paternal relation of the First Person of the Trinity to the Second is
a symbol; and the representation of eternity as an endless period of
time stretching into futurity, is a symbol. We believe that the forms
under which it is natural and necessary for us to conceive of
transcendental truths have a real and vital relation to the ideas
which they attempt to express; but their inadequacy is manifest if we
treat them as facts of the same order as natural phenomena, and try to
intercalate them, as is too often done, among the materials with which
an abstract science has to deal.

The two great sacraments are typical symbols, if we use the word in
the sense which I give to it, as something which, in being what it is,
is a sign and vehicle of something higher and better. This is what the
early Church meant when it called the sacraments symbols.[324] A
"symbol" at that period implied a mystery, and a "mystery" implied a
revelation. The need of sacraments is one of the deepest convictions
of the religious consciousness. It rests ultimately on the instinctive
reluctance to allow any spiritual fact to remain without an external
expression. It is obvious that all morality depends on the application
of this principle to conduct. All voluntary external acts are symbolic
of (that is, vitally connected with) internal states, and cannot be
divested of this their essential character. It may be impossible to
show how an act of the material body can purify or defile the
immaterial spirit; but the correspondence between the outward and
inward life cannot be denied without divesting morality of all
meaning. The maxim of Plotinus, that "the mind can do no wrong," when
transferred from his transcendental philosophy to matters of conduct,
is a sophism no more respectable than that which Euripides puts into
the mouth of one of his characters: "The tongue hath sworn; the heart
remains unsworn." Every act of the will is the expression of a state
of the soul; and every state of the soul must seek to find expression
in an act of the will. Love, as we should all admit, is not love, so
long as it is content to be only in thought, or "in word and in
tongue"; it is only when it is love "in deed" that it is love "in
truth.[325]" And it is the same with all other virtues, which are in
this sense symbolic, as implying something beyond the external act.
Nearly all the states or motions of the soul can find their
appropriate expression in action. Charity in