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III. MURANO 67
with reverence and regret?” Inasmuch as redemption is ascribed to the Virgin, No. Inasmuch as redemption is a thing desired, believed, rejoiced in, Yes,-and Yes a thousand times. As far as the Virgin is worshipped in place of God, No; but as far as there is the evidence of worship itself, and of the sense of a Divine presence, Yes. For there is a wider division of men than that into Christian and Pagan: before we ask what a man worships, we have to ask whether he worships at all. Observe Christ’s own words on this head: “God is a spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit, and in truth.”1 The worshipping in spirit comes first, and it does not necessarily imply the worshipping in truth. Therefore, there is first the broad division of men into Spirit worshippers and Flesh worshippers; and then, of the Spirit worshippers, the farther division into Christian and Pagan,-worshippers in Falsehood or in Truth. I therefore, for the moment, omit all inquiry how far the Mariolatry of the early Church did indeed eclipse Christ, or what measure of deeper reverence for the Son of God was still felt through all the grossest forms of Madonna worship. Let that worship be taken at its worst; let the goddess of this dome of Murano be looked upon as just in the same sense an idol as the Athene of the Acropolis, or the Syrian Queen of Heaven; and then, on this darkest assumption, balance well the difference between those who worship and those who worship not;-that difference which there is in the sight of God, in all ages, between the calculating, smiling, self-sustained, self-governed man, and the believing, weeping, wondering, struggling, Heaven-governed man;-between the men who say in their hearts “there is no God,” and those who acknowledge a God at every step, “if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.”2 For that is indeed the difference which we shall find, in the end, between the builders of this day and the builders on that sand island long ago. They did honour something out of themselves;
1 [John iv. 24.]
2 [Psalms xiv. 1, liii. 1; Acts xvii. 27.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
