has it that each divinity lent a charm to grace the Queen of Love. A myth, yes, but a myth founded on a fact— on Mary's creation. She is that Ruth whose loving heart recked not of home or country but only of her people and her Lord; she is that Judith who slew man's bitterest foe when she crushed the head of the serpent; she is that Abigail by whose eloquent beauty the wrath of the King of kings was turned to mercy. The Child of her prayers she gave, like Anna, freely to the Lord; but most of all she is that Mary who alone of mortals passed through the sea of this sinful world dry-shod and without a stain. Man may say that but for Eve Adam had never sinned; he may point to his sex deified in the person of the Saviour; but still, speaking of the purely mortal, we can and do turn to-night to a woman, to Mary, and salute her in the words of the poet as: " Our tainted Nature's solitary boast."
Brethren, in the Apocalypse Mary is described as the Woman clothed with the sun of God's effulgent grace, the moon — the changeful moon — under her feet, and on her head a crown of stars — the brightest star of them all her Immaculate Conception. Alone of mortals, she, from the instant of her creation, was preserved from the stain of original sin. We read that the prophet Jeremias and John the Baptist were sanctified in their mother's womb, but still each was created, each conceived, in sin. In fact, with Mary as a solitary exception, every child of Adam is heir to Adam's guilt. In the beginning God made man right, says Ecclesiasticus, right with the rectitude
