"
Yet silence may be as devoid of reality as words, and most minds require
something external to quicken thought and fill up the emptiness of their
silences. So we have symbols, whose doctrine is here most eloquently
expounded. Man is not ruled by logic but by imagination, and a thousand
thoughts will rise at the call of some well-chosen symbol. In itself it
may be the poorest of things, with no intrinsic value at all--a clouted
shoe, an iron crown, a flag whose market value may be almost nothing.
Yet such a thing may so work upon men's silences as to fill them with
the glimmer of a divine idea.
Other symbols there are which _have_ intrinsic value--works of art,
lives of heroes, death itself, in all of which we may see Eternity
working through Time, and become aware of Reality amid the passing
shows. Religious symbols are the highest of all, and highest among these
stands Jesus of Nazareth. "Higher has the human Thought not yet reached:
this is Christianity and Christendom; a symbol of quite perennial,
infinite character; whose significance will ever demand to be anew
enquired into, and anew made manifest.
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