n to our Lady encouraged, there will you
find the Deity of our Lord maintained? Has the Anglican "sanity and
reserve" in regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary saved the Anglican Church
from the inroads of unitarianism and rationalism? Is it not precisely in
those circles where the very virginity of our Lady is denied that the
divinity of our Lord is denied also? No, devotion to Mary is far indeed
from detracting from the honour due to Mary's Son.

And we cannot insist too much or too often that the doctrines of the
Christian Church form a closely woven system such that none, even the
seemingly least important, can be denied without injuring the whole. No
article of Christian belief expresses an independent truth, but always a
truth depending upon other truths, and in its turn lending others its
support. To deny any truth that the mind of the Church has expressed is
equivalent to the removal of an organ from a living body.

And to-day we feel more than ever the need of the doctrine of the
assumption. One of the bitterest attacks on the Christian Faith which is
being made to-day, emanating principally from within the Christian
community, and even from within the Christian ministry, is that which is
being made on the truth of the resurrection of the body, whether the
resurrection of our Lord, or our own resurrection. In place of the
Christian doctrine believed and preached from the beginning, we are
asked to lapse back into heathenism and a doctrine of immortality. Not
many seem to realise the vastness of the difference that is made in our
outlook to the future by a belief in the resurrection of the body as
distinguished from immortality. But the character of the religions
resulting from these two contrary beliefs is absolutely different. It
needs only to study them as they actually exist to be convinced of
this fact.

And it is precisely the doctrine of the assumption of our Lady which
contributes strong support to the Christian doctrine of the resurrection
of the body. It teaches us that in her case the vision and hope of
mankind at large has been anticipated and accomplished. The resurrection
of our Lord is found, in fact, to extend (if one may so express it) to
the members of His mystical body; and the promise which is fulfilled in
Blessed Mary, is that hope of a joyful resurrection which is thus
confirmed to us all. In its stress upon the assumption the mind of the
Christian Church has not been led astray, has not been