"Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife, and KNEW HER NOT TILL she had brought forth her first-born son," ews d'ETEKE. Now certainly these words do not necessarily imply that Joseph ever did know her, were there any text implying that he did not; no one could convict the Evangelist of self-contradiction upon the strength of ews ov; and all the parallel passages which Beza adduces contra Helvidianos (who were they?) are quite supererogatory. But still, as there is no sure text, -as Mary is never styled the Virgin in any of the few passages in which she is mentioned in the Gospels or Acts; no one can say that the perpetual virginity of Mary rests upon Bible authority. The same line of argument applies to the passages which speak of our Lord's brethren, who we are to believe were his cousins only. I do believe I would rather believe them anything than that they who scoffed at Jesus ever lay in the same womb where he had lain. Nor can I conceive it possible that she whom the Holy Ghost had overshadowed, whose issue was called the Son of God, would be mother to a mere fleshly progeny; or that any man, far less a pious man like Joseph, would dare to approach a woman whom he knew by divine communication to have conceived by the Holy Ghost. If the men of Bethshemesh, who but looked into the typical ark, were smitten, even fifty thousand and three-score and three men, how could Joseph have ventured to touch that sacred ark in which God really dwelt, and perish not? Perhaps some one

it;

may object that the old ark, deserted of Divinity, would only have been a gilt cabinet, and that Mary, delivered of Jesus, was only a woman. I anticipate such scoffing objections, only to show how little I fear them, and how easily they are answered. No doubt, the brazen serpent which Moses erected in the wilderness, the emblem of our crucified Saviour, its purpose done, was nothing but so much copper; and Hezekiah is seemingly commended for breaking it to pieces when it became an idol. Balaam's ass, when its miraculous voice was mute, was nothing more than any other ass. But Mary was a woman, capable of and participant of holiness, which wood, or copper, or mere animal life, could not be. In fine, my opinion in this case, as in many others, is the orthodox and catholic opinion, though I defy the most orthodox Oxoniensis to dig it out of the mere words of Scripture. We must bring something to the Bible, as to the study of nature, or we shall carry nothing valuable away; and they who think that I disparage the Bible by this, might as well say that I disparage nature.

Why was I led away into this unquiet path of controversy, when I meant only to certify my inward conviction that miracles, even to those who have beheld or experienced them, can never be more than subjective evidence. Mary who had borne Jesus by a more than miracle, was yet only a believer in Him. She treasured His sayings in her heart as so many confirmations of a prophecy. She had a wishing, hoping, praying, doubting, not an assured belief in

the Messiahship of her own supernatural child. Did He not rebuke her impatience at the marriage at Cana of Galilee ?*

How far Jesus was conscious of His own Divinity in His infancy, or whether there were any struggles between His Divinity and His humanity, except in the

The following beautiful stanzas-alas! unfinished-may be preserved here in illustration of the above passage:

LINES TO THE VIRGIN MARY.

Ave Maria! so for many an age,
At stated hour, the universal voice
Of boy and girl, of nimble-witted page,
Of lord and serf and motley fool and sage,
Of all that mourned, and all that could rejoice
In the blithe prospect of the coming day :-
All knelt together, and together prayed,
And never thought it toil or task to pray
For intercession of the Mother Maid.

Ave Maria! may we not adore

The Virgin Mother, the sweet maid appointed
To be the mother of the Babe Anointed?

And is it truly sin to bow before

The most immaculate form of womanhood,

The second and the better Eve,

Before all time predestined to conceive
The only man that could

Be wholly good?

Ah! lovely maiden! 'twas enough for thee
To be the mother of thine own great Saviour,-
To hold the little Jesus on thy knee,
And ponder o'er the childish sweet behaviour
Of that young Holy One. Ah! didst thou know
All that He was, and was to undergo?

Didst thou, indeed, when on thy breast He hung,
Behold Him hanging on the cursed tree?
Or didst thou think the pretty babe that clung
To thee so close was very Deity?

Ave Maria! nothing that hath been
Can cease to be,-no act of God is past!
So art thou still the Maiden Mother Queen,
And Jesus is thy babe from first to last!
Yet do they wrong thee who believe that thou
Art pleased with human misdirected prayer.

temptation in the wilderness, and the agony in the garden, are questions hidden till the last day. Only I conjecture that the words of Luke, iv. 13, "he departed from Him for a season," may be explained of that fearful temptation which Jesus vanquished with "Lord, not my will, but thine, be done."

Every part of our Lord's life which the Spirit has recorded is a mystery, from the Annunciation to the Resurrection. But by a mystery I do not mean a rhapsody of words; a strange entanglement of lines, colours, &c.; a numerical puzzle, or a mandate to believe what, not knowing, we cannot know whether we truly believe or not; but an eternal, infinite, and therefore incomprehensible truth, vital and operative in, but not limited to, or circumscribed by, a definite act or form. Thus the law, both ceremonial and moral, was a mystery; it always meant something more than itself, but with this distinction: the moral law meant itself, and something more; the ceremonial law has no meaning except as a mystery. ("It is impossible that the blood of bulls or of goats should cleanse away sin.") The municipal or merely Jewish law was no mystery; it meant nothing but itself, and has no more to do with Christianity than the laws of Charondas the Locrian.

Every act of our Lord's life was a mystery, but not so every act of the Jewish people. I detest the practice of mysticising the Old Testament events. It is good for every Christian to observe how the Almighty prepared all things for the advent of the Only-begotten; how each successive arrangement

prophesied Christianity-as the blade, the stalk, the ear all foretell the perfect grain. But further than this we should not go, at least as English Christians. If a Jew can find Christianity in the political history of his ancestors, well and good; better than not to find it at all.

ON THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION IN FRANCE.

RELIGION, such as it is, seems to be reviving in France. Images and hosts are carried in procession, as in the days of St. Louis and of Louis le Grand; and the Protestants of the Aveiron are knocked down if they do not kneel before them. The Fête Dieu has this year been celebrated with the accustomed solemnities. At Toulon the guns were fired, as in the time of Charles X.; and at Aix, in the Pas de Calais, a fair damsel of seventeen, of a highly respectable family, walked in the procession, Sunday, June 5, in the character of the Virgin. According to my authority, she was so tired of her virginity, that in the evening she eloped with an officer of cuirassiers. That, however, looks very like a lie. What does all this betoken? Is there a real reaction? Are the French, or any portion of them, about to revolve from infidelity to fanaticism, as the English at the Restoration revolved from puritanism to latitudinarianism? Are the catholic ants recovering from their stupor, and beginning to gather up the fragments of their nests, which were blown up at the