Again, had Eve not sinned, she would have been recompensed for all her virtues and sanctity exercised for God's glory in her stainless course on earth, by exemption at its close from death a and corruption as the penalty of sin. More than this, instead of passing through death, she would by privilege have been translated in body as well as in soul from earth to heaven, there to receive her merited crown of immortal glory. The immaculate virgin Mary, the Second Eve, persevered to the end unfallen. Consequently, so far as sin was concerned, she was in no way bound by the law of death. She died, indeed, as heir to the ordinary and purely physical consequences to which all human flesh had in Adam become by nature subject. She died, too, because Jesus Christ her Son had died, and herein she was to be made like to Him. But though she died, death, having no claims of sin upon her, might not detain her. Hence she was preserved from such of its effects as would have impeded the recompense which, as the unfallen Eve, she had merited by her perfectly holy life, and was assumed at its close in body as well as soul to the glory of Paradise, that there, reunited to her Divine Son, she might be enthroned beside Him, as Mother of the King of Angels and Saints, and crowned as their Queen. Besides, it was most fitting that the virginal body of Mary, of whom as his own true Mother the Divine Word had become incarnate, should ever see the corruption of the tomb.

Our Lady's glorious Assumption into heaven thus shows itself doctrinally contained in the primitive idea of Mary, the Second unfallen Eve: whilst early tradition testifies to a more or less explicit belief of the faithful as to the fact.

2. Mary, as the Second unfallen Eve, bore a great part in the work of man's Redemption, corresponding to that which the first Eve, by her transgression, had in his Fall. But here the better to illustrate our point, instead of drawing a contrast, we will suppose for the moment Eve to have remained unfallen, preserving her original state of innocence, and then on this hypothesis compare with her Mary, the Second Eve, in the office and effects of each as regards the human race.

Had both Adam and Eve remained unfallen, Eve would have shared with her husband in the grace and blessedness of being not only the natural, but also the spiritual parents of the human family conceived and born in the state of original justice derived from Adam. Eve would thus, in a true and supernatural sense, have verified her name as Mother of all the living,* instead of being, as she proved herself in fact to be, the Mother of all the dead, who died in Adam. Whereas, Mary the Second Eve, is really the Mother of all the living, that is to say, of all the redeemed, who in Christ are made alive.

*Gen. iii. 20.