splendent manhood of accomplished and final grace. Then would he be like Jesus; for he would see Him as He is!

Thus did Adam dwell in the contemplation of two futures-the one tender and familiar, the other glorious and triumphant-until his own act had made the rift between the two, and the bloodstained cross crowned the heights of Calvary. O felix culpa! We dare to say it, because our mother the Church has said it. And as Adam sees that past now, pardoned, ransomed, and glorified with his glorified Lord, he beholds his children with each stroke of eternity's golden moments, thronging through the gates of heaven by the Sacrifice of the Cross. What must not his love in heaven be! Next to that of Our Lady surely his must be the greatest of all the multitude who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.

*

But the glory of the saints now in heaven cannot be compared with that which will follow after the second mission of our Lord at the consummation of all things; for that mission is a mission

* It is generally believed that Adam was amongst the souls released from Limbo when our Lord descended thither, and who entered Heaven with Him.

of glory, even as His first was a mission of humiliation. He came to us in the womb of Mary, in the manger at Bethlehem, hidden and unknown, poor and despised; but when the time shall be ripe for that second mission, He will come in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.* He will come as the glorifyer of His own creation, of which Mary is the first in rank, a hierarchy in herself, a sealed fountain, a garden enclosed, a second paradise, but where no sin has entered; And in that second mission His saints, as also His angels will take part.

Thus we look back upon the first mission accomplished that of the Incarnation and Redemption; the second mission being accomplishedthat of the Holy Ghost gradually developing into the reign of the Holy Ghost; and we look forward to two other missions-that of His angels, and finally, that of His own second coming. "Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him.†” "For the Lord Himself shall come down from heaven with commandment, and with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God: and the dead, who are in Christ, shall rise first. Then we who are alive, who are + Apocalypse i. 7.

*Mark viii. 38.

left, shall be taken up together with them in the clouds, to meet Christ, and so shall we be always with the Lord. Wherefore comfort ye one another with these words." *

CHAPTER VI.

CONSUMMATION.

WE have spoken of the way in which the archenemy, the seducer of God's children, is aping the mysteries of the still hidden future according as his subtlety and his enmity direct him. But while his rage and cunning are devising new deceits for those who are not enlightened by Divine truth or who have hid their light under a bushel, our attention is called in a special manner to Her whose office it is, and ever has been, to crush his head. Whenever and wherever the deceits of men and devils are putting out the light and wrapping the soul of man in darkness, there does the Virgin Mother come more openly and more directly to counteract the fatal influence. It has been reserved for the cold, matter-of-fact, utilitarian last half of the nineteenth century to see awakened in the multitude the simple and

K

romantic faith in pilgrimages and in the childlike, pathetic histories of Mary's appearances upon earth that lent such charm to the ages of faith. If the enemy of mankind seems to have more power allowed to him in the evil days on which we have fallen, so the "Mother of fair love," from whose pure Hands the Divine odyle streams, is deigning to speak to children and childlike souls, showing herself to be the great channel of special graces, the medium of Divine communications, and the sure refuge against Satan's acted prophecy and pantomime of God's loving intentions. "We will come to him, and dwell with him; "-and Mary is the precursor, and the channel now, as she was then to His first coming when He took flesh in her womb. The promise to the individual soul is the promise to the Church: and vice versa. The revelation of God in the Church is also the life of God in the soul-the two are bound up in one. The life of the Church is the guarantee of the life of the soul; it is the only sure foundation of such life; and the golden house, the domus aurea of that life is devotion to the Divine Mother. For as her presence, her sweet virginal life, was the necessary preliminary to the first coming of Christ, so will the Son of God not