The Worship of the Virgin.
By E. Wentworth
The wise men of the East fell down and worshiped the infant Jesus. How happened it that they did not worship the Virgin Mary? This singular omission must be a standing wonder to all good Catholics. If Pius IX., or any member of the late Ecumenical Council, had been in the train of the Magi, St. Matthew would have been spared the egregious blunder of giving the infant Saviour a monopoly of the worship. Mary would have come in for her share of the adoration, and even St Joseph would not have been passed by in total silence by the owner of any breviary published this side of the Council of Trent. The wise men of the East knew nothing of the "glories of Mary," "the Queen of mercy," "the Mother of all mankind," "Our life, Protectress, Refuge, Help," "the Propitiator of the whole world," "the Queen of Heaven and hell," "the Co-operator in our justification," "the Omnipotent," "the Way of Salvation," "the Mediator," "Intercessor," "Redeemer," "Saviour," "the sinless Daughter of Joachim and Anna," "the immaculate Mother of God." Century by century, the Church of Rome has steadily added to the ever-cumulative mountains of tradition, and that the nineteenth might not be outdone by any of its predecessors, or the reign of the present pope be deficient in any glory that fell to the share of any other, Pius IX. has engineered the dogmatic publication of two of the sheerest fabrications ever drawn from the simple records of inspiration, or palmed upon the superstition of open-mouthed masses of followers. A worthy companion to the dogma of his own personal infallibility was that of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin, an event unknown to the evangelists and the Magi, and of which the fathers of the Church remained in shocking ignorance for some centuries. The nineteenth century has reason to congratulate itself that in both these wonderfully important points the darkness of the Bible and the early centuries is cleared away, and the true light now shineth. It does not say much for the power or patronage of the Holy Virgin that she seems to have left the Holy City when the French troops left it; that the Holy Father's mercenaries have been replaced by the troops of Victor Emanuel; that Pio Nono is a sullen and sulky prisoner in the Vatican; that his law—harmless now—so terrible in the middle ages, lies in the churches of Rome; that the Jews have been released from the horrible Ghetto; that Protestants are allowed to worship God while they live, and not condemned to a dog's burial when they die. As the Minerva of Homer is, ever at the elbow of Achilles or Ulysses, stimulating to brave words and daring deeds, so we suppose the Queen of the Romish Pantheon is now on earth stirring up the arch-hierarchs of Britain and America to get up monster processions and mammoth gatherings, and fiery speeches, and fiery resolutions, in order to frighten Victor Emanuel into the surrender of a sort of District of Columbia, ten miles square of the earth, of which "God's vicegerent" claims to be sole proprietor, as a temporal throne for the head of the church, where he may have his janizaries, and janitors, and Jesuits, and inquisitions, his swarms of beggars, and priests, and monks, and nuns; from which the hated Bible, and common school, and newspaper, and free speech, shall be expelled; and where the ballot—saving that of the Cardinal Consistor—shall be unknown; which shall be a Utah in its espionage, its perfidy; its absoluteness—a Sahara to the Protestant, and a hell to the Jew.—E. Wentworth. D. D.