SERMON XVI.

THE MISSION OF THE PENITENT IN THE CHURCH.

S. JOHN XX. 17.

GO TO MY BRETHREN, AND SAY UNTO THEM, I ASCEND TO MY FATHER, AND YOUR FATHER; AND TO MY GOD AND YOUR GOD.

We cannot dismiss this text, the last in the series of notices afforded us in the Scripture concerning the Magdalene, without expressing our wonder at another point which it presses upon our attention, and indulging in that train of reflection to which it naturally conducts us. Not only is it wonderful that a lay person should have been preferred, in this commission, to an ecclesiastic, and a woman to a man, but it is also most surprising that our Blessed LORD should have communicated His gracious message to S. Mary the Penitent, and not to S. Mary the Blessed. Most singular is it that He should have at all selected a penitent sinner for this honour, but all the more surprising, when there was one of so unblameable a life as the Blessed Virgin

through whom He might have conveyed it.

If

a woman must be the messenger of these glad tidings to the Apostles, who so fitting as she to whom was vouchsafed the greatest honour of all, even to be the mother of CHRIST JESUS, the Son of GOD? If the greater were conceded to her, which was to be the mother of God, why not the less, to bear tidings of His ascension to heaven?

But here, for one reason, there would seem to have been exercised, on the part of our Blessed SAVIOUR, a jealous care of His own honour. Perhaps it was that, foreseeing the extravagant honours that men would pay to the Blessed Virgin, His mother, HE so provided against the occurrence of any extraordinary stone of stumbling in this direction, as to remove from the paths of His disciples a snare which the history of Christianity proves would have turned out to be but too seductive to them. Ready enough have all writers and teachers of the Church of Rome been to lay hold of the little opportunity in Scripture that is afforded them to speak at all of the Blessed Virgin, and so to construe that little as to elevate her unduly, and enthrone her in places and dominions where the unapproachable seat of CHRIST ought alone to affect the mind's eye of the believer. And so, our SAVIOUR foreseeing, it may be, that this would be the disposition to which the carnal minds of men would incline, determined that they should not have it to say that it was to the Blessed Virgin, that by the commands of CHRIST,

the Apostles owed the intelligence concerning His Resurrection and Ascension,-that they should not have it to say that without the mediation of the Blessed Virgin even the Apostles could not receive instruction from the glorified lips of the REDEEmer. All this, we cannot doubt, from the weak character of that which has been often advanced as legitimate argument to prove their cause, they would have alleged; but JESUS in His mercy removed this snare from them by giving the privilege to another.

But we shall perhaps better learn why the privilege was denied to S. Mary the Virgin, when we have ascertained why it was granted to S. Mary the Penitent.

And here let us observe that the fact that Mary Magdalene was a penitent sinner, is no obstacle to CHRIST's choice of her; but rather we may perhaps say, that the having lived more blamelessly would have proved a bar in securing His selection. For as the nature of the mission, so correspondently might, most happily, be the character of its representatives. What sight more affecting to rebels than the embassy to them of one of their fellows who, having returned to his allegiance, proves by the favours of which he is the manifest subject that his late associates may expect mercy at their sovereign's hands? since, unabashed by the presence of one who had been in the same error with themselves, they listen, with the more hope and confidence, to the offers of pardon of which he is the ambassador. Penitence is the sum and substance

of the Gospel. The Gospel is essentially the glad tidings of the efficacy of repentance in making us at one with an offended GOD. There is, in its entire bearing, a manifest leaning to penitents. The first sight of the risen REDEEMER and the first Gospel message to the Church are the privileges of the penitent Magdalene. The first seat in the college of the Apostles is always assigned to S. Peter. Although thrice the denier of our LORD, his falling away became, as it would appear, the immediate cause of his establishment in his high place. Consequent on the experience he gained in his penitence and conversion, would seem to have been the bestowal of his commission to "strengthen his brethren " and the reception of its seals in the triple charge he received to feed the flock of CHRIST. Certain it is that, in quick succession with these events, the province of making a more authoritative and public declaration of the Resurrection and Ascension and all things pertaining to the kingdom was committed to S. Peter. And accordingly Bishop Andrewes says, "These two, the two chief sinners, either of their sex yet they, the two whose lots came first forth in the lot of the righteous, in partaking of this news. And this to show that chief sinners as these were, if they carry themselves as they did, shall be at no loss by their fall; shall not only be pardoned but honoured and stand foremost of all."1

Let us then conceive our Blessed SAVIOUR as one

See the entire passage in Appendix.