The "Immaculate Conception," is the finest thought ever entertained by man; the purest ray of Eternal Mind that has ever penetrated the atmosphere of our intellectual and moral world. It is the perfect progeny of perfect Spirit. It is the idea that moral purity and spiritual elevation, have a power of fatherhood and motherhood, and have given expression thereof in the Son of Mary. High and holy is the thought. Let us take occasion at this Christmas season, to dwell upon this bright vision of supramundane beauty. The devout contemplation of it will change us into the same image, from glory to glory, by the Spirit of the Lord. Ascending steep ladders, or climbing precipices, it is necessary to look up. Equally necessary is it to look above ourselves in all our efforts to rise in spiritual intelligence and power.
Hence, to degrade the story of Jesus Christ, as some do, is to remove from man the mightiest moral and spiritual leverage he has ever known. If Jesus were unholy conception, as even some carnal priests have insinuated, his story, so conceived, honors animality and sin, instead of holiness and eternal Life. If his birth is conceived as of common origin and rank, though legitimate and pure, and then by superstition elevated, or rather, transformed into myth, we can, indeed, make it useful; but it has lost that divine and holy exaltation and sacredness, and all that peculiar power to uplift and sanctify the contemplative reader, imparted by the acceptance of the Gospel narrative.
The moral power of such a conception, is an argument in its favor. We would not, on this account, wish the genius of History to close her eyes; but we would require her to look at it, and rightly estimate its worth, instead of averting her gaze as if from an unnatural and incredible phenomenon. It is the duty of history to have no aversions, especially no aversions to her own highest possible attainments. She should not be in a constant mood to deny and belie her better self. She should, rather, view all things from this highest conceivable standpoint, and compare and contrast all things by this as the normal state toward which all are working, and thence be able to recognize and welcome all indications of, and approximations to it. Then the story of Jesus Christ would not be considered a priori improbable, and its ennobling influence would not be discounted in advance.
