soul. In the redemption and elevation of man, soul and body, the whole lower creation is also redeemed and elevated, for man is, as the ancients said, a microcosm, and contains in himself the several natures of all the orders below him, and in fact, in his intelligent part, the elements of the angelic nature, which is above him.

Now when we take this view of the redemption and elevation of created nature through the Incarnation, we can easily perceive that the rank of Mary must be the highest under God. That rank is determined by her relation to the Sacred Flesh of our Lord, through which and which alone he effects this universal redemption and elevation. The Sacred Flesh was taken in her womb, and was flesh of her flesh; her relation to it must necessarily be more intimate than that of any other creature, and as it was not taken by violence, but by her free consent, she necessarily participates in its glory, in a sense in which no other creature does or can participate. As mother of that Sacred Flesh born of her, she is the Mother of God, and as it is only through it we are redeemed and sanctified in our flesh, she is the mother of our redemption and sanctification. As we by redemption and sanctification become united in our flesh to the Sacred Flesh of Christ, she is, in the order of redemption. and sanctification, literally our mother, and as truly the mother of redeemed and glorified humanity, as Eve was the mother of natural humanity, or the human race in the natural order. These considerations, to those who are capable of understanding them, will show that what

Protestants should object to in us, is our belief in the Incarnation and the resurrection and future glory of the flesh, not the worship we pay to Our Lady; for if the Word was made flesh, the strongest language the Church has ever authorized, and the warmest affection, the tenderest love, and the deepest devotion of Catholics to the Mother of God, are fully warranted. The whole cultus of Mary flows from the profound mystery of the Incarnation, and the belief in that mystery; and what Protestants so injuriously call our "Mariolatry," do and must stand or fall together. It may be that popular Catholic writers, writing for Catholics alone, and even some popular controversialists, who have more piety than thought, and more erudition than philosophy, have not taken sufficient pains to show the connection between the Incarnation and the worship of Mary, and the future resurrection and glorification of the body, but that connection exists, and it is impossible on any rational grounds to deny the consequences which flow from it. If we look into history, we shall find those who believe the most firmly and vividly in the Incarnation are the most devout worshippers of Mary; and we seldom find our worship of fending any except those who lack faith in the mystery of the Word made flesh, and who resolve Christianity into pure materialism, or a pure spiritualism, which regards man as all soul, and denies the resurrection of the flesh.

The Jurist affects to be scandalized at what he calls our worship of images. We have images of Our Lady, and of the saints in our churches, and carry them in processions, &c. But what if we do? Is it a fault? Wherefore ? He knows, or ought to know, that not simply the making, keeping, or worship of images, but the making, keeping, or worship of images as idols or gods, is what is forbidden in the first commandment of the Decalogue, otherwise painting and sculpture would be forbidden, indeed all the imitative arts, and no man could lawfully keep and respect a picture of his mother, or a statue of his father. Puritan Massachusetts would, in such case, be bound to remove the carved image of a codfish, which is now suspended in the Representatives Hall of her State House. I have while writing an image of Our Lady before me, and I kneel before it when I say my prayers, but I do not pray to it. I pray to God before the image of his Mother,

or I pray to his Mother herself, to intercede for me with him, and obtain for me the graces and benefits I most stand in need of. What harm can you detect in that? And yet here is all the worship of images Catholics practise. Here is no idolatry. I honor the image for the sake of the original, but I am not quite so stupid as to suppose it is a god. I should suppose even the most stupid Protestant could distinguish between praying before an image of Our Lady and praying to it, and between the worship we pay to Our Lady herself and that which the Ephesians paid to their goddess Diana; but it seems that Mr. Derby cannot, and that he imagines his young kinsman cannot. Surely, the power of discrimination in our Protestant friends must, if they do not slander themselves, be exceedingly weak and dull.

It seems that we keep and treat with respect the relics of saints, and such is really the fact. There is no denying it. My good Protestant mother showed me one day the writing-book of my long-departed father, which she had affectionately preserved; she also showed me a pattern of the last dress she had seen her own mother wear, and even a lock of my own and my twin sister's hair, taken from our heads when we were little children, and which nothing could induce her to part with. The lover preserves with pious care the picture of his mistress, or any thing he possesses that was hers, which she had looked upon, which she had touched, or which she had loved. These things are dear to us, not for their own sake, but for the sake of those we love and who are absent from us. So is it with Catholics in regard to the relics of the saints; we keep them, we venerate them, we cherish them for the sake of the saint whose relics they are.

But there is a higher and a holier reason for the veneration of the relics of saints. Protestants have the feelings of heathens towards dead bodies and dead men's bones. These things are repulsive to them, disgusting, and they hasten to burn them, or to bury them from their sight, because they have never fairly grasped the meaning or any portion of the meaning of the Incarnation, because they have never, believed or understood the redemption of the body, and the sanctification of matter. The Catholic looks upon the relics of the body of the saint, as redeemed and ennobled