beautiful humility was changed into a
knowledge of her own predestined glory; and, being raised bodily into
immortality, and placed beside her Son, in all "the sacred splendour
of beneficence," she came to be regarded as our intercessor before
that divine Son, who could refuse nothing to his mother. The relative
position of the Mother and Son being spiritual and indestructible was
continued in heaven; and thus step by step the woman was transmuted
into the divinity.

But, like her Son, Mary had walked in human form upon earth, and in
form must have resembled her Son; for, as it is argued, Christ had no
earthly father, therefore could only have derived his human lineaments
from his mother. All the old legends assume that the resemblance
between the Son and the Mother must have been perfect. Dante alludes
to this belief:

"Riguarda ormai nella faccia ch' a Christo
Piu s' assomiglia."

"Now raise thy view
Unto the visage most resembling Christ."

The accepted type of the head of Christ was to be taken as a model in
its mild, intellectual majesty, for that of the Virgin-mother, as far
as difference of sex would allow.

In the ecclesiastical history of Nicephorus Gallixtus, he has inserted
a description of the person of Mary, which he declares to have been
given by Epiphanius, who lived in the fourth century, and by him
derived from a more ancient source. It must be confessed, that the
type of person here assigned to the Virgin is more energetic for a
woman than that which has been assigned to our Saviour as a man. "She
was of middle stature; her face oval; her eyes brilliant, and of an
olive tint; her eyebrows arched and black; her hair was of a pale
brown; her complexion fair as wheat. She spoke little, but she spoke
freely and affably; she was not troubled in her speech, but grave,
courteous, tranquil. Her dress was without ornament, and in her
deportment was nothing lax or feeble." To this ancient description
of her person and manners, we are to add the scriptural and popular
portrait of her mind; the gentleness, the purity, the intellect,
power, and fortitude; the gifts of the poetess and prophetess; the
humility in which she exceeded all womankind. Lastly, we are to
engraft on these personal and moral qualities, the theological
attributes which the Church, from early times, had assigned to
her, the supernatural endowments which lifted her above angels
and men:--all these were to be combined into one glo