k, rather than to foreshadow, the
higher forms of which they are but the failure and botched essay, so the
very highest conceivable, taken as more than a metaphor, were an
irreverent parody of the Divine love for the human soul. It is not the
_same_ relationship on an indefinitely extended scale, but only a
somewhat _similar_ relationship, the limits of whose similarity are
hidden in mystery. But when a man is so thoroughly in love with his
metaphor as Patmore was, he is tempted at times to press it in every
detail, and to forget that it is "but one acre in the infinite field of
spiritual suggestion;" that, less full and perfect metaphors of the same
reality, may supply some of its defects and correct some of its
redundancies. We should do unwisely to think of the Kingdom of Heaven
only as a kingdom, and not also as a marriage-feast, a net, a treasure,
a mustard-seed, a field, and so forth, since each figure supplies some
element lost in the others, and all together are nearer to the truth
than any one: and so, although the married love of Mary and Joseph is
one of the fullest revealed images of God's relation to the soul, we
should narrow the range of our spiritual vision, were we to neglect
those supplementary glimpses at the mystery afforded by other figures
and shadowings.

And this leads us to the consideration of a difficulty connected with
another point of Patmore's doctrine of divine love. He held that the
idealized marriage relationship was not merely the symbol, but the most
effectual sacrament and instrument of that love; "yet the world," he
complains, "goes on talking, writing, and preaching as if there were
some essential contrariety between the two," the disproof of which "was
the inspiring idea at the heart of my long poem (the 'Angel')." Now,
although in asserting that the most absorbing and exclusive form of
human affection is not only compatible with, but even instrumental to
the highest kind of sanctity and divine love, Patmore claimed to be at
one, at least in principle, with some of the deeper utterances of the
Saints and Fathers of the Christian Church; it cannot be denied that the
assertion is _prima facie_ opposed to the common tradition of Catholic
asceticism; and to the apparent _raison d'etre_ of every sort of
monastic institution.

It must be confessed that, in regard to the reconciliation of the claims
of intense human affection with those of intense sanctity, there have
been among all rel