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Show THE BLESSEDNESS Of THE VIRGIN MOTHER 4 More Real faith Would Spring From a Truer I ce Strange That Devotion to the Saints of Christ Should be Thought to be Ccn-! Ccn-! trary to the Spirt of Christ. i . K;. Rev. J. Lancaster Spalding. 1). I)., iff the Ave Miiria. )i;tl Christ's saints die with tli -o wli heard : Mi- ..ico: Shall ihr.v die when tlio a pes. of mar- i - are gone? lWs 1 lo nut work even until now - lie imt tho (iu.l of the living? Does lie not .'i.i.' until the rent urics fail '. Ah, nun condemn 1- t'-t r honoring the saints ami Christ, will con-u. con-u. inn ns because wo have- not known them! Would M " ! "ur saint-worship were not dilettantism! We speak- their panegyrics, aud light candles before be-fore ihoir shrines; but they were not, children of hi- world. Wo are wiser in our generation than they. We believe in. time and the things wo sec; i'lit their heart' desire was in eternity, with the invisible (m.l. To them what appears was shadowy; the unseen alone was substance. They believed; we make-believe. A more real faith would spring iieiii a inter v. The measure of 1heir glory is f nil. We .-an not add to it. we can not take from, , il : and lhe honor which we pay them, if it help in! ourselves 1o a higher and more godlike life, is empty and without Cleaning. Yet is it not altogether alto-gether vain to he able to recognize lh:it holiness is the best; that lhe most perfect saint is the highest man; for it is a gain, and some beginning of progress, pro-gress, to have a right ideal. .Most strange is it ihat devotion 1 the saints of Christ should be ' thought 1o be contrary to the spirit of Christ. '. TIiom' who aim at wealth take delight in tin lives of millionaires; line ladies are deep in whatever i I eoneeiiis the ueens of fashion; the soldier will j ' weary "0U wllh the bailies of hi'-. 'great c'tptaTuaT") ; They drink in the spirit of what they love, by j j studying' the history of its chief representatives. I ; Now, Christ spirit is not the world's spirit; I Jiis ideals are n'1 the world's.- To be poor, to be meek, to be humble, to be pure, is not what lhe I world asks of it.s heroes; and hence the children of I tliis generation do not find the lives of the saints I beautiful. The Blessed Lord Himself, were He I 1o walk the earth again, they would not know, as their fathers knew Him not. If we but rightly p'-nder it. there is no more certain proof of the j a it i-Christian spirit of the religious revolution of , I i!k sixteenth century than its attitude towards the li'Toe of Christianity. And this has not escaped j v. n .Mr. Froude. After stating that all that Pro- l t"tants have been able to do with the lives of the sainis i lo call them lies, and point a shallow I f.oial on lhe credulity of Catholics, he continues: I "An atheist could not wish us to say more. If we I can really believe that the Christian church was I ! . !. over in its vers' cradle to lies ami to the I i.i'lin- of lies, and was allowed to remain in his i.'-'-piug, so to say. till yesterday, he will not much trouble himself with any faith winch after such : a admission we may profess to entertain. For : this spirit began in lhe first age in which the fiiur.-h began to have a history, so it continued s" long as ihe church as an integral body retained J viiality. and died out only in the degeneracy J J v -h preceded and which brought on the Reforma- j ''!:. For fourteen hundred years these stories held j la.-ir place, and rang on from age to age, from j :ifnry to century. As the new faith 1 wai, ,,,., it,; boundaries, and numbered ever j !":( and more great names of men and I v . ii who had fought and died for it, so long their ' -tori.-s. living in the hearts of those for whom ; y labored, laid hold of them and filled them; and I . ti d voiit imagination, possessed with what was i'en no m..re than the rumor of a name, bodied ; -tit iiiio life and form and reality." : In turning with contempt from lhe example of saints. Protestantism lost the standard of 1 i n-tinu perfection. "Wouldst thou be perfect ?" j ' 'i our Saviour to the young man who sought Hi- eounsel. (Jo sell what thou hast,' give it to po,,r. and come and follow Me." And to fol-Hi fol-Hi in means to waJk humbly, meekly, chastely, j 1'iioiit offense in all things; and it is for this I "'-a: the saints have striven. They have renvuneed I world, they have crucified Hie flesh; t hey are I they are lender-hearted, they are merciful, I ' v are patient, tolerant of injury, and slow to I '.ink . vil. They deem not poverty a hardship, nor I '"-lienee a slavery, nor chastity an intolerable I ; ia-. To 'forego liie pleasures of the world is lo I .:- what lures the soul but leaves it hungry still. "i ii-.v believe in Cod and the better life. They have I ' -saken all things, and in refurn have found peace, j ' e may not be able to follow litem, hut at least j " ought to see. if we believe in Christ, that theirs I H e better part. And yet the Protestant view is 1 a.:i il life of a saint is ridiculous. Why? Ik- S . -use u. is. wise who makes money, who lives com-I com-I . ' rtably. who knows that hunger and thirst are j al. even though Cod and the soul bo problematic. 1 'lake no 1 bought of all these things, said Christ, ''-"tiding thereby to turn the hearts of his disciples I rnmarily and absolutely toward God and His heav- ' iy kingdom. ''When the Son of Man eoincth, if -hail He find, lliiuk you. faith on earth?" j The Pope himself has never excited so much I ai or feigned horror among Protestants as Cath- I -li - devoiion to the Blessed Virgin. Even the calm j : :!.d reasonable llallam held it to be an ojH-n ques- I 1i"n whether this devotion, which he calls the su- ! l"fstiiion of the Dark Ages, was not more in- I , bil ious 10 public morals and the welfare of society i 'h;,u lhe entire absence of all religion would have j ' hei ,i. Lat. r in life, it is true. he. half repented of this skepticism, aud unfile a feeble apology; but he , i jl -. . - - ... ..... I- - ! . ,m ' ' " has left unaltered in the text the passages in which he expressed his early belief. Upon what does he found his opinion ( Chiefly upon anecdotes found in the writings of some popular authors of the Mid-' die Ages, telling how great criminals, who in the midst of their evil deeds still retained a kind of veneration for the Blessed Virgin, wore finally saved from some imminent harm and converted by her miraculous interposition. Such stories arc familiar fa-miliar to the readers of the legends of Mary; and the most that can be fairly said of them is that it may be doubted whether this kind of pious anecdote may not be specially liable to misinterpretation by the depraved and superstitious. Hut so is the example ex-ample of the penitent thief; so are the examples of all who after a life of siii seem to receive the grace of thorough and true conversion. Assuredly these stories were never related with a view to quiet men in their evil deeds; the aim of their author was to hold out to those who might be tempted to despair, a hope of Cod's mercy through the intercession inter-cession of the immaculate and loving Mother of 1 1 i 111 who died for all. I certainly believe, and T think all intelligent Catholics have always believed, that a man who 1 settles hhiwdf in a perverse and wicked life, trust-! trust-! ing to some pious practice in honor of the Blessed ; Virgin or any saint, or to kind acts done to the poor, or to any other device, will find that this has only added to his deep damnation. To use good deeds as hypnotics to compose us in our sin is a superstition worthy of idiots or of demons. If there are Catholics who are so senseless or so depraved, de-praved, they are unknown to inc. In any event, devotion to the Blessed Virgin has most certainly no tendency to foster such a moral habit. She is presented to us by the Church as the ideal of purity and sinlessness; ami -to love and honor her is to love and honor all virtue. Evil minds change good to their own nature. It is not necessary to pray to the Blessed Virgin or the saints to be guilty of the superstition of which llallam speaks. The deist or tho Protestant may form for himself a false conscience Ust as easily, to say the least, as the Catholic, lie may persuade himself, for instance, that if he is not a murderer or an adulterer or a thief, (rod will not he rigorous with him on other matters, and so deaden his sense of many and serious transgressions transgres-sions by keeping in mind his pharisaic virtues. Or the Protestant may lay to heart Luther's advice: "Sin bravely, but believe more bravely still." lie may then lead the most disorderly life and feel perfectly per-fectly safe in his sin. without having to trust to a possible miraculous interference in his behalf. It is not. necessary aud it is not pleasant to insist upon this. I have taken llallam, because he is one of the most favorable examples of the kind of criticism criti-cism which the Church recives at the hands of Protestants, lie honestly sought to maintain the character and dignity of an impartial historian: he was not a partisan, and he was superior to conscious con-scious prejudice; but he was a victim to the' wretched wretch-ed and narrow spirit which does not jfermit Englishmen Eng-lishmen to be reasonable when the Catholic church is in question. The whole significance of the Catholic Cath-olic veneration for the Blessed Virgin he finds in these popular legends, the meaning' of which ho yet fails to catch. Was there ever a shallower criticism criti-cism or a more pitiful failure to grasp a great and noble theme ( (To Be Continued.) |