Every age has furnished the Church with constantly increasing proofs of Mary's mediation; there are epochs in which she seems to be so lavish of her presence, that we might say she lives familiarly among mankind, and that her delights are to converse with them. Again, on the contrary, she appears to retire, to hold herself aloof from the world, to give no more signs of her intervention. We have a striking example of this in a somewhat recent age. More than a century do we find deprived of Mary's sensible mediation; history records in all that period not one of these apparitions, not a new pilgrim shrine founded, not a signal grace obtained through the intercession of the Mother of Mercy. If a few events of this kind took place, they were at least very rare, and have remained in obscurity. This age, forsaken by the Blessed Virgin, was the eighteenth century, to which we must add the first thirty years of the nineteenth. At this epoch, when impious rationalism endeavored to efface all idea of the supernatural, when the most firmly established truths were attacked, when among Christians the standard of virtue was lowered and character was of slight esteem in any class or station of society, we might believe that Mary, fatigued with men's ingratitude, had resolved to leave them to their own devices, and let them govern the world according to their ideas of assumed wisdom. She did, in reality, not renounce her mission of Mediatrix in favor of the Church, she still watched over her great adopted family, she listened to the prayers of her faithful servants, but she remained invisible, she no longer displayed any of those marks of tenderness her maternal heart had lavished upon them in the ages of faith. We know the consequences of Mary's abandoning the earth, and how these sages who wished to dispense with God governed society. The history of their reign is written in letters of fire, of blood and of filth. This revolutionary and impious naturalism was prolonged into the nineteenth century; it still exerts a deplorable influence at the present day, but it encounters opposition; the supernatural order is firmly asserted, the truths of Faith are warmly defended, the holy Church is respected and obeyed, its august Head is held in veneration to the very extremities of the earth, God's kingdom is still opposed, but it numbers devoted subjects, who, if needful, would shed their blood in its defence. Indifference, human respect, jeering scepticism, are gradually disappearing, leaving the Church with only sincere friends or declared enemies. It is a progress no one can ignore.