d of human anguish at her heart, should become
exaggerated and idealized into Mother of God--instead of Jesus's human
matrix, Queen of heaven, instead of a ransomed soul herself, the joy of
angels--in lieu of their lowly fellow-worshipper, and the Rapture of the
blessed--thus dethroning the Almighty.

Take a second instance: why should Peter, the most loving, most
generous, most devoted of them all, have been singled out from among the
twelve--with a "Get thee behind me, Satan?"--it really had a harsh
appearance; if it were not that, prophetically speaking, and not
personally, he was set in the same category with Judas, the "one who was
a devil." I know the glosses, and the contexts, and the whole amount of
it. Folios have been written, and may be written again, to disprove the
text; but the more words, the less sense: it stands, a record graven in
the Rock; that same Petra, whereon, as firm and faithful found, our Lord
Jesus built his early Church: it stands, a mark indelibly burnt into
that hand, to whom were intrusted, not more specially than to any other
of the saintly sent, the keys of the kingdom of heaven: it stands, along
with the same Peter's deep and terrible apostacy, a living witness
against some future Church, who should set up this same Peter as the
Jupiter of their Pantheon: who should positively be idolizing now an
image christened Peter, which did duty two thousand years ago as a
statue of Libyan Jove! But even this glaring compromise was a matter
probable, with the data of human ambitions, and a rotten Christianity.

Examples such as these might well be multiplied: bear with a word or two
more, remembering always that the half is not said which might be said
in proof; nor in answering the heap of frivolous objections.

Why, unless relics and pseudo-sacred clothes were to be prophetically
humbled into their own mere dust and nothing-worthiness, why should the
rude Roman soldiery have been suffered to cast lots for that vestment,
which, if ever spiritual holiness could have been infused into mere
matter, must indeed have remained a relic worthy of undoubted worship?
It was warm with the Animal heat of the Man inhabited by God: it was
half worn out in the service of His humble travels, and had even, on
many occasions, been the road by which virtue had gone out; not of it,
but of Him. What! was this wonderful robe to work no miracles? was it
not to be regarded as a sort of outpost of the being who was Hum