"Our Lord Jesus very early in the morning came with a glorious multitude of Angels to the sepulchre, and took again to himself that most holy Body; and, the sepulchre itself being closed, went forth, having risen again by His own power. At the same hour Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome began their journey to the sepulchre, with the ointments they had prepared.

Meanwhile, our Lady remained at home and prayed, as we may devoutly conceive, in words of affection such as these: 'O most merciful, O most loving Father! my Son, as Thou knowest hath died; He hath been crucified between two thieves, and I have buried Him with my own hands; but Thou art able to restore Him to me unharmed; I pray Thy Majesty to send Him to me. Why delays He so long to come to me? restore Him I beseech Thee, for my soul can find no rest until I see Him. O dearest Son! what hath befallen Thee? what is Thy employment? why dost thou delay? I pray Thee tarry no longer; for Thou hast said, On the third day I will rise again. Is not this, my Son, the third day? for not yesterday, but before yesterday, was that great, that bitter day; the day of suffering and of death, of clouds and darkness, of Thy separation from me and Thy death. This, then, my Son, is the third day; arise, my Glory, my Only Good and return. Beyond all other things I long to see Thee. Let Thy return comfort whom Thy departure did so bitterly grieve. Return, then, my Beloved; come, Lord Jesus; come, my only Hope; come to me, my Son!' And while she thus prayed, and gently poured forth tears, lo suddenly our Lord Jesus came in raiment all white, with serene countenance, beautiful, glorious, and glad. Then she embraced Him with tears of joy, and, pressing her face to His, clasped Him eagerly to her heart, reclining wholly in His arms, while He tenderly supported her. Afterwards, as they sat down together, she anxiously gazed upon Him, and found that he was still the same in countenance, and in the scars of His hands, seeking over his whole person, to know if all pain had left Him. They remain and happily converse together, passing their Easter with delight and love. O what an Easter was this!"—pp. 244, 245.

Now, it is very easy to say there is nothing of this in the gospel, but we may piously believe it,-though it is not very obvious how one can piously believe that which rests on no testimony of God, but only on his own fancy and invention. A pious man may allow too great a licence to his imagination. And many pious persons have done so. But in believing the creations of one's own imagination to be realities, there is no piety whatever, but the reverse. This story, however, is quite out of the range of pious imaginings, for this very obvious reason, that it contradicts the sacred narrative. For the Evangelist will tell us that it was to Mary Magdalene he appeared first. Mr. Oakeley has met this difficulty in so remarkable a manner, that it would be wrong to withhold it from the reader.

"That such an appearance there was, although not recorded in the Holy Gospels, it seems almost a result of natural piety to suppose. That She, whose blessed soul had been pierced through and through at the Crucifixion, and who had been remembered on the cross in her own especial relation, when the beloved Apostle was consigned to her as a mother, should yet have been left without the consolation of an interview with her glorified Son, when all the Apostles, and the other holy women, and St. Mary Magdalene, and others, were thus favoured, is, it may safely be said immeasurably more at variance with what may be called religious probability, than that such interview should not have been recorded. Nothing whatever can be gathered as to the occurrence or non-occurrence of a fact from the silence of scripture; especially when the Holy Spirit expressly says, on two separate occasions, and both times immediately in connexion with the history of the Resurrection, that our Lord did many more things than are written. Surely the New Testament bears no appearance whatever of being a complete or formal system of teaching; each inspired writer seems to speak as he is moved,' at the time, without reference to the consistency of the several portions of the actual Sacred Volume, as it has since been collected and promulgated by the Church. How does the special Appearance of our Lord to St. Peter after His Resurrection come out' in scripture, but by the most incidental mention

of the circumstances in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, fallen in with a yet more incidental mention of it in the Gospels? How casually does St. Paul in the same passage drop, as it were, that our Lord appeared to St. James! But it will be said that Scripture is mysteriously silent about the Blessed Virgin. That it is more silent than we should expect, did we come to it, rather than to the church as evolving it, for instruction in Divine Truth, may be readily allowed; but except upon that hypothesis, which Catholics cannot receive, its silence upon this subject proves no more than its silence upon any other matter of ancient belief besides that of the honour due to St. Mary, e. g. the use of prayers for the dead. Is not this argument, grounded upon the absence from the page of Scripture of such notices as we might expect about St. Mary, one of those which, as the saying is prove too much? Is it not prejudicial to her acknowledged claim-acknowledged, I believe, by the ancient Fathers, and certainly by many of our own divines-to all such reverence as is short of adoration? Moreover, if the silence of Scripture upon the high claims of St. Mary be mysterious, (let it be remembered, however, that Scripture is not panegyrical,) are not the Scripture intimations of that blessed among women' strangely significant also? Let the reader turn in thought to the narratives of the Annunciation, of the Visitation, of the Marriage of Cana, of the Crucifixion, and again to the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and surely he will remember passages which are at least suggestive of very wonderful thoughts concerning the Mother of God.

Can

"Moreover, there is precisely the same extent and kind of silence in the three former Gospels as to the Blessed Virgin's presence at the Crucifixion which all four preserve upon our Lord's Appearance to her after the Resurrection. Other holy women are mentioned by name, both as present at the Crucifixion, and as assisting at the Burial, and watching at the Tomb; but of her there is not even a hint. anything seem more like purposed exclusion? Is there any conceivable amount of traditionary proof, or ecclesiastical impression, which, by those who stipulate for direct Scripture evidence, would have been held sufficient to outweigh the circumstance of a silence so complete, and apparently so pointed? Then comes the beloved Apostle, and discovers to us the Holy Mother just where piety would have anticipated, in the place of honour, as it were, admitted to the most intimate communion with the sacred Passion, and singled out among the whole female company for special notice and high privilege. There is reason, then, to think that the absence of St. Mary's name from the accounts of the Resurrection, far from implying any slur upon her, is even a token of honour; and imports rather that she was signally favoured, than that she was postponed to others. Certainly the fact of total silence is beyond measure more arresting than would have been that of passing mention.

Upon the grounds of that silence it would be of course presumptuous to speculate; yet it may be observed how great is the difference between meditating upon the acts and privileges of St. Mary as matter of distinct revelation, and merely of pious conjecture. It may be, that minds so feeble and undiscriminating as ours, would have been unequal to the task of dwelling upon so tangled and delicate a theme as a certainty, while yet it would by no means follow that the withholding of knowledge (properly so called) is tantamount to the discouragement of contemplation. Does not this denial of perfect satisfaction to our curiosity tend to infuse into our meditations that special element of indefiniteness, which, in this very peculiar case, may be the necessary condition of the benefit to be derived from them; and, by removing the subject from the province of history into that of poetry, (not discredit it, but merely) obviate the temptations to a confused and unspiritual view of it? Had acts of the Blessed Virgin been recorded, one by one, as those of our Lord have been, they had seemed so like His own, that we had been tempted to forget her immeasurable distance from Him. They had been the acts of a perfect human nature not in union with the Divine, and thus essentially different, at once, from those of our Lord, and from those of the Apostles. There would not have been, as in the latter, the imperfection of humanity to temper our veneration, nor, as in Him, the Divine Nature to justify our worship. St. Mary was the very mirror of the Divine perfections in human nature; reflecting the Divine Image (as in a measure all Christians do) with a faithfulness to which other Saints have but approximated (with

"In Mr. Newman's Sermons bearing on Subjects of the Day, p. 36-43, will be found a deep view on our Lord's mysterious sayings relative to His Blessed Mother, as connected with His Ministry, which would bring them into strict harmony with the belief of her ineffable dignity."

whatever closeness,) the while she was but a Woman. On the acts and privileges of such an one, it might have been unsafe for us to dwell, had they been brought before us in the full blaze, as it were, of revealed light. Yet it is plain that meditating on them to whatever extent as mere deductions from revealed truth is absolutely different in kind from meditating on them as revealed facts. That Scripture has drawn a veil over them, may be fully granted; but it has still to be proved that this veil is meant to conceal the light from our eyes, and not merely to adapt it to their feeble powers.

"But it will be said, that Scripture is not only silent about any Appearance of our Lord after His Resurrection prior to that with which St. Mary Magdalene was favoured, but speaks of the appearance to St. Mary Magdalene as the first. Now when Jesus was risen, early the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene . . . and she went and told them that had been with Him.' I cannot think, however, that, read naturally, this text would ever have been thought to contradict the belief in a prior appearance. Did Scripture indeed speak emphatically and with a controversial object, no doubt the word 'first' would be meant not only to assert, but to exclude. If, on the other hand, we suppose a writer to be speaking with reference to the point just before him, and no other, we can, I think, perfectly understand the use of the wordfirst,' without any emphatic or preclusive meaning whatever; or rather I would say, that the context added to other intimations of Holy Scripture, render such an interpretation of this text not merely a possible, but even the more natural, one. St. Mary Magdalene, says the Evangelist, went and told them that had been with Him, as they mourned and wept; thus seeming to draw our attention to prior claims, which they had, to see Him on His Rising. Yet,' the Evangelist seems to say, they did not actually see Him before they had heard of His Resurrection from another.' Moreover, the Greek word is not porn, but πρмτоν, which, in the New Testament, if I mistake not, almost invariably means, not very first,' or 'first of all,' but first of the following,' i. e. 'before.'"pp. xvi.-xxi.

Really there seems something so amazing in this mode of treating the word of God, that one scarcely knows what to say to it, or whether there be any need to say anything about it; but leave it to the piety and good sense of Christians to receive that condemnation, which it is sure to receive from every right-minded person. Scripture is silent, with regard to a particular circumstance, on which we are tempted to indulge our imagination. What then? Surely we may "devoutly conceive," to use the phraseology of these writers, that it is not without good and sufficient reason the divine wisdom has seen fit to leave us in ignorance. One very obvious reason, one might have supposed, would have occurred to any exercise of the understanding that deserves to be called "meditation”—namely, that it is important to us to be taught to keep our imaginations under controlwithin defined bounds and limits, and, consequently, it can be no other than a merciful provision for our infirmities that these bounds and checks are not left to our own invention to supply, but are already furnished for our use, in the silence of holy Scripture on those innumerable points on which curiosity would not unnaturally seek for satisfaction. What we are intended to know, the word of God has recorded. What it is good and desirable and profitable for us to know, is revealed, and made matter of certainty by the providence of our Father's goodness. But the whole book is constructed in such a manner, as to exercise our faith in his wisdom and love, and our submissive and contented acquiescence in his will, in all those cases where he has seen fit to leave us ignorant. There is a silence of the soul, which is a divine and heaven-inspired virtue, that curbs the rambling excursions of a lively and impetuous fancy, and bids the

imagination be still and prostrate, hearkening only to what the Almighty thinks proper to disclose.

It is an earthly and sensual curiosity which will know, and will conjecture, and will imagine, and will try to force its presumptuous entrance into the mysterious darkness in which the divine teacher has involved everything except what he has deemed it safe and useful for us to know. The vice is ill-concealed, by dignifying it with the name of Meditation. In effect, what is this virtue, which is here so feebly delineated, but a perception of the inestimable preciousness of truth ?a jealous anxiety lest the truth may get confused with fiction, and the mind lose its keenness of discrimination. A man has lost all just reverence for truth before he dares to meditate on the awful realities of the gospel in the fashion this school desire to recommend. He has, in a fearful degree, lost his reverence for sacred names and sacred things, before he could presume to turn the life of the Son of God into a legend, in which irreverence assumes a form a thousand times more criminal, by the fact of which proofs are everywhere afforded that circumstances are continually invented-not because they seem probable, or even because they appear edifying, but because they will serve to give colour to a superstition. As Bonaventure will tell us that Mary adored the cross, after the Lord's body was laid in the sepulchre.

"When they came to the Cross, she bent her knee and said, 'Here rested my beloved Son, and here was poured forth His most precious blood!' And after her example all did the same. For we may well believe that our Lady was the first to pay this devotion to the Cross."—p. 236.

But where there is no particular doctrine or superstition to be recommended, still is it a most sinful presumption and irreverence, and a no less sinful disregard of truth that will speak where God is silent. Can anything be more calculated to repress a licentious curiosity than the manner in which the Evangelists record the agony of the Lord in the garden-His brief and thrice-repeated prayer-his bloody sweat? -what reverent spirit will desire to conjecture the mysterious import of the one, or to imagine the details of the other? Who will not rather prostrate his spirit and adore in silence? But this is just the sort of subject which suits this spirit of Meditation; and so, having presumed to expound the mysterious prayer in this manner,

"He prays the Father that the hour of death may pass from him; that is, that, if it be God's pleasure, He may not die; and in this prayer He is not heard.”—p. 209. Bonaventure goes on to compose a prayer of considerable length, which he dares to put into the lips of the Son of God; and then, in order to bolster up the foolish traditions about the holy places, he goes on to say, without a shadow of authority from holy Scripture,

"He prayed in three different places, distant from each other about a stone's cast; not so far as with a great effort one might throw a stone, but with a gentle impulse; perhaps about the same length as our houses, as I hear from one of our brethren who has been there; and still on those very spots are the remains of the churches which have been built upon them."-pp. 211, 212.

and then presently he says,

"He rises then from prayer the third time, His whole person bathed in blood; behold Him cleansing His face from it, or haply immersing it in the stream.”—Ibid.

It is needless to comment on writing from which the mind turns with loathing; but it is important to observe that the writers of this school are endeavouring to instill into people's minds the notion that it is possible for them to realize the sufferings of Christ by these flights of imagination; as if any such exercises can have the remotest tendency to enable one to realize sufferings, whose essential peculiarity consisted neither in their nature nor their intensity, but in the vicariousness of their import, and the divine nature of the Person who endured them. Other methods also besides those of meditation are likewise recommended by these writers: for example, by Dr. Pusey, who, in a work of Surin the Jesuit, which he lately has "Edited and Adapted to the use of the English Church," gives the following directions, which may serve to indicate the existence of some practices, of which the public has not yet been informed.

"Another and more efficacious means of feeling the Sufferings of Christ is, in some measure to experience them. No man,' says our author, has so cordial a feeling of the Passion of Christ, as he who hath suffered the like himself. B. ii., c. 12. St. Bonaventure teaches us, that this is done by looking at this Divine Model of patience, and trying to feel in ourselves the rigour of His Tortures; and thus, that we may know in ourselves what He suffered at the pillar, WE MUST, says this holy Doctor, DISCIPLINE OURSELVES TO BLOOD. One who sincerely loves our Lord, and who desires nothing so much as to participate in His Sufferings, can thus best judge how cruel His Scourging was, and how great the pain caused by the nails which pierced his Hands and Feet. Many pious persons of the present day, falsely persuaded that it is enough to care for the interior, might learn by such experience that the exterior exercises of virtue are of no little service to the soul which desires to be hid with Christ in God.""-The Foundations of the Spiritual Life, p. 193.

The whole notion here put forward by Dr. Pusey for "the use of the English Church," is founded on utter ignorance of the nature of the sufferings of Christ, since not acts of realization either by pictures in the imagination, or by self-inflicted torments of body, can ever give one the faintest perception of the meaning of that suffering, which consisted in sacrifice, in His offering up, by the eternal Spirit, His body and soul for the sins of the world. But all this error,—and it is a very dreadful error, does, by reducing the sufferings of the Lord to a spectacle which is to move the feelings and excite the imagination, tend but too directly to the denial, not only of the doctrine of the atonement, but of the Godhead of Christ. And all this error springs from trifling with truth, and tampering with holy Scripture, until, at last, men's moral perceptions have become blunted, and the distinction between truth and falsehood has become mystified and confused in their understandings.

Mr. Oakeley acknowledges the reserve which holy Scripture maintains concerning the blessed Virgin; but meditate he must: and therefore, instead of being satisfied to stop short, where Scripture is silent; he actually makes its silence a justification for the liberties he takes. It may well be granted to him that the Lord may have appeared to his mother, although the appearance is not recorded. But he may not have appeared to her. He may have had wise reasons for