fact that there was no precedent was not in anywise fatal; the point of the situation was just that there was no precedent for the relation to God into which Blessed Mary had been called.  It was precisely this uniqueness of vocation which was leading theological thought to the conclusion of the uniqueness of her privilege:  and this uniqueness of privilege seemed to call for nothing less than an exemption from sin in any and all forms.  So a belief in the Immaculate Conception grew up despite a good deal of opposition while its implications were being thought out, but was found more and more congenial to the mind of the Church.  She whose wonderful title for centuries had been Mother of God could never at any moment of her existence have been separate from God.  She must, so it was felt, have been united to God from the very first moment of her existence.

But what does this exemption from the common lot of men actually mean?  I think that the simplest way of getting at it is to ask ourselves what it is that happens to a child at baptism.  Every human child that is born into the world is born in original sin, that is, is born out of union with God, without sanctifying grace.  It is then brought to the font and by baptism regenerated, born again, put in a relation to God that we describe as union, made a partaker of the divine nature.  This varying description of the effect of baptism means that the soul of the child has become a partaker of sanctifying grace, the grace of union with God.  Original sin, we say, is forgiven:  that is, the soul is placed in the relation to God that it would have had had sin not come into existence, save that there remains a certain weakness of nature due to its sinful heredity.  This that happens to children when they are baptised is what is held to have happened to Blessed Mary at her creation.  Her soul instead of being restored to God by grace after her birth, was by God’s special grace or favour created in union with Him, and in that union always continued.  The uniqueness of S. Mary’s privilege was that she never had to be restored to union with God because from the moment of her existence she had been one with Him.  This would have been the common lot of all men if sin had not come into the world.

In view of much criticism of this belief it is perhaps necessary to emphasize the fact that a belief in Mary’s exemption from original sin does not imply a belief that she was exempt from the need of redemption.  She is a creature of God, only the highest of His creatures:  and like all human beings she needed to be redeemed by the Blood of Christ.  The privileges which are our Lord’s Mother’s, are her’s through the foreseen merits of her Son—­she, as all others, is redeemed by the sacrifice and death of Christ.  There is in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception no shadow of encroachment on the doctrine of universal redemption in Christ; there is simply the belief that for the merits of the Son the Mother was spared any moment of separation from the Father.