The Immaculate Conception.—
Bishop Kelley, of Savannah, sends a pastoral from Lourdes, France, to his diocese “ordering the celebration of the golden jubilee of the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception,” as expressed in the Savannah Morning News of August 22. We suppose that similar pastoral letters have been sent by all the bishops. By this dogma it was “infallibly” declared “that the most blessed Virgin Mary in the very first instant of her conception was, by a singular grace, and privilege of God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ the Redeemer of the world, preserved from all stain of original sin, had been revealed by God, and, therefore, must be firmly believed by all the faithful.” Great joy filled the hearts of the faithful, the bishop tells us, when the dogma of Pius IX. was published, because another star was added to Mary’s crown. And yet how contrary to Scripture and human hope it all is. The Word of God tells us that God sent forth His Son “born of a woman,”—a woman of the same nature as other women. Again, we are told that Jesus was made of “the seed of David according to the flesh,” a flesh in which original sin through the ages was manifest and often dominant. He was made “in all things” “like unto His brethren.” Why?—Simply this, that man might have as a Saviour one who had met and conquered in the flesh all that man must meet and conquer in the flesh; and that, as Jesus, with the same flesh conquered in all His temptations, He within us will enable us to conquer in all our temptations. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception puts Christ far away, and necessitates all the intermediaries in the Catholic system; it denies the scripture, There is “one Mediator also between God and man, Himself man, Christ Jesus,” and takes from the sin-burdened heart the preciousness of a divine-human Saviour, who is approvable by every one who will accept His invitation, “Come unto Me.” His human nature shares all the sin, the misery, the sorrows, the woe of human weaknesses, while His divine nature triumphs over all. Such a Saviour is the Son of God, born of humanity, to all who believe.