the fulfillment of the Trinity, the embodiment of a mercy that
is unrelated to justice.

Today Mary, Immaculate and Ascended, has actually
become the executive director of Deity, the ultimate mediator
of God's grace to men. She is not only Queen of Heaven;
she is also Queen of the Universe, Queen of Civilization. God
has assigned her this mission: to maintain close and constant
contact with the needs and desires of common folk, and with
the course of human civilization as a whole. It is true that
Mary is not worshiped as Divine; yet only through her can
contact with the Divine be established. The Mass, with its
Christocentric orientation, continues to be the official center
of Roman Catholic worship; but, as the author of this book
points out, "the heart of the people is rather with the Virgin
Mary than with the tremendous and abstract mysteries of the
altar" (p. 182 ). It is Mary rather than Christ who becomes
increasingly relevant to the human situation today. The dream
is growing of a new Marian civilization.

What is at stake is this. Is the Risen Christ a free and
contemporaneous spiritual reality? Is He directly accessible
to human longing? Is He close to the milling highways of
life? Evangelical Christianity says yes. Can Christ's humanity
be both inspiration and pattern for a vital Christian Human-
ism? The Protestant answer is: He can. Through the Holy
Spirit, Jesus Christ is a living contemporary Presence, tender,
strong, and righteous, Head of the Church and Ruler of
the nations.

What then of the Virgin? Let Mary continue to be "blessed
among women," the greatest and most honored woman who
ever lived. But let us not do her wrong. That she was honored
to bring Christ the Saviour into the world is no basis for
believing that she should now be Christ's substitute in the
world. Today, alas, the blessed Virgin, whom Protestants, too,
love, devotedly, is being given a religious status for which there
is no Biblical authority and a redemptive role for which there
is no spiritual necessity.

JOHN A. MACKAY

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