For the exactness of this story in all its details, Bishop James of Voragio could not have vouched, nor did it greatly matter.  What he could vouch for was the relation of intimacy and confidence between his people and the Queen of Heaven.  The fact, conspicuous above all other historical certainties about religion, that the Virgin was by essence illogical, unreasonable and feminine, is the only fact of any ultimate value worth studying, and starts a number of questions that history has shown itself clearly afraid to touch.  Protestant and Catholic differ little in that respect.  No one has ventured to explain why the Virgin wielded exclusive power over poor and rich, sinners and saints, alike.  Why were all the Protestant churches cold failures without her help?  Why could not the Holy Ghost—­the spirit of Love and Grace—­equally answer their prayers?  Why was the Son powerless?  Why was Chartres Cathedral in the thirteenth century—­ like Lourdes to-day—­the expression of what is in substance a separate religion?  Why did the gentle and gracious Virgin Mother so exasperate the Pilgrim Father?  Why was the Woman struck out of the Church and ignored in the State?  These questions are not antiquarian or trifling in historical value; they tug at the very heart-strings of all that makes whatever order is in the cosmos.  If a Unity exists, in which and toward which all energies centre, it must explain and include Duality, Diversity, Infinity—­Sex!

Although certain to be contradicted by every pious churchman, a heretic must insist on thinking that the Mater Dolorosa was the logical Virgin of the Church, and that the Trinity would never have raised her from the foot of the Cross, had not the Virgin of Majesty been imposed, by necessity and public unanimity, on a creed which was meant to be complete without her.  The true feeling of the Church was best expressed by the Virgin herself in one of her attested miracles:  “A clerk, trusting more in the Mother than in the Son, never stopped repeating the angelic salutation for his only prayer.  Once as he said again the ‘Ave Maria,’ the Lord appeared to him, and said to him:  ’My Mother thanks you much for all the Salutations that you make her; but still you should not forget to salute me also:  tamen et me salutare memento.’” The Trinity feared absorption in her, but was compelled to accept, and even to invite her aid, because the Trinity was a court of strict law, and, as in the old customary law, no process of equity could be introduced except by direct appeal to a higher power.  She was imposed unanimously by all classes, because what man wanted most in the Middle Ages was not merely law or equity, but also and particularly favour.  Strict justice, either on earth or in heaven, was the last thing that society cared to face.  All men were sinners, and had, at least, the merit of feeling that, if they got their deserts, not one would escape worse than whipping.  The instinct of individuality went down