wax and wane, civilizations grow out of savagery, crest and sink back into savagery and oblivion.  Redemption is for the individual, not for the race, nor yet for society as a whole.  Then, and only then, and under that form, it is sure, however long may be the period of its accomplishment.  “Time is the ratio of the resistance of matter to the interpenetration of spirit,” and by this resistance is the duration of time determined.  When it shall have been wholly overcome then “time shall be no more.”

See therefore how perfect is the correspondence between the Sacraments and the method of life where they are the agents, and which they symbolically set forth.  There is in each case the material form and the spiritual substance, or energy.  Water, chrism, oil, the spoken word, the touch of hands, the sign of the cross, and finally and supremely the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist.  Each a material thing, but each representing, signifying and containing some gift of the Holy Spirit, real, absolute and potent.  So matter and spirit are linked together in every operation of the Church, from the cradle to the grave, and man has ever before him the eternal revelation of this linked union of matter and spirit in his life, the eternal teaching of the honour of the material thing through its agency and through its existence as the subject for redemption.  So also, through the material association, and the divine condescension to his earthly and fallible estate (limited by association with matter only to inadequate presentation) he makes the Spirit of God his own, to dwell therewith after the fashion of man.

And how much this explains and justifies:  Man approaches, and must always approach, spiritual things not only through material forms but by means of material agencies.  The highest and most beautiful things, those where the spirit seems to achieve its loftiest reaches, are frequently associated with the grossest and most unspiritual forms, yet the very splendour of the spiritual verity redeems and glorifies the material agency, while on the other hand the homeliness, and even animal quality, of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appeal that are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absolute essence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and his powers of assimilation that it would be inoperative.

This is the true Humanism; not the fictitious and hollow thing that was the offspring of neo-paganism and took to itself a title to which it had no claim.  Held tacitly or consciously by the men of the Middle Ages, from the immortal philosopher to the immortal but nameless craftsman, it was the force that built up the noble social structure of the time and poised man himself in a sure equilibrium.  Already it had of necessity developed the whole scheme of religious ceremonial and given art a new content and direction through its new service.  By analogy and association all material things that could be so used were employed