than we can doubt of any other
particulars recorded in the same Gospel: it proves that she must have
been, for her time and country, most rarely gifted in mind, and deeply
read in the Scriptures. 4. She was of a contemplative, reflecting,
rather silent disposition. "She kept all these sayings, and pondered
them in her heart." (Luke ii. 51.) She made no boast of that wondrous
and most blessed destiny to which she was called; she thought upon it
in silence. It is inferred that as many of these sayings and events
could be known to herself alone, St. Luke the Evangelist could have
learned them only from her own lips. 5. Next her truly maternal
devotion to her divine Son, whom she attended humbly through his whole
ministry;[1] 6. and lastly, the sublime fortitude and faith with which
she followed her Son to the death scene, stood beside the cross till
all was finished, and then went home, and _lived_ (Luke xxiii.); for
she was to be to us an example of all that a woman could endure, as
well as all that a woman could be and act out in her earthly life.
(John xix. 25.) Such was the character of Mary; such the _portrait_
really _painted_ by St. Luke; and, as it seems to me, these scattered,
artless, unintentional notices of conduct and character converge into
the most perfect moral type of the intellectual, tender, simple, and
heroic woman that ever was placed before us for our edification and
example.

[Footnote 1: Milton places in the mouth of our Saviour an allusion to
the influence of his Mother in early life:--

"These growing thoughts my mother soon perceiving
By words at times cast forth, duly rejoiced,
And said to me apart, 'High are thy thoughts,
O Son; but nourish them, and let them soar
To what height sacred virtue and true worth
Can raise them, though above example high.'"]

But in the Church traditions and enactments, another character
was, from the fifth century, assigned to her, out of which grew the
theological type, very beautiful and exalted, but absorbing to a great
degree the scriptural and moral type, and substituting for the merely
human attributes others borrowed from her relation to the great
scheme of redemption; for it was contended that, as the mother of
_the Divine_, she could not be herself less than divine; consequently
above the angels, and first of all created beings. According to the
doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, her tender woman's wisdom
became supernatural gifts; the