er lowliness she has been exalted--how
highly she herself cannot at the time have dreamed. We can see what was
necessarily involved in God's choice of her, and to-day we think of her
as in her perfect purity exalted in heaven far above all other
creatures. Mother of God most holy we call her, and in the words of her
canticle ever repeat her thanksgiving as our thanksgiving, too, for the
vocation that God sent her and for the gift which through her has
come to us.

But there is a more universal aspect of the Magnificat. Essentially it
is the presentation of the constant antithesis which runs through all
revelation between the flesh and the spirit, between the Kingdom of God
and the Kingdom of this world. It embodies the conception of God
striving to save a world which has revolted from Him, and now at last
entering upon that stage of His work which is the beginning of a triumph
over all the powers of the adversary. In Mary's song the contrasted
powers are still presented under the Old Testament terminology which was
the natural form of her thought. The adversaries of God are the proud,
the mighty, the rich; while those who are on God's side are the humble,
the god-fearers, the hungry. The form of the thought and its essential
meaning remain the same through the centuries, though our terminology
changes somewhat. Presently in the pages of the New Testament we shall
get the presentation as the contrast between the children of this world
and the sons of God. We shall find the briefest expression of the latter
to be the saints.

We no longer feel that rich and poor express a spiritual contrast. Nor
do we, who are quite accustomed to the action of labour leaders, regard
social position as being the exclusive seat of arrogancy. But we know
that the spiritual values which are expressed in the varying terminology
are constant; we know that the warfare between God and not-God is still
the most important phenomenon in the universe. And it happens as we look
out on the battlefield where the forces of good and evil contend, where
before our eyes they seem to sway back and forth on the field of human
life with every varying fortunes, that we not seldom feel that the
battle is not obviously falling to the side of righteousness. There come
moments when we are oppressed by what seems to us the lack of power in
the ideals of righteousness. The appeal of the proud and of the rich is
so dazzling; the splendour of the visible kingdom of th