Page:The seven great hymns of the mediaeval church - 1902.djvu/131

Rh divine human Son. They breathe the ame love to Chrit, and the burning deire to become identified with Mary by ympathy in the intenity of her joy as in the intenity of her grief. They are the ame in tructure, and excel alike in the Angularly touching muic of language, and the oft cadence that echoes the entiment. Both conit of two parts, the firt of which decribes the objective ituation; the econd identifies the author with the ituation, and addrees the Virgin as an object of worhip. Both bear the impres of their age and the monatic order which probably gave them birth. The myterious charm and power of the two hymns are due to the subject and to the intenity of feeling with which the author eized it. Mary at the manger, and Mary at the cros, opens a vita to an abys of joy and of grief uch as the world never aw before. Mary tood there not only as the mother, but as the repreentative of the whole Chritian church, for which the eternal Son of God was born an infant in the manger, and for which he uffered the mot ignominious death on the cros.