And by liberty, one gathers, is meant freedom to do as one pleases, and especially as one sexually pleases. The assault is pushed hardest just now against the sanctity of the sacrament of matrimony and the morals of that sacrament as they have been developed by the Christian Church. Protestantism long ago assented to the overthrow of Christian standards in the marriage relation and has aided the sexual anarchy with which we are faced to-day. To-day the chief attack is on the purity of marriage in the interests, ostensibly, of humanity. A vigorous campaign in favour of what is called birth-control is being carried on, and is being supported in quarters which are professedly Christian. There are many grounds for opposing the movement, social, humanitarian and other. We are here concerned with it only as it is an attack on purity. From the Christian point of view the marriage relation has for its end the procreation of children for the upbuilding of the Kingdom of God. If circumstances are such, through reasons of health or economy, that children seem undesirable, the remedy is plain, self control. The theory that human beings have no more control over their appetites than beasts, while it has much to support it in contemporary life, cannot be admitted from the point of view of religion. Self-control is always possible, and is constantly exercised by many men and women who choose to be guided by principle rather than by passion. And in any case the Christian Religion can become no partner, not even a silent one, in a conspiracy to murder, or in the sort of compromise that turns marriage into a licensed sodomy. If indeed the economic status of the modern world is such that the average couple cannot support a family, then the Christian Church may well aid in the bringing about of an economic revolution; but it can hardly aid in the destruction of its own ideals of purity.
What is ultimately at stake in the modern world is the whole conception of purity as a quality that is desirable. This attitude has become possible among us for one reason because we have consented to the suppression of ideals of life which were calculated to sustain it. To sustain any moral or spiritual conception there must be maintained certain appropriate ideals which, while out of the reach of the average man, create and sustain in him an admiration and respect for the ideal standard. So the standard of purity presented in Mary and protected by the belief in her Immaculate Conception and her assumption, has the effect, not only of commending the life of chastity in the sense of the vows of religion, but also in the broad sense of the restraint and discipline of appetite whether within or without the marriage relation. It impresses upon us the truth that purity is not only a human quality but a divinely created virtue, the result of the infusion of sanctifying grace into the soul. Is it not largely because the young are taught (when they are taught anything at all in the premises) that purity is a matter of the will, that they so often fail? If they were taught the nature of the virtue and were led to rely more on the indwelling might of the Holy Spirit would they not have better success? And if there were held constantly before their eyes the example of the saints and especially of Blessed Mary ever-virgin, would not they have an increased sense of the value of purity?
The life and example of S. Mary are an inestimable treasure of the Church of God, and her removal from the world has only enhanced that value. To-day her meaning is clearer to us than ever. The spirit-guided mind of the Church has through the centuries been meditating on the meaning of her office as Mother of God. The words in which she accepts her vocation, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, implying, as they do, an active co-operation with the divine purpose, a voluntary association of herself with it, imply, too, the perpetual continuance of that association, and contain in germ all Catholic teaching in regard to her office. She passed from this world silently, and to the world unknown; but to the Church of God she ever remains of all human beings the greatest spiritual force in the Kingdom of God.
Weep, living things, of life the Mother dies;
The world doth lose the sum of all her bliss,
The Queen of earth, the Empress of the skies;
By Mary's death mankind an orphan is.
Let Nature weep, yea, let all graces moan,
Their glory, grace and gifts die all in one.
It was no death to her, but to her woe,
By which her joys began, her griefs did end;
Death was to her a friend, to us a foe,
Life of whose lives did on her life depend:
Not prey of death, but praise to death she was.
Whose ugly shape seemed glorious in her face.
Her face a heaven; two planets were her eyes,
Whose gracious light did make our clearest day;
But one such heaven there was, and lo, it dies,
Death's dark eclipse hath dimmed every, ray:
Sun, hide thy light, thy beams untimely shine;
True light since we have lost, we crave not thine.Robert Southwell, 1560-1595
Robert Southwell, 1560-1595
PART TWO
CHAPTER XXV
THE ASSUMPTION
Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am;
that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me.
S. John XVII, 24.