the divine approval; and that
approval can never be false to the facts; what God treats as holy
must be holy.

So we come to holy Mary's Song with the feeling that in studying it we
shall find in it a revelation of S. Mary herself. She is not an
instrument on which the Holy Spirit plays, but an intelligent being
through whom He acts. She, like S. Elizabeth, is filled with the Holy
Spirit--she had never been in the slightest degree out of union with
God--but still the Magnificat is her utterance; it represents her
thought; it is the measure, if one may so put it, in modern terminology,
of her degree of spiritual culture. Much that we say about S. Mary, her
simplicity, her social place, and so on, seems to carry with it the
implication of the ignorance and spiritual dullness that we associate
with the type of poverty we are accustomed to to-day. But the poor folk
whom we meet in association with our Lord are neither ignorant nor
spiritually dull; and it would be a vast mistake to think of Blessed
Mary as other than of great intelligence and spiritual receptivity, or
as deficient in understanding of the details of her ancestral religion.
We have no reason to be surprised that she should sing Magnificat, or to
think that the Holy Spirit was speaking through her thoughts which were
quite beyond her comprehension. Inspired she was, but inspired, no
doubt, to utter thoughts that had many times filled her mind.

Her spiritual attitude as revealed in the Magnificat is but the attitude
which must have been hers habitually--the attitude that exalts God and
not self. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in
God my Saviour." That is the starting-place of all holy souls--the
adoration of God. True humility is never self-conscious because self is
lost in the vision of God. S. Mary was bearing in her pure body the very
Son of God. Admit, if you will, that as yet she did not understand the
full reach of her vocation; but she did know that she had been chosen by
God in a most signal manner to be the instrument of His purpose. That
which S. Elizabeth spoke under divine impulse,--"Whence is this that the
mother of my Lord should come to me?"--must have had clear meaning for
her. But the wonder of all that God is accomplishing through her only
brings her to God's feet. That "He that is mighty hath done me great
things," is but the evidence of His sanctity, not of her greatness.

One never gets through wondering at t