Continued from Chapter II. Romanism substitutes Mary for Christ.

Rome Belies the Truth, and Falsifies the Scripture to Aid the Worship of Mary.

Take in proof: The church close by the Vatican has upon its marble pediment, graven in large letters, “Let us come to the throne of the Virgin Mary, that we may find sin in time of need.” The Roman sees 4:16 quoted, but cannot verify it if seeing the Bible is forbidden to him, and knows not that it reads, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” The context shows that Christ is presented as the Mediator. Pius IX, at the foot of the Column of the Immaculate Conception, erected to perpetuate the fact that he was permitted to decree the dogma, has Moses, David, Isaiah, and Jeremiah casting crowns before the Virgin, saying, “Thou art worthy, for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood.”

Rome to destroy faith in Christ, lifts up Mary. In all the picture galleries of Europe, and also many of those found in England and America, we see pictures of Mary holding Christ’s crucified body and ministering to the sleeping dead in all wonderful attitudes of worship. The fact is, Mary never saw Christ after she bade Him farewell when He was hanging on the cross. Christ never went home after His resurrection, and never appeared to Mary after He rose from the dead.

(Note: Does the Bible really indicate that? No Bible teacher I have ever heard has taught that Jesus never appeared to Mary after He rose from the dead.)

The disciples treated Mary as though she were only an ordinary woman. In Acts 1:14 we see her for the last time, when in an upper room she is with her children, waiting with the disciples for the descent of the Holy Spirit. She went to the home of John; there she passed her declining years, died, and was buried, and in that grave she will remain until the resurrection trump shall sound, and she shall come forth with the redeemed to cast her crown at the feet of our ascended Lord.

THE EXTENT OF THE WORSHIP OF MARY

It is co-extensive with the worship of the idolatries of Rome. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is a part of Romanistic belief. On Dec. 8th, 1854, Pio Nono (Pope Pius IX) went in great state to St. Peter’s, followed by 54 Cardinals, 44 Archbishops, 94 Bishops, and a very great number of Priests, and crowning with a diadem the image of the Virgin Mary which is on the altar of the Cardinal’s chapel, he then read an extract of the bull of the Immaculate Conception, declaring “that she was immaculate at the first instant of her conception in the womb of her mother, and by a singular privilege and grace of the Omnipotent God, in virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ.”

In an Encyclical dated Feb. 2nd, 1869, Pius IX declared that “Mary is exalted to the throne of God. Our salvation is founded on the Holy Virgin, since God the Lord has deposited in her the fulness of all good, so that if there is hope and spiritual healing for us, we receive it solely and alone from her.”

In the “Glories of Mary“, page 200, it is stated “that those who cannot be saved by Christ, are saved by Mary.”

“No one is saved but through Thee,” page 135, Glories of Mary.

Can idolatry go further? Keep the fact in mind that Romanism finds no warrant for any such claim for Mary in the Scriptures.

Christ showed Himself ten times after His resurrection, the first time to Mary Magdalene, but not at any time to His mother. It does not appear that she was present at His ascension. The eleven were there, but no mention was made of Mary.

He expounded to the disciples on the way to Emmaus all the Scriptures concerning Himself, but He does not mention His mother.

In the model prayer, neither Mary nor the saints are referred to. When Jesus and Mary were on earth, Jesus showed an infinite love for sinners in dying for them; Mary did not. Three times the Infinite Father proclaims Christ as an object of worship, but there is no mention of Mary.

The dying thief on the cross was as near the living Mary as to the dying Christ, but when he wanted help he cried to Jesus. There is not in the Scriptures a single instance where any one asked her to intercede for them, nor was there any need. Christ’s love is infinite, and His power is infinite, and does not require any help to spur His will, or any other power to work out His purpose.

Truly has He said, “I am Jehovah, this is my name, and my glory will I not give to another” (Isa. 43:8). As He said to Satan, so He says to all, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” To the disciples He told the whole truth when He said, “No one cometh unto the Father but by me; if ye shall ask anything in my name, (not in Mary’s name) I will do it.”

is a Romish superstition. To the Romanist, Mary is God, and worship is the adoration of the Virgin. Viewing Romanism in the light of the Bible, this is its crowning sin; viewing it as a system calculated to seduce and enslave—this is its masterpiece.

Popery blots out the God-Man as Mediator and in His stead presents us with Mary, who is to the devotee the one living and true God. For though the Father and Son are known, they are only accessible through Mary, and they stand so far behind and beyond her, that to the Romanist they are a vague shadow and unknown.

Mary is the first name to be lisped in childhood, the last to be uttered by the quivering lips before they are closed in death. Around the neck of the infant is suspended a small image of the Virgin; when the babe seeks the breast, it must kiss the image, and thus literally draws in the adoration of Mary with its mother’s milk.

THE MARY WORSHIPPED IS A MYTH

It is the Lady of the Jesuits that Rome bows down to, not to the Mary that the Church knew, or the New Testament describes. Rome has an Apocryphal Testament full of falsehoods concerning Mary, which is substituted for the Gospel, and is believed in by the superstitious.

In Rome, poetry, painting, and imagination have done their utmost to exalt this papal goddess. She is not Venus, nor Minerva, nor Ceres, nor Vesta, but an invention of diabolical cunning, framed to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect.

The marvels described began before her birth. Her parents, Joachim and Anna, of the royal race of David, are childless, and bitterly grieved on this account. As a specimen of the manner in which Rome falsifies the truth, take this statement as an illustration: On a great festival day when Joachim brings a double offering to the Lord, it is rejected by the priest, saying, “It is not lawful for thee to bring thine offerings since thou hast begotten no issue in Israel.”

And Joachim was exceedingly sorrowful and went into the wilderness and fasted forty days and forty nights and said, “Until the Lord my God look upon mine affliction, my only meat shall be prayer.” Then Anna prayed under a laurel tree, and behold the angel of the Lord stood by her, and said: “Anna, thy prayer is heard; thou shalt bring forth a child that shall be blessed throughout the world; see also thy husband is coming with his shepherd’s crook, for an angel hath comforted him also.”

And Anna went forth to meet her husband, and Joachim came from the pasture, and they met at the golden gate, and Anna ran and embraced her husband, and said, “Now I know that the Lord hath blessed me.” Then comes the birth of Mary, the suspicious infant, with all manner of signs of good omen.

And when the child was three years old, Joachim said, “Let us invite the daughters of Israel, let them each take a lamp and attend on her that the child may not turn her back on the temple of the Lord.” And being come to the temple, they placed her on the first step, and she ascended all the steps to the altar, and the High Priest received her and kissed her, and blessed her, saying, “Mary, the Lord hath magnified thy name to all generations; in thee shall all nations of the earth be blessed.” Titian has represented this and other scenes.

A legend has it that Mary was sustained by the ministry of angels who daily visited her, and brought to her the bread of angels, and the water of life. It is the tradition of the Greek Church that Mary alone of all her sex was allowed to enter the holy of holies, and pray before the ark of the covenant.

In her 14th year the priest announced to her that it was time for her to be given in marriage, but she declared that she had vowed a life of virginity, and declined, but the High Priest told her that he had received a message from the Lord, and so she submitted. Then the High Priest enquired of the Lord, and was bid to order all the widowers of the people to come, each with a rod in his hand, that the Lord might choose one by a sign; and Joseph the carpenter came with the rest and presented his rod, and lo, a white dove flew from it and settled upon his head.

According to St. Jerome, the tradition has another version. The rods of the candidates were placed in the temple over night, and lo, in the morning Joseph’s rod had burst forth in leaves and flowers. The painting of Raphael in the Brera at Milan, as fresh in color as if but yesterday, gives the mediaeval conception of that wedding.

Then come pictures of the wonderful Annunciation, thick as lilies in the meadow. All that human art can do with splendors of color, and richness of fancy, to embellish the theme, has been done to elevate Mary as an object of worship.

In the apocryphal gospels, there is no end to fables concerning Mary after the crucifixion of Christ, for which there is not a particle of scriptural support. To Mary was ascribed all the divine attributes and offices; she is represented in heaven as commanding the Son with the authority of a mother, and Christ, for whom all things were made, is pictured as bending in submissive obedience to her behests; in short, there comes to be in Romanism and Ritualism no God but Mary. As a worship, if not as a religion,

In Roman Catholic countries the images of the Virgin are loaded with costly offerings, as if they had power to grant help; the poor may go unfed, the naked unclothed, but the statue of Mary is enriched by the most costly offerings. In some of the churches in Spain, millions of dollars are lying in the lap of the so-called Virgin. Mary is exalted at the expense of the worship of Christ.

In the “Glories of Mary”, two ladders are described, one red ladder and one white; the red ladder is Jesus Christ, the white ladder is the Virgin mother; up the red ladder millions try to climb and fall into hell, then comes the cry, “Try the white ladder”; they obey and are saved.

In the largest Sabbath school in New York, the priest came before 1,900 children and asked, “Who is your best friend, children?”
“Mother,” is the quick reply.
“All that say Mother hold up your hands”; all held up their hands.
“Who is your best heavenly friend?”
“Mary.”

What does Christ say? “Whosoever believes not shall be damned.”

“She pleads for us and saves us.” Thus is that Being who took children in His arms and blessed them, to whom they ran with joy, who died that He might open Heaven to childhood, set before them as a cruel monster, painted by Michelangelo, with thunderbolts in His hand, wishing to see them damned, while this pitiful mother hides her eyes from the sight.

As a result, Romanists pray to Mary who can do them no good, even if they believe on her—for with Romanists as with others, “There is none other name under Heaven given among men whereby we must be saved,” but the name of Jesus Christ, Who was crucified and Whom God raised from the dead.

All sorts of deceptions are practiced in the nunneries and churches where Mary is worshipped. Blood is made to appear on her face, her eyes are made to turn by a secret spring moved by a priestly hand, and the people fall down in adoration and rapture, and roll and tumble on the floor in unmeasured delight.

Keep it in mind, Jesus was Mary’s first-born Son, and the only-begotten Son of God. Holy Scriptures never once even faintly hint that Jesus was the only Son of Mary.

is now being worked, but it is an afterthought and a feeble subterfuge, as the Right Hon. Sir Robert Montagu, in his “The Virgin and the Sower“, has shown. His cousins were the sons of Zebedee. Paul mentions James as the Lord’s brother (Gal. 1:19).

Suppose the cousin theory were true, Jesus would have said, “Who is my brother and who are my cousins? Whosoever doth the will of my Father is my male or female cousin.” The disciples who do the will of God are sons of God, not nephews, not cousins, because they have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry “Abba, Father.”

THE OBJECT OF MARIOLATRY

is manifestly to turn thought, and love, and faith, from Christ the Creator to Mary the creature. As a result, a manly Christianity is overthrown in lands where Mary is worshipped. There is no vir in the religion, no strength, no honesty, no Bible, no literature worthy of the name, no promise of the future, no joy in the present.

As a leading clergyman of England has recently said, in reply to the Bishop of Chichester, “The Virgin Mary of the papal church, and that some Anglicans worship, is a heathen goddess, pandering to the foolish fancies of doting ecclesiastics, covering the amorous delinquencies of erring nuns, and patronizing villains of the deepest dye.”

They who have set up her image in sanctuaries as has been done by the Ritualists in St. Paul’s Cathedral and in Westminster Abbey, London, have been guilty of the sin of idolatry, and have provoked the wrath of God. They who thus act reject the true, the great, and the strong, and accept the false and the weak, and are impoverished thereby.

The reason for this is obvious; the carnal nature naturally turns to Mary, and then seeks to work out salvation by enduring personally the sufferings which Christ endured in our stead. As a result, failure follows failure; the worshippers of Mary are without joy, and without a well-grounded hope.

The exaltation of the image of Mary is proof that the spirit which rejected Christ lives and works. It is a duty to head against the manner in which Christ planted the heel of condemnation on every effort to promulgate the debasing doctrine that bows down to the Lady of the Jesuits and ignores the Mary of the New Testament.

“In vain,” says Christ, “do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” If we would serve our Lord we must believe His word, accept His teachings, and obey them.

Chapter IV. Christ Guarded Against Mariolatry.