THE MADONNA-AND-CHILD A TEST-SYMBOL.
Among the most beautiful of American lakes is one in the northern part of New York State. The old Indian name for it was Horicon, or Holy Lake—called so, perhaps, from the transparency of its water. Its banks abound with historic memories. They have been a battle-ground for English and French, and again in the war of Independence. But what specially endears it to Catholics is its consecration by the Jesuit missionary Father Jogues, who gave it, on the Eve of Corpus Christi, in the year 1646, the name of Lac du Saint-Sacrement—Lake of the Blessed Sacrament. Unhappily, the name it bears at present is the one conferred upon it by Sir William Johnson, who, courtier-like, dubbed it Lake George, after George I. of England.
May its Catholic name soon be restored! As an earnest whereof there now stands on the right shore—about a mile and a half from the head—a building known as “St. Mary’s of the Lake,” from which, through the summer months, a silvery bell rings out the Angelus at morning, noon, and evening. Strangers are informed that this building is “the monastery”; but a front view of it presents one feature which dispenses with all need of inquiry as to the creed of its occupants: not the cross upon the roof—for heresy has stolen that; but an unmistakable “encroachment of popery” in the shape of a Madonna-and-Child.
Among the curious who have ventured upon visiting “the monastery,” a certain good woman was one day discovered standing before the house and looking up at the statue. On being asked what she thought of it she replied, in the accent of Vermont: “Waal, it gives me a feeling as if something was crawling all over me to see the Virgin so big and the Saviour so small! It’s the Saviour that ought to be big.” Now, this sentence, absurd as it sounds, contains, we may say, an entire theology. To one who has never been a Protestant it is unintelligible, no doubt; but to one who has, or has had, that misfortune it expresses, though poorly, an idea of which he is, or has been, himself conscious. Our friend was sufficiently familiar with the Gospel story to know that the figures before her represented the Virgin Mary and the Child Jesus. Her remark, too, evidenced her belief in that story. She meant to tell us, in her simple way, that we made almost everything of the Virgin and almost nothing of the Saviour. Perhaps, had she been better educated, she would have expressed a preference for seeing the Saviour alone, and not as a child but as a man. Such, at least, would have been the writer’s own sentiment, years ago, when he was a Protestant. Not but that we should have felt more at ease had there been no image there at all; for the genius of Protestantism dislikes images: it is essentially iconoclastic. But, certainly, we would rather have seen any image than a Madonna-and-Child.
Here are two points for investigation: Why Protestantism is essentially iconoclastic; and why it is particularly uneasy and bitter in the presence of a Madonna-and-Child.
The heresy of the Iconoclasts, or Image-breakers, was Eastern, and raged in the eighth and ninth centuries; even reviving, for a time, after its condemnation by Pope Adrian I. and the Seventh Œcumenical Council. It sought to abolish sacred images and pictures, on the ground of their being idolatrous. Originating with an ignorant soldier, Leo the Isaurian, who had become Emperor of Constantinople, and “manifesting itself” (to borrow the words of Döllinger) “as a blind and senseless hatred of the imitative arts,” we wonder that such a fanaticism could gain footing at all. But, in fact, it developed into a persecuting heresy which “shed more blood,” says the same writer, “than any which had preceded it.”
Now, Protestantism has been said to partake of all the previous heresies; and we, for one, can testify to the truth of the accusation; for, after becoming a Catholic, we discovered, in the course of study, that our mind had entertained, at some time or other—though not always culpably, we trust—nearly every heresy ever known. But that Protestantism has especially distinguished itself by its iconoclastic zeal will be questioned by no one who is acquainted with its history.
We say, then, that Protestantism, as such, is necessarily iconoclastic. And, first, from the negative attitude which its very name implies—from its principle of asserting the right of private judgment to the rejection of extrinsic authority. Man, having a body as well as a soul, and living in an order of the visible and the palpable, naturally seeks to image his ideas—to place them outside of himself in a representative form. And particularly does he feel this need in matters of religious belief. Whence we find the use of symbolic representations in all the ancient religions. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman minds were peculiarly fertile in symbolism—most so the Greek (the word “symbol” is Greek). But a creed, if it can be called a creed, which consists of negations—which finds its vitality in protesting against authority—cannot consistently use symbols; for, obviously, it has nothing to symbolize. Protestantism, therefore, instinctively dislikes images, seeing in them the symbolic representation of what is positive, affirmative, dogmatic.
Again, Protestantism started with another principle which gave it a tradition of iconoclasm—the principle of a false supernaturalism. The supernatural was exaggerated, to the destruction of the natural. Our nature was declared to be totally depraved, so that even free-will was wanting to us. Consequently, instead of being able to co-operate with grace and acquire merit, we had to be justified by “faith only”; the righteousness of Christ had to be “imputed” to us—thrown over our depravity like a cloak over a leprous body. Now, of course, as an immediate result of this doctrine, away went the saints; for they were no better than ordinary mortals—possessing no merit of their own and nothing to be venerated for. And with them away went their images.
Furthermore, this exaggerated supernaturalism involved elimination of the visible and the material from the economy of grace. For the natural being evil, the visible and the material were evil too, as a part of the natural, and therefore incapable of forming a system intermediary and sacramental between the soul and grace. Hence, away went the idea of a visible church, and away went sacraments and sacramentals. Now, images—representations of any kind—come under the sacramental system, inasmuch as, by raising our thoughts to their originals, they help us to commune with the unseen, and put us in mind the more constantly to invoke that mercy or intercession from or through which graces flow to us. Therefore, again, away went images with the rest of the sacramental system.
But, now, does not all this hostility to the visible and the material as elements of religion look very much like a misunderstanding on the subject of the Incarnation? If Christ is God-Man, he is God made visible—God with a human soul and a material body. Surely, then, to maintain that Christianity has nothing to do with the visible or the material is to betray an unfamiliarity with the meaning of the Incarnation.
This unfamiliarity will become the more apparent when we shall have considered an objection to what has been said on the iconoclastic tendencies of Protestantism. We may not unreasonably be reminded that Protestantism has passed through various important changes in the course of its career, and especially within the last half-century; that the doctrine of total depravity has long gone out of fashion and is practically extinct; and, again, that Protestants do use symbols now—such as the cross and the triangle—while some of them encourage painted windows, and even images, in their churches. Very true. And the change is not surprising—what with unnaturalness of doctrine on the one hand and conflict of principle on the other. “Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret,” says Horace—“You may drive nature off with a pitchfork, yet she will keep running back.” Then, as to principles, logic, like murder, “will out.” The doctrines of the Reformation, though negations of Catholic dogmas, took a positive aspect for themselves; and the right of private judgment, which had made them, was only consistent in destroying them. Within the last half-century—and particularly within the last quarter—the principle of self-sufficiency has found its extreme in the complete rejection of the supernatural. Its votaries who have not reached that terminus are drifting thither, if unconsciously. And hence a reaction, in favor of what are called “orthodoxy” and “churchmanship,” is perceptible among all earnest Protestants who retain belief in Christianity as something more than philanthropy, something with a divine meaning. Not that they at all suspect (except those in the front ranks of the movement—the Ritualists, who openly avow it) that they are going back upon the Reformation. But they are. And as they advance they take in ideas which are less and less compatible with genuine Protestantism. One of these ideas is symbolism, the representation of doctrines by signs or images—as the triangle signifies the Blessed Trinity and the cross the Redemption.
Our argument, therefore, that Protestantism, as such, is necessarily iconoclastic or hostile to images, holds good in spite of the fact that modern Protestants are returning to the use of symbols. This return means that they have abandoned the position taken by the Reformers, and have set their faces—how little so ever they think so—Romeward and homeward.
Here, then, comes in a very appropriate question. If Protestants are gradually relinquishing their old iconoclastic spirit—if nowadays they set up the cross to express their faith in the Atonement, and use the triangle as an affirmation of their belief in the Trinity—where is their symbol for the Incarnation? Of course they acknowledge the Incarnation. They bracket it with the Trinity as a fundamental doctrine of Christianity. Then why do they not equally symbolize it? Evidently, their not even attempting to do so—their having no symbol for it—is abundant proof of what has been just said, that, while they profess to receive the doctrine, they are strangers to its meaning. They understand by it merely the divinity of Christ, and beyond this keep it in the background and give it no practical bearing. The Atonement is everything with them; the Incarnation nothing. But Christianity is the religion of the Incarnation. For call it, if you will, the religion of the cross, that term does not designate it as a whole. The truth expressed by the cross depends on the truth of the Incarnation; and so does every other Christian dogma. Christianity, therefore, is either the religion of the Incarnation or it is nothing. As that it must stand or fall. And if we would express it as a whole, we must symbolize the Incarnation. Now, the crowning proof (were any needed) that the Incarnation, rightly understood, has no place in Protestant theology lies in the fact that, besides not attempting to symbolize the doctrine themselves, all Protestants agree in a common aversion (not to say abomination) to the only symbol possible, which is—the Madonna-and-Child.
And why is the Madonna-and-Child the only symbol of the Incarnation? Because the Incarnation means that God is man; but how can we express the truth that God is man, except by showing that he has a Mother? In his divine nature he has no mother; then, if he has a mother, he is man. Whence the creeds do not merely say that Christ is the Son of God, or that the Son of God was made man, but affirm that he was “born of the Virgin Mary”; “Incarnate of (or from) the Virgin Mary”—thus setting forth the same divine Person as at once the Son of God and the Son of Mary. That is, they show us Incarnate God as a Child in his Mother’s arms; they symbolize the Incarnation (a creed is called a “symbol”) by the Madonna-and-Child.
Thus far, then, we have seen that the genius of Protestantism is hostile to images in general, and to the Madonna-and-Child in particular, because it is out of joint (so to speak) with the genius of the Incarnation. We have here a very singular spectacle: a vast body of professing Christians, who hold, with us, the doctrine of the Incarnation, and have not formulated any heresy about it in their “confessions of faith” (we are not including Unitarians among Christians; for they have no more right to the name than Mohammedans); a body of Christians who say with us that they “believe in Jesus Christ ... born of the Virgin Mary”; who keep “merry” Christmas, too, with us—Christmas, the feast of the Madonna-and-Child—who yet, for all this, instead of dwelling with delight on a representation of the Infant Saviour in the arms of his Blessed Mother, invariably show that they are not at home with it as a religious symbol.
Can it be that they are insensible to what is beautiful and touching? No; their hearts are as human as ours. Any other mother and child by an artist of moderate skill could scarcely fail to interest them. Moreover, it is fashionable with cultivated Protestants to admire this Mother and Child where the question is one of art, not of religion. They display a very creditable taste for the Madonnas of Raphael and other great painters. Or if the association of religion add a charm, it is nothing more to them than the glamour which invests a symbol of pagan superstition. And in saying this we speak from experience. When, as a school-boy, the writer became acquainted with the mythologies of Greece and Rome, he found them full of poetry, and soon came to envy the religion of those old pagans—a religion so much in contrast with the aridity of his own. So, too, when, a year or two later, he first saw Catholic worship (it was Benediction, of all lovely rites), he remarked as he came away: “That religion is full of poetry.” “Yes,” was the answer—“of pagan poetry.” And then he was told how all the “corruptions” of Rome had been introduced from paganism; and, as an instance, the Madonna was cited. “They call her the Mother of God,” said the informant (a clergyman of the Church of England, who had learnt his lesson well). “You remember Cybele, the 'mother of the gods’? Well, there’s their Madonna—the Virgin Mary in place of the goddess Cybele.” He was told this and other things of like nature, and so became imbued with the idea that the Catholic religion was a paganized Christianity. Still, for this very reason (as we are free to confess), it had a fascination for us; and the greatest charm of all was its supposed goddess-worship.
At sixteen, again, our attraction to the Madonna was greatly increased by some stanzas of Lord Byron, in which that most wonderful of poets, inspired by the beauties of the Mediterranean twilight, and with some famous painting in his mind, thus apostrophizes Our Lady:
“Ave Maria! Over land and sea,
That heavenliest hour of heaven is worthiest thee!
“Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of prayer!
Ave Maria! ’Tis the hour of love!
Ave Maria! May our spirits dare
Look up to thine and to thy Son’s above!
Ave Maria! O that face so fair!
Those downcast eyes beneath th’ Almighty Dove!
What tho’ ’tis but a pictured image strike,
That painting is no idol—’tis too like!
“Ave Maria! Blessed be the hour,
The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
Sink o’er the earth, so beautiful and soft!
As swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
And the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft:
While not a breath crept thro’ the rosy air,
Yet all the forest leaves seem’d stirred with prayer!”
Perhaps, too, we were even more impressed by a single stanza in another canto of the same poem, where, in his description of Norman Abbey (his own Newstead), he recalls a solitary Madonna-and-Child which had been standing amid the ruins:
“But in a higher niche—alone, but crown’d—
The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, look’d round:
Spared, by some chance, when all beside was spoil’d.
She made the place beneath seem holy ground.
This may be superstition, weak or wild:
But ev’n the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.”
Lord Byron, it is true, was not a Protestant, but a deist. But this makes it all the more evident how full of poetry the Catholic religion is—and particularly in its worship of the Madonna—when it could so attract a mind that rejected Christianity altogether. Other non-Christian poets have proved the same thing, and none more so than our own great Unitarian poet, Longfellow, whom, when we first read “Evangeline” and “Hiawatha,” we supposed to be a Catholic. But Protestant poets, too, and of various persuasions, have evinced a sympathy with particular features of the Catholic religion as it appears to those outside of it, and especially with the Madonna. These see an ideal in our Virgin-Mother. And none has expressed this higher view so well as Wordsworth in his celebrated sonnet—to which, perhaps, we are indebted for our own first glimpse of her as an ideal. It is one of his Ecclesiastical Sonnets, and comes among a series in which, as a true poet, he is forced to lament the destructive work of the so-called Reformation.
“Mother, whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied:
Woman above all women glorified—
Our tainted nature’s solitary boast!
Purer than foam on central ocean tost:
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses: than the unblemished moon,
Before her wane begins on heaven’s blue coast!
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mix’d and reconciled in thee
Of mother’s love with maiden purity—
Of high with low—celestial with terrene!”
Clearly, therefore, it is not an obtuseness to the beautiful, or even to the ideal, that alienates the Protestant mind from our symbol of the Incarnation. No; the key to the puzzle is this: that the system of Christianity known as Protestantism cannot see in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol of itself—has nothing in it capable of being symbolized by either Madonna or Child.
The Incarnation, once more, is God made visible. As such it must needs create for itself a visible kingdom on earth: a kingdom over body as well as over soul—a kingdom in the world of mind, and equally into the world of sense and matter. The kingdom thus created will, of course, be in harmony with that which created it—the Incarnation—and, therefore, with the symbol of the Incarnation—the Madonna-and-Child; and so will find in the Madonna-and-Child the symbol of itself—the mould upon which it was cast.
Here, then, the reader will perceive what we mean by calling the Madonna-and-Child a test-symbol. Whatever system of Christianity is not at home with this symbol, or not entirely in harmony with it, is thereby convicted of being false, as not the kingdom of the Incarnation. So that, to demonstrate the true Christianity, out of all existing systems calling themselves Christian, we have only to confront them with the Madonna-and-Child.
Let us do this. And, first, we will call up all the Protestant communions, and particularly the two most important and respectable—the state church of England and her daughter in America; excluding on the one hand whatever sects deny the divinity of Christ, and on the other that party in the said Episcopalian churches which is working, more or less consciously, to bring back “popery without the pope.” Neither of these extremes is genuine Protestantism.
All classes of genuine Protestants, when confronted with the Madonna-and-Child, acknowledge it, of course, the representation of an historic fact in which they believe—the birth of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary—but instinctively feel that it means a great deal more. They principally object to the Madonna, as giving the Blessed Virgin too much prominence. “We all know,” they argue, “that she is the Mother of our Saviour; but, beyond this, what is she to us?” They are not accustomed to speak of her, except when they mention her in the Creed; or even to think of her, except when they pity or abuse their “idolatrous” fellow-Christians. At the same time neither do they care to see the Child, particularly in Mary’s arms or by her side. “He did not remain a child all his life,” they say. “It was not as a child that he came out in public to work miracles and preach the Gospel; it was not as a child that he suffered and died. Then what is his childhood to us?” In a word, our symbol of the Incarnation reminds them of nothing with which they are familiar.
The secret is, they are not within the visible kingdom of the Incarnation; they are outside the visible church. Each sect will call itself a church, no doubt; and the Episcopalians have something to show for theirs, because, in its outward form, it is a fair imitation of a real hierarchy. But when they say in the Creed, with us, “I believe in the Holy Catholic Church,” they do not mean at all what we mean. To them the Catholic Church of the Creed is the collective multitude of omnigenous believers in Christ, instead of signifying a visible institution divinely endowed to teach and govern, and standing to them in the relation of a mother—carrying them in her arms and feeding them at her breast. If they did mean this by the Catholic Church, they would recognize at once in the Madonna-and-Child a symbol of that church with them in her arms, and would, so far, feel at home with the Madonna-and-Child.
Neither, again, have they the Blessed Sacrament—that lovely “second infancy” of Jesus—or they would joyfully acknowledge in the Madonna-and-Child an image of the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her keeping.
But especially would their attitude towards Our Lady be different from what it is now. Believing in a visible church, they would not insist, as now, on having nothing between themselves and Christ, who, by instituting the church, chose to place an entire system between himself and them. And, seeing the type of this church in Mary, they could not vituperate our doctrine of the latter’s maternal mediation; not only because of the church’s mediation, but also because Mary, as the type of mother church, must needs be Mother Mary.
Now, to the writer this is all the more clear because it is the history of his conversion. Having come—and, thank God! not so late as it might have been—to feel the necessity of a visible church as a mother and guide, at whose feet we could sit child-like and learn from her “the words of eternal life”—to hear whom would be to hear Christ; to go to whom, to go to Christ—we gradually discovered that the Church of England, in which we had been reared, and to whose ministry we were looking forward, was no such mother and guide, nor ever could be. We found that she did very well as a state church, a moral police, a “part of the civil service”; but that her success in being fashionable was owing—not to any divine commission, not to her speaking “as one having authority,” not to her teaching one definite body of doctrine—but, on the contrary, to her being the creation of Parliament; to her disclaiming all authority to teach, except as a fallible human witness; and to her leaving the utmost latitude for every variety and contradiction of opinion, so that her clergy were equally at liberty to hold or deny such vital doctrines as baptismal regeneration, the Real Presence, sacerdotal absolution, and apostolical succession. Added to these doctrines—which we had come to believe from joining first the moderate High-Church party, and then the extreme, or the Ritualists—was a parallel attraction to the Blessed Virgin, whom we had discovered to be truly the Mother of God. And the two ideas of a mother in the church and a Mother in the Blessed Virgin rose together and grew together, till we found them both realities in the kingdom of the Incarnation.
And now we may let Protestantism go. Its votaries are loud in exhorting us to return with them to the purity of primitive Christianity. But when we take them back with us over the centuries to the very cradle of Christianity—to the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem—and enter that sanctuary on the first Christmas morning, are they or we more at home there, in the presence of the Madonna-and-Child? So far, then, from establishing its clamorous pretensions to be the only unalloyed Christianity, Protestantism is ruled out of court by our test-symbol, as neither the kingdom of the Incarnation nor any part of that kingdom, and therefore—virtually and logically—not Christianity at all.
The Catholic Church, however, has not the field all to herself yet. There is the Russo-Greek, including some half-dozen independent communions. Is not she in harmony with our test-symbol?
While on the road to Rome we were much attached to the Greek Church. Most Anglicans of the “High” school are—because they know very little about her. (A case where “distance lends enchantment”—and a very hazy distance, to boot.) There is one thing, though, which Anglicans ought to know about the Greek Church, and which we did know: the fact that her worship of the Blessed Virgin is more “excessive” (to use their own phrase) than that of the Roman Church. We say we knew this, and confess that, instead of being repelled by it, we were the more attracted. So far, therefore, the writer was consistent, at least—unlike other Anglicans, who protest especially against our “Marian system” (as they call it), and at the same time babble and dream (for dream it is) of union with the Greek Church. What we were afraid of in the Roman Church was not the Blessed Virgin, but the Pope. We had been so thoroughly imbued from boyhood with the notion that the Pope was “Antichrist” and the “Man of Sin,” that the influence of this monstrous superstition haunted us, in some shape, to the very eve of our conversion. We say in some shape. We had come, since a Ritualist, to believe that Antichrist was yet to appear, and that the Pope could not possibly be he. Nevertheless, we took it for unquestionable that the Papacy was a usurpation; had caused the separation of the Greek Church from the Latin; and was also to blame, in a great degree, for England being out of communion with the other western churches. While under instruction for reception into the church we read Mr. Allies’ See of Peter; and our amazement at the evidence for the Papacy was only equalled by our indignation at the unblushing impudence which had assured us, and with such pretence of patristic learning, that there was not a single proof from the first six centuries for the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.
Well, then, the Greek Church is in harmony with our test-symbol to a certain and considerable extent. 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.” And, again, though they are made much less familiar with the Blessed Sacrament than we are, yet, having a true priesthood (not a sham one like the Anglican), a true altar, and a true Mass, the Real Presence is a living fact with them. So that they may see in the Madonna-and-Child the church and the Blessed Sacrament as we do.
The Madonna-and-Child, however, being, as we have said, the mould upon which the church is cast, makes a law which must not be violated in any single particular. If, therefore, this self-styled “orthodox” Greek Church be found out of harmony with our test-symbol in even one point, she is no more the kingdom of the Incarnation than if she were in harmony with it at no point.
Now, she does fail to correspond with it in one most important point: viz., in her theory of the church as a whole. She holds, like the Anglican Ritualists, the theory of a divided church. But the Madonna can no more represent a divided than an invisible church, and those who say, with us, in the Nicene Creed, “I believe one Catholic and Apostolic Church,” yet maintain that she need not be visibly “one,” are more illogical than those who use the words in the sense of an invisible church. That a visible church, of which oneness is a mark, need not be visibly one!—could absurdity, in the shape of theory, go further?
Again, if this theory of the church as a whole—that she is no longer visibly one as her divine Author made her—renders it impossible to see the type of such a church in the Madonna separately, what meaning will it find in the Madonna-and-Child together? It beholds in the Madonna a unity which it denies; and in the Child—either nothing at all, or something which it consciously rejects.
What makes a church, according to the apostolic constitution? All churches which have that constitution agree that the essentials of a church are a bishop with a clergy and laity in his communion. The bishop is its nucleus, and makes the church in the sense in which the head makes the body. A bishopless church is a headless body. We say this is what all Christians agree upon who believe in apostolical succession. So that even the recent contemptible sect calling themselves “Old Catholics” were bound to procure a bishop for their schism, albeit they set at defiance both authority and logic.
A bishop, then, and the church in his communion are the normal or representative church. Now, we see in this representative church the form of the Madonna-and-Child. To some this may seem fanciful. It is not. Every priest is “another Christ”—in the celebrated words of St. Bernard; and the bishop is the complete priest, as having the power to confer the priesthood. If, then, the Madonna typifies the church, the Christ-child typifies the priesthood, and, if the priesthood, still more the episcopate. Again, as Christ has in Mary not only a Mother, but a Daughter and a Spouse—for he is her Father by creation (whence Chaucer and Dante exclaim, “Daughter of thy Son!”) and her Spouse as the Spouse of all elect souls, among whom she is “as the lily among thorns”—so, too, has the priest in the church at once a mother, a daughter, and a spouse; and therefore still more does the bishop stand in this threefold relation to the church. And, once more, as Christ is “the first-born among many brethren,” his Mother being ours also, so is the priest an elder brother, ruling his brethren from the arms of their common mother; and, if the priest, much more the bishop.
There is nothing fanciful, then, in our view of the Madonna-and-Child as a symbol of the normal or representative church. But what does this mean, if not that the collective church, consisting as it must of a multitude of single churches, has equally the form of the Madonna-and-Child—is equally capable of being symbolized thereby? or, in other words, that all single episcopates must be subordinated to one universal episcopate? Now, the Russo-Greek Church, while affecting (at least in theory) the principle of hierarchical subordination from the bishop up to the patriarch, stupidly contradicts her own assertion of this principle, and destroys the church as a whole, by rejecting the supremacy of the Pope. She is, therefore, in this all-important point, as much out of harmony with our test-symbol as the Anglican and the other Protestant sects; and is ruled out of court, in her turn, as neither the kingdom of the incarnation nor any part of that kingdom.
So at last we have only the Roman Church to contrast with the Madonna-and-Child. And small need have we to show how harmoniously at all points she corresponds with our test-symbol. The Catholic recognizes in the Madonna-and-Child not only the Incarnation but its kingdom. He sees there the church with the Blessed Sacrament in her hands; and, again, the church our mother with her Christ-child at her breast; and, lastly, this same mother as our lady and queen, with her eldest son the Pope ruling his brethren from his throne on her heart, the Sancta Sedes.
With regard to this last point we think it strange that controversialists have made so little use of the Madonna-and-Child of the Apocalypse.[[164]] We proposed to conclude our subject with a proof of the Papacy from this vision, but must reserve it for a separate article.