arms the love of Jesus, the hands stood for good works, the knees for the sacrament of penance, the legs for the Apostles, the shoulders for the yoke of Christ, the breast for evangelical doctrine, the belly for avarice, the bowels for the mysterious precepts of the Lord, the body and loins for suggestions of lust, the bones typified hardness of heart, and the marrow compunction, the sinews were evil members of Anti-Christ.  And these writers extended this method of interpretation to the commonest objects of daily use, even to tools and vessels within reach of all.

Thus there was an uninterrupted course of pious teaching.  Yves de Chartres tells us that priests instructed the people in symbolism, and from the researches of Dom Pitra we know that in the Middle Ages Saint Melito’s treatise was popular and known to all.  Thus the peasant learnt that his plough was an image of the Cross, that the furrows it made were like the hearts of saints freshly tilled; he knew that sheaves were the fruit of repentance, flour the multitude of the faithful, the granary the Kingdom of Heaven; and it was the same with many pursuits.  In short, this method of analogies was a bidding to everybody to watch and pray better.

Thus utilized, symbolism became a break to check the forward march of sin, and at the same time a sort of lever to uplift souls and help them to overleap the stages of the mystical life.

This science, translated into so many languages, was no doubt intelligible only in broad outline to the masses, and sometimes, when it percolated through the labyrinthine maze of such minds as that of the worthy Bishop of Mende, it appeared overwrought, full of contradictions, and of double meanings.  It seems then as if the symbolist were splitting a hair with embroidery scissors.  But, in spite of the extravagance it tolerated and smiled at, the Church succeeded, nevertheless, by these tactics of repetition, in saving souls and carrying out on a large scale the production of saints.

Then came the Renaissance, and symbolism was wrecked at the same time as church architecture.

Mysticism in the stricter sense of the word, more fortunate than its handmaidens, survived that period of festive dishonour; for it may be safely asserted that, though it was unproductive while living through that period, it flourished anew in Spain, producing its noblest blossoms in Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa.

Since then doctrinal mysticism seems dried up at the source.  Not so, however, as regards personal mysticism, which still dwells acclimatized and flourishing in convents.

As to the Liturgy and plain-song, they too have gone through very various phases.  After being dissected and filtered in the numberless provincial Uses, the Liturgy was brought back to the standard of Rome by the efforts of Dom Gueranger, and it may be hoped that the Benedictines at last will also bring all the churches back to the strict use of plain-song.