BOOKS.

MARIOLATRY FOR ENGLAND.*

WHEN Madame Bunsen was showing to Sir Walter Scott, among other Roman objects of interest and art, a representation of the Madonna and the infant Jesus, the novelist blandly remarked, " A religion which is symbolized by a mother so beautiful and a child so lovely should be a very benevolent one." The nay' utterance of the old poet somewhat startled the good lady, but it was entirely characteristic of the speaker, who was a Scotchman to his heart's core in all his sympathies excepting those which affect theology. The whole poetry of his nature rose up in rebellion against the terrible logic of the Kirk, and even Mariolatry itself seemed beautiful to him contrasted with the gloom of Sabba- tarianism, and the remorseless decrees of the Confession of Faith. At the same time, it is nowise our meaning that the name of Sir Walter should be included in the list of authorities who have pronounced in favour of the Marian worship. On the contrary, we can sympathize with his statement, without in the least compromising our Protestantism on the subject. Sir Walter spoke as a poet, and it would have been good for the Church and for the world if only great artists bad inter- preted for us the story of the Mater Purissima and her rela- tion to her Son. But it has been the baneful task of priests and of pedants to turn poetry into prose, and to taint the original sweetness and idyllic simplicity of Biblical facts and teaching with most corrupting admixtures. And, perhaps, into no one sub- ject has the priestly leaven been introduced with more fatal issues than into that of the worth and honour which, in the noblest sense of the words, must ever be associated with the name of Christ's mother.

We have read Dr. Melia's ponderous treatise on " Mary " with perhaps more dispassionateness than the author will give us credit for. On the precise measure of " veneration and confidence " to which a devout and orthodox Catholic believes the Virgin to be entitled, we were quite willing to regard ourselves as ignorant, prejudiced, and foolish. Accordingly we sat down to the perusal of this volume with the eager curiosity of little children. More- over, Dr. Melia gives his publication to the world under the special sanction and imprimatur of Dr. Manning, so that in taking him as our guide on the present occasion we felt confident that we should learn at least so much of Marian verity as it was safe for any Protestant to possess. We must confess that our expectations were more than realized. Dr. Melia has apparently no faith in the doctrine of "reserve," and for the enlightenment and edification . of Englishmen in this nineteenth century, he delivers his soul on the glories of Mary with the unctuousness and outspokenness of a young priest when enlarging on the merits of the Queen of Heaven before a juvenile female audience.

Dr. Melia's dissertation consists of two main divisions, of which the former is termed, in a quite high-scientific style, the theoretical, and the second the practical. In the theoretical department we have not fewer than twenty chapters, in which our author, in a mild, maundering, semi-apolegetic way, not without here and there a certain pinchbeck glimmer of eloquence, writes as if he wished his readers wholly to believe that he has established, at least to his own satisfaction, by means of Holy Scripture, the early fathers of the Church, Christian archmology, and the admissions of Protestants, such positions as these,—that "Mary has been made by the Holy Trinity an object of veneration and confidence to all generations ;" that, besides her perpetual virginity, " she has a new claim to the veneration of Christians on account of her immaculate conception ;" that " by consenting to the Holy Trinity's embassy, she became the mother of God ;" that the first public miracle at Cana was wrought by our Saviour at the sole request of his mother (sic); that " veneration and confidence towards the mother of God are congenial to the human mind and heart, so that Mary claims all our sympathy and love" (in com- pliance, no doubt, with both the letter and spirit of the First Commandment) ; and that " Mary stands in heaven pleading the cause of her needy clients in this world."

Fortunately for his readers, and perhaps out of consideration for mortal infirmity on the author's part, the " practical " section of the volume contains only eight chapters, and these of fairly moderate dimensions. The object of them is to inform us that " Mary was made by the Trinity an object of imitation to all Christians," and then to exhibit in detail how faithful she was to

• The Woman Blessed by AU Generations; or. Mary the Object of Veneration, Confidence, and Imitation to AU Christians. By the Bei. Raphael Melia, D.D. London Long- mane. 1868.

her great mission by her prudence, fortitude, charity, and other virtues.

In the preceding sentences we have tried to give a brief but quite faithful summary of Dr. Melia's teaching ; and as we look at the results we have obtained, our feeling is as if we had seen the rose of Sharon or the lily of the valley transformed into a huge mustard tree, with great birds of prey lodged iu its branches. We have lost the Virgin of the Scriptures, and have gained instead a Diana of the Ephesians ; and, notwithstanding all that Dr. Melia repeats to us touching the old distinction between adoration and worship, we are unable to evade the conclusion that for all " practical" ends the object of Catholic veneration, of the true Roman species, is not a Trinity, but a Quaternity. Theoretically, " adoration is only due to God ;" but practically, the Roman faith recognizes " three persons" and one goddess.

It is only natural and, as we think, necessary, to image to ourselves Christ's mother as being morally, and perhaps out- wardly too, the most beautiful of women. It is wholly lawful to imagine that the infant Jesus looked up into Mary's face as into a heaven of sweetness, and purity, and truth ; and it is almost necessary to believe that a singularly heavenly discipline had trained the boy who in his twelfth year could speak as Jesus did of the higher relations and trusts of humanity. The custody of that divine child was doubtless in holy hands, and subjection to Mary's gracious rule must have been a gradual development in freedom, in reverence, in good- ness. But we must honestly avow that it is precisely this element which we fail to discover in Dr. Melia's elaborate en- deavour to glorify Mary. Under the doctor's manipulation the Virgin simply ceases to be human, and in one word, in his pious efforts to magnify " Our Lady," he has only succeeded in showing that, according to his conception, she was, after all, not a rear woman. Dr. Melia, no doubt, is desirous of exhibiting his "mother of God " as the type of all feminine excellence, but his " theory" of her constitution, so to speak, is wholly of the mechanico-physiological kind, and if we are to believe him, the salvation of the world is chiefly owing to the circumstance that Christ's mother did not belong to the human family ! The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews bases his rendering of the gospel of our redemption upon the fact that Christ's " flesh and blood " were identical with the nature of the many children whom He came to lead back to their Father in heaven. In striking contrast, the modern Marian worship is based on the assumption that whereas all the other children of God " are partakers of flesh and blood," she did not " take part of the same." The same canonical writer affirms that He who sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all of one. The clients of Mary, on the other hand, are loud in their vaunting% that their self-elected patroness and advocate stands in solitary isolation from those whom her Son is not ashamed to call brethren.

But Dr. Melia proves a great deal too much for his own thesis ; for in order to obtain an immaculate generation, such as he asserts the Virgin's to have been, he must, first of all, remember the old saying, that no man can bring a clean thing out of an unclean, and, accordingly, he must never stop short in the ascending series of ancestry until he reaches the first mother of mankind herself. And who can tell but that some day even Dr. Melia will believe that divine hands did make and fashion us all ; that the Romish and Calvinistic interpretation of Genesis iii. does not contain the true root of human history ; and that the Fall was not the first step in a chaotic descent, but proved to be an upward movement under the great law of development, which has yielded us the prophets, and Homer, and Plato, and in the fullness of the times, as the flower and crown no less than the root of all true humanity, Christ himself—the Word made flesh.

Under the head of archaeology, Dr. Melia has furnished us with a very remarkable series of woodcuts of Marian representations, chiefly taken from the Roman Catacombs. We have failed to detect in any of the earlier groups of subjects either attitude or legend which implies direct worship of the Virgin. But that several of them, dating as far back as the third and fourth centuries, express a pious sentiment towards the mother of our Lord which, perhaps, words could only rudely render, is likely enough. If, however, there is any doubt as to whether in primitive Christian art, in so far as the Virgin is concerned, there is iu reality anything more intended than history or symbol,—and, for our parts, we think Mrs. Jameson's conclusions are not shaken by Dr. Melia,—the'

early patristic literature is quite decisive against the dogmas of the modern appraisers of Mary. We have no reason to question the

accuracy of Bishop Bull's affirmation that " there is not one tittle to be found in any genuine writer of the first 300 years after Christ

(to go no further) that may give any the least countenance to the invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary." But even if we were to concede that the Catacombs were crowded with proofs of Mariolatry, and did we find that from Clemens Romanus down to the Council of Ephesus there was an unbroken catena of recog- nized leaders of opinion who advocated the worship of Mary, we should still feel under no obligation to accept the teaching of Dr. Melia. For, in the first place, the Apostolic epistles are wholly silent on the Marian claims to veneration, indeed, the name of the Virgin is not mentioned in one of them, and when St. Paul speaks of Christ's birth, his language simply is either that our Lord was descended from David, or was made of a woman ; and, secondly, whenever in the narratives of the Evangelists events are recorded which were specially fitted to reveal that Mary either claimed or received the honours which her worshippers now demand for her, we find an explicit statement which emphatically gainsays the Romish ascriptions and devotion. For we read that a spiritual affection is a more blessed attribute than even the mater- nity of Mary, " Yea, rather blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it ;" and, in grand contrast with the materialism of a fantastic physiology, we have the announcement of the divine relation which exists between Christ and all who surrender them- selves to the in-dwelling Spirit of the divine Love, " Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother."* Finally, if the words at the marriage feast in Cana, " Woman, what have I to do with thee?" are not a decisive, though gentle, intimation that in His public ministry Christ can take His commands only from Heaven, we confess our- selves unable to detect any meaning in them whatever.

Apart, however, from the silence or the literal statements of the New Testament, we must demur to the contents of Dr. Melia's volume as being in direct antagonism to the spirit of the revelation conveyed• to us by Jesus Christ. The mediation of Christ, according to the Pauline and Johannean mode of thought, meant this, and this only,—that Jesus Christ was the living medium through whom the Eternal Father of our spirits had imparted to the world the secret of His all-embracing love. Had the elder brother in the parable of the Prodigal Son gone into the far country to seek and save the younger one, and had he died, or been put to death, amid his expostulations and endeavours to bring the wandering youth back to the bhssedness of home and duty, we should have had a tolerably lifelike image of the life and death of Christ, as that life and death were set forth by the Apostles ; whereas the Romish doctrine of mediation implies the amazing belief that the creature can induce in the Creator a propitiousness which is not spontaneous, and hence it is very 'comprehensible how Mary-worship, and saint-worship, and all manner of invocations will prevail, until the apostolic Gospel is believed, that all things are of God, and that God was in Christ not reconciled, but reconciling the world to Himself.

Lord Bacon has supplied us with the fine saying, as our guide in the interpretation of Scripture, that the first crush of the grape yields the sweetest wine. Mr. Robertson's great discourse on 4g The Glory of the Virgin Mother" is a splendid illustration of the depth and truth of Bacon's maxim. Dr. Melia's dissertation, on the other hand, represents the wine mixed with water, the liquid into which the husbandwen, by means of mechanical pres- sure, have forced the elements of husk and coarse soil,—the liquid which is of the earth, earthy.

One word more, and we take our leave of Dr. Melia. Coleridge has observed that praying to the Saints is like a man calling to a deaf stranger a great way off to intercede on his behalf with a friend who has his hearing faculty quite entire, and who is seated close by the suppliant. We commend the illustration to our author's consideration. A life hid in a present God, who compasseth our lying-down and rising-up, and besets us behind and before, is opened to us by Christ; but as Mary, according to Dr. Melia, is not omnipresent, of the millions of her votaries not one can be -certain that he is not addressing a person who is too far off to be able to catch a whisper or bear a litany.