prayers and feel that in doing so we are exercising our brotherhood in the Body of Christ in calling into action its mutual love and sympathy. We should be beyond measure astonished if we were told that such requests for the prayers of our brethren were encroachments upon the honour of God and the sin of idolatry! But if in this case our surprise is justified, it is difficult to see how the case is at all altered by the fact that the fellow members of the Body whose prayers we are asking happen to be dead, that is, as we believe and imply in our request for their intercession, have passed into a new and closer relation to our Blessed Lord. Nor, again, does the case seem to be at all altered, if the brother whose prayers we ask has been dead a long time, and has, by the common consent of Catholic Christendom, been received into the number of the saints. The ways in which the human mind works under the influence of prejudice are always interesting. There are many devout persons who feel that it is a valuable element in their religion to have the privilege of following the Kalendar of the Church and to keep the saints' days therein indicated by attendance at divine service; who yet would be horrified if it were suggested that a prayer should be offered to the saint whose day is being observed, and that the saint should be made the object of an act of worship. But what essentially is the keeping of a saint's day, with a celebration of the Holy Communion with special collect, epistle and gospel, but an act of worship (dulia) of the saint? The nature of the act would be in no way changed if in addition to our accustomed collects there

were added one which plainly asked for the prayers of the saint in whose honour we are keeping the feast.

In the worship of the Church of God a place apart is assigned to the honour to be paid to the blessed Mother of our Lord. As the highest of all creatures, as highly favoured above all, as she whom God chose to be the Mother of His Son, the devout thought of generations of Christians has felt that their recognition of her relation to God in the Incarnation called for a special degree of honour rightly to express it. The thought of the faithful lingers about all that was in any degree associated with the coming of God in the flesh: so great was the deliverance thereby wrought for man that man's gratitude ever seeks new means of expression and ever finds the means inadequate to his love. Many of the expressions that are found in devotional writers associated with the cultus of the Blessed Virgin Mary are an outcome of this attitude of mind. To those who are unused to them they seem exaggerated; in the vast mass of the devotional writings of Catholic Christendom there is no difficulty in finding expressions which are exaggerated; but it is well to remember when thinking of this that the exaggeration is the exaggeration of love. The tendency of love is to exaggerate the forms of its expression. It is, however, we feel on reflection, an error to judge by the exaggeration rather than by the love. It is perhaps well to ask ourselves whether we are saved from exaggeration by greater sanity or by lesser love.

But exaggeration apart, this feeling of the unique

position of the blessed Mother in relation to the Incarnate Son, as calling forth a special honour for her is embodied in the designation of the honour to be rendered her as hyperdulia-a specially devoted service. It is hardly necessary after what has been said to point out that even here in the highest honour rendered to any saint there is no passing of the infinite gulf which separates Creator from creature, any infringement upon the honour of God. No Catholic could dream that blessed Mary would be in any wise honoured by the attribution to her of what belongs to her Son. These are no doubt commonplaces, but it is better to be commonplace than to be misunderstood. The intercession that is asked of the blessed Mother is the intercession of one who by God's election is more closely associated with God than any other human being is or can be. Her power of prayer is felt to proceed from the depth of her sanctity; from, in other words, the perfection of her relation to her blessed Son Who is the only Mediator and the Saviour of us all.

Let me say in conclusion that this giving of honour to our Lord, and to all His saints as united to Him, and the celebration of their days according to the Church's year, and the asking of the help of their intercession in all the needs of our lives, is not simply a thing to be tolerated in those who are inclined to it, is not simply a privilege which we are entitled to if we care for it, but is a duty which all Christians ought to fulfil because otherwise they are failing to make real to them a very important article of the

Christian Creed. The Communion of Saints, like all other articles of the Creed, needs to be put into active use, and will be when we believe it as distinguished from assent to it. When we believe that all who live unto God in the Body of His dear Son are inspired with active love one toward another, we shall ourselves feel the impulse of that love, and be compelled both to seek an outlet for it toward all other members of the Body, and also will equally feel compelled to seek our own share in the action of that love by asking for the prayers of the saints for ourselves and for all in whom we are interested. Then will we find in the "worship of the saints" one great means whereby we can worship the God of the saints by the devout recognition of the greatness of His work in them. May God be praised and glorified in all His saints.

O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
Lowly, and higher than all creatures raised,
Term by eternal council fixed upon,
Thou art she who didst ennoble man,
That even He who had created him
To be Himself His creature disdained not.
Within thy womb rekindled was the love,
By virtue of whose heat this flower thus
Is blossoming in the eternal peace.
Here thou art unto us a noon-day torch
Of charity, and among mortal men
Below, thou art a living fount of hope.
Lady, thou art so great and so prevailest,

That who seeks grace without recourse to thee,
Would have his wish fly upward without wings.

Thy loving-kindness succors not alone

Him who is seeking it, but many times
Freely anticipates the very prayer.

In thee is mercy, pity is in thee,

In thee magnificence, whatever good

Is in created being joins in thee.

Dante, Par. XXXIII, 1–21. (Trans. H. Johnson.)