run successful in securing a point of action in humanity, in winning the
allegiance of men of good will to co-operation with the purpose of God.
We see spiritual ideals assimilated, and sympathy with the work of God
generated, until we feel that that work has gained a firm and enduring
ground in humanity from which it can act. God is able to consummate His
purpose, and men begin to understand in some measure the nature of the
future deliverance and to look forward to the coming of One Who should
be the embodiment of the divine action and the Representative of God
Himself with a completeness which no previous messenger of God had
ever attained.

It we would understand the Old Testament we must find that its intimate
note is preparation, just as the intimate note of the New Testament is
accomplishment. God is working to a foreseen end, and is working as fast
as men will consent to co-operate and become the instruments of His
purpose. The purpose is not one that can be achieved by the exercise of
power; it is a purpose of love and can be effected only through
co-operating love. And as we watch the final unfolding of that purpose
in the Incarnation of God, we more and more become conscious of the
preparation of all the instruments of the purpose which are working in
harmony for the revelation of the meaning of God.

Of all the instruments of this divine purpose, one figure has
preeminently fascinated the devout imagination because of her unique
beauty, and has been the object of profound speculation because of the
intimacy of her relation to God,--Mary of Nazareth. The vocabulary of
love and reverence has exhausted itself in the attempt to express our
estimate of her. The literature of Mariology is immense. And no one who
has at all entered into the meaning of the Incarnation, of what is
involved in eternal God taking human flesh, can wonder at this. Here at