Is It Honest? [pp. 239-255]

Is it Honest?
to her Son our Lord, and he delights
to honor her by granting her requests.
For a like reason we invoke the saints,
that is, ask them to pray for us. We
must then be more ignorant and stu pid than even our sectarian ministers
believe us, if, in praying to them be cause as his friends they are dear to
him, we substitute them for him from
whom what we seek can alone come.
If we believe they themselves give
it, why do we ask them to pray him
to grant it? Cannot our acute and
ingenious doctor see that the invoca tion of saints renders the error he
supposes Catholics fall into utterly
impossible in the case of the most
ignorant Catholic, and that it tends
to fix the mind and the heart directly
on the fact that every good and every
perfect gift is from above and com eth down from the Father of lights?
Can he not see that the interces sion we invoke is a clear confession
of the truth he thinks it obscures or
obliterates? If we think the good
comes from them, why do we ask
them to intercede with Christ to be stow it? Why not ask it of them?
But is it true, as the tract affirmns,
that we ask nothing of Mary and the
saints in heaven that it would be im-,(,t - proper to ask of our fellow-Christian?
This is not precisely what the tract
asserts. It asserts that asking their
prayers and influence is exactly of
the same nature, that is, the same in
principle, with what Christians do
when they ask the pious' prayers of
one another. To this the preacher
replies:
"I hold here a volume of 8oo00 pages,
almost every one of which contains an an swer to these questions, so far as I honestly
read it, in the affirmative. It is The Glo ries of AIary, by St. Alphonsus Liguori,
approved by John, Archbishop of New York. I scarcely know where to begin
quoting, or to cease.
"' O Mary, sweet refuge of miserable sin ners, assist me with thy mercy. Keep far
from me my infernal enemies, and come thy.rseZf to take my soul and present it to my eter nal Judge.''All the mercies ever bestowed
upon men have come through Mary.'' Ma ry is called the gate of heaven, because no
one can enter heaven if he does not pass
through Mary, who is the door of it.'' As
we have access to the eternal Father only
through Jesus Christ, so we have access to
Jesus Christ only through Mary.'
"'Mary is the peacemaker between sin ners and God.''My Mother Mary, to
thy hands I commit the cause of my eternal
salvation. To thee I consign my soul; it
was lost, but thou must save it.'' Thou art
the advocate, the mediatrix of reconcilia tion, the only hope, and the most secure re fuge of sinners.''I place in thee all my
hopes of salvation.''She is the advocate
of the world and the true mediatrix between
God and man.''Blessed is he who clings
with love and confidence to those two an chors of salvation, Jesus and Mary.''De liver me from the burden of my sins; dispel
the darkness of my mind; banish earthly af fections from my heart.'' O Lady, change
us from sinners to saints.'"
Tastes differ, and not every Ca tholic would employ every expres sion used by St. Alphonsus in his
Glories of Mary; but none of these
expressions convey to the Catholic
mind what they do to the Protestant
mind; for Catholics have a key to
their meaning in their faith in the in carnation. The strongest of them
is justified by the relation of Mary to
that great mystery in which centres
and from which radiates the whole of
Christianity. From her was taken that
flesh, that human nature, in which
God redeems and saves us; and be ing taken from her, she has a relation
to God, our Saviour, and consequently to our redemption and salvation,
which no other woman, no other
creature, has or can have. This relation explains the passages in the
Litany of our Lady of Loretto, and
those passages of St. Alphonsus and
other Catholic writers which assert
that all mercies and graces come from
God through her. They all come
from God in his human nature and
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