It is true enough that the world is unhappy; that hearts are broken; that families, countries, and centuries are laid waste by sin. Yet since the Church is Divine, she knows, not merely guesses or hopes or desires, but _knows_, that _although all things come to an end, God's commandment is exceeding broad_. Years ago, she knows--and therefore not all the criticism in the world can shake her--that her Lord came down from heaven, was born, died, rose, and ascended, and that He reigns in unconquerable power. She knows that He will return again and take the kingdom and reign; she knows, because she is Divine, that in every tabernacle of hers on earth the Lord of joy lies hidden; that Mary intercedes; that the saints are with God; that _the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin_. Look round her earthly buildings, then, and there are the symbols and images of these things. There is the merry light before her altar; there are the saints stiff with gold and gems; there is Mary, "Cause of our Joy," radiant, with her radiant Child in her arms. If she were but human, she would dare but to shadow these things forth--shadows of her own desires; she would whisper her creed; murmur her prayers; darken her windows. But she is Divine and has herself come down from heaven; so she does not guess, or think, or hope--she knows. But she is human too and dwells in the midst of a human race that does not know and therefore will not wholly take her at her word, and the very height of her exaltation must also be, then, the measure of her despair. The fact that she knows so certainly intensifies a thousandfold her human sorrow, as she, who has _come that they may have life_, sees how _they will not come_ to her and find it, as she sees how long the triumph which is certain is yet delayed through their faithlessness. "If _thou hadst known_," she cries in the heart-broken words of Jesus Himself over Jerusalem, "_if thou hadst but known the things that belong to thy peace! Behold and see, then, if there be any sorrow like to mine_, if there be any grief so profound and so piercing as mine, who hold the Keys of Heaven and watch men turn away from the Door." So, then, in church after church stand symbolic groups of statuary, representing joy and tragedy, compared with which Venus and Adonis are but childish and half-civilized images--Mary as triumphant Queen, with the gold-crowned Child in her arms, and Mary the tormented Mother, with her dead Son across her knees. For she who is both Divine and Human alone understands what it is that Humanity has done to Divinity.