Immaculate Conception

“ The situation then as presented by the dogma of the "Immaculate Conception" is this: By it Jesus, even in his "human" nature, is put so far from sinful men that we cannot reach him nor approach him except through the intercessions of Mary, and Anne, and the other Catholic saints. ”

“ With a fine feeling for psychological procedure he cleared the ground by removing the arguments of his opponents, and only then offered his own solid and luminous appeal to the honor and merits of Christ and of His Blessed Mother, on behalf of her great prerogative of the Immaculate Conception. ”

“ Wells would be the first to ridicule a Continental journalist who should talk of “Sir Gladstone.” But this blunder about the Immaculate Conception—a doctrine affecting the whole of Christian theology, and a commonplace in the mouths of all instructed Europeans—is far less excusable. The term “Immaculate Conception” is a specific theological term, signifying the absence in a human soul from its first moment of original sin. ”

“ The pealing tones of the organ resound under the touch of the highest masters of art for his simple ear. Listening to those strains, his mind forms a conception of the harmony and beatitude of Heaven!
Even death is not looked upon with horror by the Catholic. If he lose a friend in this life, unlike the Protestant, he does not abandon him in oblivion, but his sympathies still extend to him by offering masses for his soul. And it is because it is so adapted to man’s spiritual nature that the Catholic religion has withstood the shock and surge of ages! ”

“ An idol is an object, generally an image, worshipped for its own sake—being supposed to not only represent a god, but to have some immanent sanctity. The Catholic priest, and for that matter all Brahmins or bonzes, assure us that their sacred images are “only symbols, not regarded as really dwelling-places of divinity.” They are not, so to speak, magnified amulets. Yet how is it that, if this be true, so many images and pictures are regarded and represented by priests as being able of themselves by the touch to cure tooth-ache, and all other ills which flesh and bones are heirs to. ”

“ That which gives birth to a miracle, which brings forth God, must itself be of miraculous, divine origin, or nature. How could Mary have had the honour of being overshadowed by the Holy Ghost, if she had not been from the first pure? Could the Holy Ghost take up his abode in a body polluted by original sin? If the principle of Christianity, the miraculous birth of the Saviour, does not appear strange to you, why think strange the naive, well-meaning inferences of Catholicism? ”

“ It is against a universal iconoclasm we have to contend—an iconoclasm which seeks to throw down and deface the image of celestial truth and beauty, to break the painted windows through which the light of heaven streams in upon this earthly temple, to efface those angelic and saintly forms with the Madonna who is the queen of the whole bright multitude, to overthrow the cross, and finally to drag down the sacred humanity of Christ, together with the deity that dwells in it and is worshipped through it, leaving mankind without a temple, an altar, a Saviour, or a God. ”

“ With a noble blasphemy—dearer, one may hope, to God, than the slavishness of many evangelical pietists—he treats the Christian legend with the same sort of freedom that the old Greek poets used in dealing with the gods of Nature.
The figure of Christ becomes under his hands, as we feel sometimes it does under the hands of the great painters of the Renaissance, a god among other gods; a power among other powers, but one possessed of a secret drawn from the hidden depths of the universe, which in the end is destined to prevail. ”

“ If the miracles had been public, the crucifixion could not have been. Do away with the miracles, and the superhuman character of Christ is destroyed. He becomes what he really was—a man. Do away with the wonders, and the teachings of Christ cease to be authoritative. They are then worth the reason, the truth that is in them, and nothing more. Do away with the miracles, and then we can measure the utterances of Christ with the standard of our reason. We are no longer intellectual serfs, believing what is unreasonable in obedience to the command of a supposed god. ”

“ Let that pure face shine upon heart and spirit, and as the sun photographs itself on the sensitive plate exposed to its light, and you get a likeness of the sun by simply laying the thing in the sun, so He will ‘be formed in, you.’ Iron near a magnet becomes magnetic. Spirits that dwell with Christ become Christ-like. The Roman Catholic legends put this truth in a coarse way, when they tell of saints who have gazed on some ghastly crucifix till they have received, in their tortured flesh, the copy of the wounds of Jesus, and have thus borne in their body the marks of the Lord. ”

“ This great enigma, the solution of which the Eternal has, in his wisdom, reserved from mortal creatures, loses all its obscurity and ceases to be a mystery to the man who converses with a figure made of wood or painted on canvas; for he not only believes that it sees him, but that it can protect him, grant him favours, and even obtain for him salvation. In vain it will be said that the Roman Catholic sees in the image a symbol, an emblem, a representation. ”

“ Given a knowledge and mastery of the instruments of expression, and the thought will determine its character; the nature of the thought expressed depends upon the conceiving mind; the highest conception of the mind is the offspring of religious affection, the Catholic is the true religion; therefore the expression of Catholic genius is the summit of art. It is by no means a necessity that the soul shall express itself under sensuous forms; but to all outward manifestation a power over the instrument is a condition—in which sense the body is itself an instrumentality. ”

“ It always has been blasphemy to say "I do not know whether God exists or not." In all Catholic countries it is blasphemy to doubt the bible, to doubt the sacredness of the relics. It always has been blasphemy to laugh at a priest, to ask questions, to investigate the Trinity. In a world of superstition, reason is blasphemy. In a world of ignorance, facts are blasphemy. In a world of cruelty, sympathy is a crime, and in a world of lies, truth is blasphemy. ”

“ But the omnipotent beam, the all-illuminating radiance, the transforming light, the heat that melts, are all dependent on our looking at it—I do not only say, as Paul looked at it, nor do I even say as Christ looked at it, but as the deep necessities of humanity require that the world should look at it, as the altar whereon is laid the sacrifice for our sins, the very Son of God Himself. To me the great truths of the Incarnation and the Atonement of Jesus Christ are not points in a mere speculative theology; they are the pulsating vital centre of religion. ”

“ Did the fore-runner of the coming of God, for Immanuel is God with men, appear without the state, grandeur, and luxury of the world; and shall those who pretend to receive the message, and that for glad tidings too, and confess the Immanuel, Jesus Christ, to be the Lord, live in the vanity and excess of the world, and care more for their fine clothes, delicate dishes, rich furniture, stately attendance, and pleasant diversion, than for the holy cross of Christ, and blessed narrow way that leadeth to salvation. ”

“ Thus seen, the communion of saints is a real thing, embracing our daily life at a thousand points, the extension and drawing out of the Incarnation, understood by it, and in it. To those who do not realise that tremendous Presence at the altar the saints are so many sinful men and women made gods and goddesses, and those who reverence them idolators. How much do people lose by such a misconception: how utterly do they fail to perceive the length and depth and breadth and height of the Truth: they halve and quarter the Incarnation and boast that they alone understand it. ”

“ I do not believe that original sin consists in following Adam, as the Pelagians say, and as the Church of Rome teaches; neither that it is washed away by the water of baptism. Born as we all are to natural life, we are re-born unto spiritual life "by water and the Holy Spirit." Neither do I believe that our own works in any way contribute to our justification, the works themselves being the effect of justifying grace. Jesus Christ has not said that those who work will be saved, but those who "believe and are baptized." ”

“ In the first place, she holds the Catholic doctrine of the Incarnation, and by no means keeps it in the background, but gives it due prominence in her catechism and liturgy. And since she teaches the devotional use of representations, particularly of pictures, her people are no less familiar than we are with the Madonna-and-Child as the symbol of the Incarnation. Secondly, although (as must be the case) they have not the same tender mother in their church that we have in ours, still, all who are in good faith being by intention Catholics, they can speak, with us, of “our mother the church.” ”

“ He begs his hearers to try and keep the difference in meaning between an image and an idol clearly before their minds. “An image is a similitude of a natural thing that has been, is, or may be,” he tells them. “An idol is a similitude of what never was or may be. Therefore the image of the crucifix is no idol, for it represents and signifies Christ crucified as He was in very deed, and the image of St. Paul with a sword in his hand as the sign of his martyrdom is no idol, for the thing signified by it was a thing indeed, for he was beheaded with a sword.” ”

“ How, indeed, can it be supposed that the pope has the power to apply the merits of Jesus Christ to a person who pays him a sum of money, or makes a pilgrimage, or prays before a particular image; or to one who persecutes the heretics, who delivers them up to the Inquisition, and does his utmost to have them burned alive? The Scripture teaches us that the merits of the passion and death of Christ are applicable to us through faith; not through the operation of any man, but from Jesus Christ himself, who is the only Head of the invisible Church, the only High Priest ”

“ Let us pray that the 'mystery of abomination' may at length be taken away, and that to all the people may be discovered and made known 'the man of sin,' the son of perdition, the adversary; he who exalts himself above every one, and is called a divinity or god, who sits in the temple of God, as God, showing himself to all, and asserting that he is God. Let us pray that the holy name of Jesus Christ may be no longer profaned and blasphemed by a class of people who have unworthily usurped it, and, as it were, solely to abuse it. ”

“ Lastly—we had almost said above all—the beauty of holiness is stamped exclusively upon all art created after the mind of the Church. For Catholic art is nothing else than the product of contemplation in souls gifted with artistic capacities; and contemplation is only another word for the gaze of supernatural faith, quickened and perfected by supernatural love, upon one or other of those mysteries which the Church sets before the minds of her children. ”

“ No, it is the Catholic Church alone that can stamp upon the painter's productions the supernatural impress of those notes by which she herself is recognizable as true.
There is a unity of intention, scope, and spirit in Catholic art of every age and clime. Like the doctrines and devotions of the Church, Catholic art, in all its various forms—symbolical, historical, devotional, ideal—ever revolves round one centre, and is referable to one exemplar. Divine beauty "manifest in the flesh"—the image of the Father clothed in human form and living in the Church—he is the inspirer of Christian art. ”

“ We have read somewhere, in an English novel whose name has escaped our memory, the same beautiful idea most poetically expressed. It was something to this effect: “We put up a stone at the head of a grave, just as we write labels in the spring-time for the seeds we put into the earth, that we may remember what glorious flower is to spring from the little gray, hidden handful that seems so insignificant just now”—a Catholic thought found astray in a book that had nothing Catholic about it save its beauty and poetry; for beauty is a ray of truth, and truth is one and Catholic. ”

“ The doctrine of the Holy Spirit who regenerates, sanctifies, comforts, and saves, becomes an indispensable element in preaching, and so becomes ingrained into the preacher's confession of faith. A personal and present Christ, Immanuel, God with us, is the source of the missionary's power; he has practical proof that the Holy Spirit is Christ in spiritual form, with his people alway, even to the end of the world. ”

“ The miracle of Jesus Christ's atoning sacrifice, satisfying God's wrath, and taking off the curse from mankind, is the foundation both of the mass and of the famous Lutheran tenet. But, in the mass, the priest makes the miracle over again and applies its benefits to the believer. In the tenet of justification, the believer is himself in contact with the miracle of Christ's atonement, and applies Christ's merits to himself. ”

“ God is a wall of fire round about her, and her glory in the midst of her. The Roman Church is made glorious by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, by spiritual might and force, by truth, grace, and sanctity. These same divine gifts and powers pervade the whole Catholic Church by virtue of communion with the See of the Vicar of Christ. The burning light of faith, the burning fire of charity, are concentrated within, and diffused all around the Catholic Church, constituting all her glory and all her power, and by these she illumines and inflames the whole world. ”