188 The Faith of Our Fathers The love she bears us, her children by adoption, can be estimated only by her love for her Son by nature. It was Mary that nursed the Infant Savior. It was her hands that clothed Him. It was her breast that sheltered Him from the rude storm and from the persecution of Herod. She it was that wiped the stains from His brow when taken down from the cross. Now we are the brothers of Jesus. He is not ashamed, says the Apostle, to call us His brethren.266 Neither is Mary ashamed to call us her children by adoption. At the foot of the cross she adopted us in the person of St. John. She is anxious to minister to our souls as she ministered to the corporal wants of her Son. She would be the instrument of God in feeding us with Divine grace, in clothing us with the garments of innocence, in sheltering us from the storms of temptations, in wiping away the stains of sin from our soul. If the angels, though of a different nature from ours, have so much sympathy for us as to rejoice in our conversion,267 how great must be the interest manifested toward us by Mary, who is of a common nature with us, descended from the same primitive parents, being bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and who once trod the thorny path of life that we now tread! Though not of the household of the faith, Edgar A. Poe did not [191] disdain to invoke Our Lady's intercession, and to acknowledge the influence of her patronage in heaven. "At morn — at noon — at twilight dim — Maria! thou hast heard my hymn; In joy and woe — in good and ill — Mother of God, be with me still ! When the hours flew brightly by, And not a cloud obscured the sky, My soul, lest it should truant be, Thy grace did guide to thine and thee; 266 Heb. ii 11. 267 Luke xv. 7.