Called on Lady ----, who had asked me to dine with her to-morrow. She spoke to me seriously on a subject which, she said, had been much upon her mind. Living for a long time among Roman Catholics, she had come to the knowledge of a vast number of answers to prayer addressed through the Blessed Virgin to God. Without rejecting evidence which on any other subject she should admit to be conclusive, she could not refuse her belief to the efficacy of these prayers, and yet her whole mind revolted from addressing an invocation to the Blessed Virgin. Moreover, she believed that, in the minds of the ignorant and superstitious in the Roman Communion, the Blessed Virgin was an obstacle to their approaching God,--they stopped with her. And yet these prayers were undoubtedly answered. Did God then vouchsafe a reply to the love which evidently dictated these prayers? To her Protestantism seemed to have called forth the manly virtues, independence and self-possession; whereas Catholicism developed itself in far greater tenderness of spirit and affection. She showed me a passage from Padre Ventura, strongly setting forth the paternity of God the Father and the maternity of the Blessed Virgin in parallelism, and compassionating those who held either without the other. But to Protestants the Blessed Virgin was a merely historical being, having no present existence; they did not mean to dishonour her, but they simply never thought about her.
I said it appeared to me that the Intercession of the Saints for the Church on earth and its particular members could not but be an essential part of the Communion of Saints, and this once being granted, the pre-eminent position of the Blessed Virgin accounted for the effects wrought by her intercession; that those who had carried her power to the highest yet made it a simply intercessory power. "Monstra te esse matrem" was the highest exhibition of her authority. When the mind comes to reflect upon her, and the position she holds, so unapproachable by any other creature, it can hardly fail to come to these results. The greater tenderness and devotion of spirit discernible among Roman Catholics must be on account of their so vividly realising the Communion of Saints, and this specially in the case of the Blessed Virgin. We must not reason from the ignorant and superstitious members of the Roman Church, any more than from the apathy and utter deadness of heart and irreverence apparent in so many of our own people. The cultus of the saints may be idolatry to those who do not realise the ineffably higher office of our Lord. I can conceive their asking, What good can the bones of dead men do? But when the reality of Christ's presence in the tabernacles of their flesh is felt, I could not see how the grace and glory bestowed by the Head upon his members detracted from Himself, as the source and giver of it. The Communion of Saints, therefore, would account for the answers given to prayers for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. But how could the Saints know of the prayers made to them? I said I saw no difficulty in the view of divines, that those who enjoyed the vision of God, beheld in Him the needs and requests of their brethren in the flesh.