Lord; the material from which He built Him an earthly habitation. Christ was the wisdom of the Father, and Holy Writ has it that " wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul nor dwell in a body subject to sin." To deny the Immaculate Conception of Mary is, to my mind, scarcely less blasphemous than to assert that the humanity of Christ Himself was stained with original sin, for did He not become flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone? And who does not recoil in horror from the thought that even the adorable body and blood of Christ in the Sacrament of the altar should have had its origin in anything defiled by sin? The Immaculate Conception of Mary is a necessary corollary of Christ's absolute sinlessness. It was asserted by John the Baptist when he refused to baptize the Saviour in the Jordan. It was asserted by Christ Himself when He demanded of His enemies: " Which of you shall convince Me of sin? And what fellowship is there of God with Belial? "
But apart from her divine Son, Mary in the Scripture vindicates in her own person this article of our faith. Mary's destiny was to undo what Eve had done, and whatever in the order of grace Eve lost, Mary regained. Mary is the direct antithesis of Eve. Ave — Eva — even their very names are an inversion, the one of the other. It was due to God's dignity and power that His fair creation should be restored by exactly the same means wherewith by the demon it had been destroyed. Eve sprang from Adam and became his mother in error and death; Mary sprang
