Church places her? Did any remain in Christ as she did? Did His words ever so abide in any heart as in hers? Suppose a Christian who lived in the times of the Apostles, before the Blessed Virgin had gone to her rest, when she was just dying; suppose such a one sorely tried and tempted within and without; suppose him anxious about his salvation, distrustful of his own petitions, fearful of the coming storms of persecution; and suppose him in this state of mind to have read that passage of St. James, "The continual prayer of a just man availeth much," what more natural than that he should have said to himself, "I will go to ask the prayers of the dear Mother of Christ. I will ask her to use her power and influence with her Divine Son in behalf of a frail wanderer like me." And when he came into her presence and knelt before her, and kissed her hand and made his plea, and looked up to her and saw that sweet grave smile, and heard her say, "Yes, my child, when I stand in the presence of my Royal Son, and He holds out to me the golden sceptre, and says to me, what wilt thou? what is thy request? then I will remember thee!" Oh! how light his heart! Oh, how strong his soul! what a charm against sadness! what a fortress in temptation! Mary prays for me in heaven to Christ her Son! And is there any thing in this joy and confidence which reason or Christianity would condemn? If so, it must be either that intercessory prayer is not the power the Scriptures say it is, or that Mary is not the saint the Church considers her. Why, even Protestants have gone as far as this. {397} Protestants who have made the primitive form of Christianity their study and profess to accept it as their rule, as, for example, High-Church Episcopalians, have distinctly acknowledged in the seventeenth century, and in our own day, that the saints in heaven do intercede for us, and that this was the primitive doctrine of Christianity. Why, then, find fault with us for invoking the saints, and say we ought only to ask God to hear their prayers for us, as if invocation on our part were not the correlative of intercession on theirs; as if it could be right to ask a saint to pray for us the moment before he died, and wrong the moment after; as if there could be any moral difference before God between a direct and an indirect supplication for the benefit of their prayers in heaven?