"Truth! what is truth?" said Hester.
"Truth is the harmony of all things as they exist in God; as love is their manifestation," said M. de Villeneuve. "The simplicity of ideas, their order, beauty, harmony, find expression in the created world; but the ideas themselves [{612}] are immaterial or spiritual, and have a relative spiritual expression in the soul. You have taken one and left the other, hence the failure. Missing the idea itself, you necessarily fail in power, for spiritual power is needed to develop truly even the material type. And, moreover, you cannot understand the type until you possess the idea."
"Something is wanted, that is certain," said Hester; "but if all virtue is typified in some material existence, tell me where is the type of purity?"
"Where but in the virgin-mother," responded the comte. "In the mother of him who died to obtain for man that power over sin which had escaped him. The world lies the victim of its own self-will: it needs a high ideal of purity and of sanctifying love, and this it finds in Mary; it needs the power to work out this ideal, and this it finds in Jesus. The progression of man is dearer to Mary than ever it can be to you, for she is our mother, and the mother of our Redeemer; but progression consists in sanctifying the individual, in destroying that overweening empire of sense which overlies the spiritual faculty, and which is fatal to woman in every sense, even in this world. Did you never observe how the progression of ancient times ever riveted woman's chains? From Egypt to Greece, from Greece to Rome, as luxury increased the degradation of the majority of women followed. The temples of the gods were filled with thousands of women enacting scenes of horror under the name of worship. This affords a key to the disorders that always accompanied ancient civilization, for woman is the mother of the race, the peculiar impersonation of the affections, and in her maternity the representative of that self-sacrificing principle which forgets self in care for the welfare of her children. Where woman is not cognizant of her true office, where her spiritual affinities remain undeveloped, the race can get no further than materialism, and that sensuous gratification which contains already within itself the germ of decay, No For it is of earth, earthy. But the divine instinct of religion, when proclaiming the 'grace to rise' one for us by the cross on which the God-man died, raised Mary on the altars of his church, for the special protection of all that is holy and aspirative to in womanhood. And since that blessed time Christian women have been respected as virgins and as mothers; as beings formed to foster virtue and watch over the spiritual education of the of the members of Christ's body. Mary acts wonderfully through her daughters. Christian queens converted their husbands, and with them their subjects throughout Europe; Christian matrons have given that tone to society which now, even in this age of heresy, respect security in theory, though it throws it off in practice. All that is pure, all that is lovely, all that is harmonious and holy invests the shrine of Mary, and from her influence proceeds the charm that represses vice, converts the heart to goodness as its chief happiness, and gives power to the individual to do those works of penance, of violence to self, which win the kingdom of heaven; a kingdom which commences here, in our own hearts, when we once enter into the harmonies of the religious teachings of nature and of revelation."
Hester started to her feet. "Is this the office of Mary?" she exclaimed.
M. de Villeneuve assented by a gesture.
"True or not true," said Hester, "this explanation does not in the least savor of ignorance and superstition it is beautiful poetry!"
"And is not poetry the highest truth?" said the comte.
"No," said Mr. Godfrey, coming forward with a frown on his countenance. "No! I wonder you religious people can never keep within your proper bounds. I, who have traveled in France, in Belgium, and in Italy, and seen the painted dolls and gaudy dressed-up images, protest against your giving a poetic or philosophic dress to this idolatry or mariolatry. When I [{613}] take Hester abroad, she will see with me that this worship is nothing but the rankest superstition."
"But I thought you said there was always a meaning under every myth. Pop, may not this be the meeting of 'Mary'"?