"THE GOD OF THE THEOLOGIANS."
By Editor
THE Catholic Mirror of Oct. 22, 1898, printed the following:— Prof. Carroll D. Wright, the United States Commissioner of Labor, writing for Munsey's Magazine, says:— "I used to feel that it was mere idolatry or absence of refined feeling that led the Spanish and Italian peasants to kneel before the image of the Virgin Mother. A deeper appreciation of the inspirations of the human soul removed that feeling from my mind. . . . The peasant can realize and bring into his own heart in this way the whole idea of the Mother, when he could not, even with the estheticism of religious devotion, reach the God of the theologians. It has been through the innumerable representations of the Madonna that religion has received in many lands its most stimulating influence." There is just the trouble—"the god of the theologians," plainly the only god that many persons know, or they would not so speak. But this is not the God of the Bible. He is more loving than a brother, more tender than a mother. "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee." Greater, and comprehending all true, pure loves, is the love of God, "broader than man's mind," deeper than hell, higher than heaven. It was because the theologians separated man from God that the heart demanded an intermediary. Christ came down to be Immanuel, God-with-us; but the theologians have separated Him by a great gulf from man, and put a mortal in His place. The words of Mr. Wright are good Catholic doctrine, but, O, how far short of Biblical Protestantism do they come! Christ's love—O, tell it to all—is more than a mother's! Christ's willingness to personally help every soul is more than any mortal's, living or dead, of the past or present, can be. He is a divine-human Saviour, the all in all to every soul.