The influence of Cabbalism at this period was felt not only in the growth of magic, but in the revival of the science of allegorism, which resembles magic in its doctrine of occult sympathies, though without the theurgic element.  According to this view of nature, everything in the visible world has an emblematic meaning.  Everything that a man saw, heard, or did—­colours, numbers, birds, beasts, and flowers, the various actions of life—­was to remind him of something else.[342] The world was supposed to be full of sacred cryptograms, and every part of the natural order testified in hieroglyphics[343] to the truths of Christianity.  Thus the shamrock bears witness to the Trinity, the spider is an emblem of the devil, and so forth.  This kind of symbolism was and is extensively used merely as a picture-language, in which there is no pretence that the signs are other than artificial or conventional.  The language of signs may be used either to instruct those who cannot understand words, or to baffle those who can.  Thus, a crucifix may be as good as a sermon to an illiterate peasant; while the sign of a fish was used by the early Christians because it was unintelligible to their enemies.  This is not symbolism in the sense which I have given to the word in this Lecture.[344] But it is otherwise when the type is used as a proof of the antitype.  This latter method had long been in use in biblical exegesis.  Pious persons found a curious satisfaction in turning the most matter of fact statements into enigmatic prophecies.  Every verse must have its “mystical” as well as its natural meaning, and the search for “types” was a recognised branch of apologetics.  Allegorism became authoritative and dogmatic, which it has no right to be.  It would be rash to say that this pseudo-science, which has proved so attractive to many minds, is entirely valueless.  The very absurdity of the arguments used by its votaries should make us suspect that there is a dumb logic of a more respectable sort behind them.  There is, underlying this love of types and emblems, a strong conviction that if “one eternal purpose runs” through the ages, it must be discernible in small things as well as in great.  Everything in the world, if we could see things as they are, must be symbolic of the Divine Power which made it and maintains it in being.  We cannot believe that anything in life is meaningless, or has no significance beyond the fleeting moment.  Whatever method helps us to realise this is useful, and in a sense true.  So far as this we may go with the allegorists, while at the same time we may be thankful that the cobwebs which they spun over the sacred texts have now been cleared away, so that we can at last read our Bible as its authors intended it to be read.[345]