the direct contrary.  Here again Joseph and Mary are both called his parents:  Joseph is once mentioned by name, and so is Mary.  If the language had been so framed as on purpose to take away all distinction of preference or superiority, it could not more successfully have effected its purpose.  But not only so, of the three addresses recorded as having been made by our blessed Lord to his beloved mother (and only three are recorded in the New Testament), the first occurs during this visit to Jerusalem.  It was in answer to the remonstrance made by Mary, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?  Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” [Luke ii. 48.] “How is it that ye sought me?  Knew ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”—­[or in my Father’s house, as some render it.] He lifts up their minds from earth to heaven, from his human to his eternal origin.  He makes no distinction here,—­“Wist YE not.”  Again, I would appeal to any dispassionate person to pronounce, whether this reproof, couched in these words, countenances the idea that our blessed Lord intended his human mother to receive such divine honour from his followers to the end of time as the Church of Rome now pays? and whether St. Luke, whose pen wrote this account, could have been made cognizant of any such right invested in the Virgin?

The next passage calling for our consideration is that which records the first miracle:  “And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there, and both Jesus was called and his disciples to the marriage.  And when they wanted wine (when the wine failed), the mother of {279} Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.  Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” [John ii. 1.]

I have carefully read the comments on this passage, which different writers of the Roman Catholic communion have recommended for the adoption of the faithful, and I desire not to make any remarks upon them.  Let the passage be interpreted in any way which enlightened criticism and the analogy of Scripture will sanction, and I would ask, after a careful weighing of this incident, the facts, and the words in all their bearings, would any unprejudiced mind expect that the holy and beloved person, towards whom the meek and tender and loving Jesus employed this address, was destined by that omniscient and omnipotent Saviour to be an object of those religious acts with which, as we shall soon be reminded, the Church of Rome now daily approaches her?

It is pain and grief to me thus to extract and to comment upon these passages of Holy Writ.  The feelings of affection and of reverence approaching awe, with which I hold the memory of that blessed Virgin Mother of my Lord, raise in me a sincere repugnance against dwelling on this branch of our subject, beyond what the cause of the truth as it is in Jesus absolutely requires; and very little more of the same irksome