ch of another fashion in a back
street, and Darnell, who had found in one of the old notebooks the maxim
_Incredibilia sola Credenda_, soon perceived how high and glorious a
thing was that service at which he assisted. Our stupid ancestors taught
us that we could become wise by studying books on 'science,' by meddling
with test-tubes, geological specimens, microscopic preparations, and the
like; but they who have cast off these follies know that they must read
not 'science' books, but mass-books, and that the soul is made wise by
the contemplation of mystic ceremonies and elaborate and curious rites.
In such things Darnell found a wonderful mystery language, which spoke
at once more secretly and more directly than the formal creeds; and he
saw that, in a sense, the whole world is but a great ceremony or
sacrament, which teaches under visible forms a hidden and transcendent
doctrine. It was thus that he found in the ritual of the church a
perfect image of the world; an image purged, exalted, and illuminate, a
holy house built up of shining and translucent stones, in which the
burning torches were more significant than the wheeling stars, and the
fuming incense was a more certain token than the rising of the mist. His
soul went forth with the albed procession in its white and solemn order,
the mystic dance that signifies rapture and a joy above all joys, and
when he beheld Love slain and rise again victorious he knew that he
witnessed, in a figure, the consummation of all things, the Bridal of
all Bridals, the mystery that is beyond all mysteries, accomplished from
the foundation of the world. So day by day the house of his life became
more magical.

And at the same time he began to guess that if in the New Life there are
new and unheard-of joys, there are also new and unheard-of dangers. In
his manuscript books which professed to deliver the outer sense of those
mysterious 'Hidden Songs of Iolo Sant' there was a little chapter that
bore the heading: _Fons Sacer non in communem Vsum convertendus est_,
and by diligence, with much use of the grammar and dictionary, Darnell
was able to construe the by no means complex Latin of his ancestor. The
special book which contained the chapter in question was one of the most
singular in the collection, since it bore the title _Terra de Iolo_, and
on the surface, with an ingenious concealment of its real symbolism, it
affected to give an account of the orchards, fields, woods, roads,