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Jesus Christ Himself is the expression of the fatherly and motherly nature in God. But this great truth was lost sight of in the dark ages; and the strange idea arose that even Christ Himself was what God was formerly conceived to be — a stern and angry judge, needing intercession and appeased with difficulty. The manhood in Him, from its very sinlessness, was supposed to be implacable; and therefore the pitying, compassionate womanhood was personified by His mother, who acted the part of intercessor between Him and a guilty world. She was a human being, having all a human being's experience of sin, its temptations, trials, and sorrows; having the consciousness of weakness in herself, teaching her how hard it is not to sin, which would necessarily make her compassionate towards others. We all know how, step by step, she has been raised from that position of participation in human sin and sorrow to an exemption from it. We can trace this gradual ascent in the pictures of her which represent her first as alone; then with the infant Saviour in her arms; then with Christ crowning her; then kneeling before Him; then sitting a little lower; then on a level with Him. And now there is a tendency to place her above Him; for there are more churches dedicated to her than to Him. In Rome God the Father is almost unknown, and God the Son has ceased to be an object of adoration. The Father is pictorially represented as an old man, and the Saviour as a little child; arid both are made subservient to the Virgin. But there is a Nemesis in this last monstrous development. By the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, thus paying Divine honours to her, she is removed further from the sympathies of men, and the attraction of her intercession will ultimately be weakened. What made her worship so alluring was the mistaken idea that just because she was a tender human being — a loving, sainted mother — having the knowledge of sin, she would be less severe towards the frailties of men. But this charm she will lose by her deification. She will come to be regarded as a stern and implacable judge, having no sympathy with men, because she is herself withdrawn from the possibilities of their frailties; and the confiding trustfulness with which prayers are now offered to her will cease to be felt. Indeed, the change has already taken place, and the supposed mother of the Virgin, called St. Anne, is now invoked to entreat her daughter to ask her Son to be propitious to the suppliant. Where is to be the end of such meditatorship? May not the Virgin's grandmother be also brought in? And if the Virgin is to be regarded as conceived without sin, must not her mother also — and so on — back to Adam; and thus the doctrine of the Fall and of original sin be done away with altogether, and with it the standing-ground and necessity of the Church? How simple and satisfactory the truth itself which is thus so strangely perverted!

(H. Macmillan, LL. D.)

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KJV: And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.

WEB: When the wine ran out, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no wine."