head, followed by the anxiety of
Holy Week and the watch by the Cross on Good Friday; but as these things
came she could understand them as involved in her vocation, in her
acceptance of God.

And cannot we get the same attitude toward life? In the acceptance of
the Christian Religion what we have accepted is God. We have
acknowledged the supremacy of a will outside ourselves. We say, "we are
not our own, we are bought with a price," the price of the Precious
Blood. But if our acceptance is a reality and not a theory it will turn
out to involve much more than we imagined at the first. The frequent and
pathetic failures of those who have made profession of Christianity is
largely accounted for by this,--that the demands of the Christian
Religion on life turn out to be more searching and far-reaching than was
supposed would be the case. Religion turns out to be not one interest to
be adjusted to the other interests of life, but to be a demand that all
life and action shall be controlled by supernatural motive. Those who
would willingly give a part, find it impossible to surrender the whole.
The world is full of Young Rulers who are willing "to contribute
liberally to the support of religion," but shrink from the demand that
they "sell all." "I seek not yours, but you," S. Paul writes to the
Corinthians; and that is also the seeking of God--"Not yours but you."
And because the limit of our willingness is reached in contribution and
does not extend to sacrifice, we fail.

But Blessed Mary did not fail because there was no limit to her
willingness to sacrifice. Her will to sacrifice had the same limitless
quality as her love; and because of the limitless quality of her
self-giving her growth in the life of union was unlimited, or limited
only by the limitations of creaturehood. When therefore we think of her
to-day as Queen of Saints we are not thinking of an arbitrarily
conferred position; we are thinking of a position which comes to her
because she is what she is. She through the unstinting sacrifice of her
love came into more intimate relations with God than is possible for any
other, and through that relation came to know more of the mind of God
than any other. The power of her intercession is the power of her
understanding, of her sympathy with the thoughts of God. When we come to
her with our request for her intercession we feel that we are sure of
her sympathy and her understanding. Her experience of human life, we