_, of which the characters express the Greek formula: 'Jesus,
Son of God, Saviour,' figures, in a secondary sense, the believer, the
rescued soul, fished out from the sea of Paganism; the Redeemer having
told two of His Apostles that they should be fishers of men.

"And of course the period when human beings lived in closest intercourse
with God--the Middle Ages--was certain to follow the revealed tradition
of Christ, and express itself in symbolical language, especially in
speaking of that Spirit, that essence, that incomprehensible and
nameless Being who to us is God. At the same time it had at its command
a practical means of making itself understood. It wrote a book, as it
were, intelligible to the humblest, superseding the text by images, and
so instructing the ignorant. This indeed was the idea put into words by
the Synod of Arras in 1025: 'That which the illiterate cannot apprehend
from writing shall be shown to them in pictures.'

"The Middle Ages, in short, translated the Bible and Theology, the
lives of the Saints, the apocryphal and legendary Gospels into carved or
painted images, bringing them within reach of all, and epitomizing them
in figures which remained as the permanent marrow, the concentrated
extract of all its teaching."

"It taught the grown-up children the catechism by means of the stone
sentences of the porches," exclaimed Durtal.

"Yes, it did that too. But now," the Abbe went on, after a pause,
"before entering on the subject of architectural symbolism, we must
first establish a distinct notion of what Our Lord Himself did in
creating it, when, in the second chapter of the Gospel according to
Saint John, He speaks of the Temple at Jerusalem, and says that if the
Jews destroy it He will rebuild it in three days, expressly prefiguring
by that parable His own Body. This set forth to all generations the form
which the new temples were thenceforth to take after His death on the
Cross.

"This sufficiently accounts for the cruciform plan of our churches. But
we will study the inside of the church later; for the present we must
consider the meanings of the external parts of a cathedral.

"The towers and belfries, according to the theory of Durand, Archbishop
of Mende in the thirteenth century, are to be regarded as preachers and
prelates, and the lofty spire is symbolical of the perfection to which
their souls strive to rise. According to other interpreters of the same
period, such as Saint Meli