sect, he was neither more nor less than the
Paraclete. But come, in the absence of early Scriptures what do the
seers say? Does Sister Emmerich speak of him?"

"She tells us nothing precise," replied Durtal. "To her he was a sort of
priestly angel charged with the preparation for the great Act of
Redemption."

"That is very much the view held by Origen and Didymus, who also
ascribed to him the angelic nature."

"Thus she perceives him long before the advent of Abram in various
desert spots of Palestine; he unlocks the springs of Jordan, and in
another passage of the life of Christ she adds that it was he who taught
the Hebrews the culture of wheat and of the vine. In fact, she throws no
light on this insoluble enigma."

"From the artist's point of view," Durtal went on, "Melchizedec is one
of the best statues in this porch. But what a strange face is that of
his neighbour Abraham, seen only three-quarters full, with hair like
rolled grass, a beard like a river god, and a long nose straight from
the forehead, coming down between the eyes without a bridge, like the
proboscis of a tapir, with cheeks that seem swollen with cold, and a
look--how shall I describe it?--of a conjuror who has made away with his
son's head."

"In point of fact, he is listening to the commands of the angel, whom he
cannot see; observe, below on the pedestal the ram caught in the
thicket, and the symbolism is evident.

"This is the Father sacrificing his Son, and Isaac is the very image of
the Son--Isaac bearing the wood to fire the altar, as Jesus bore the
Cross; then the ram becomes figurative of the Saviour, and the bush in
which he is caught by the horns is symbolical of the Crown of Thorns.

"To do full justice to this subject and to the teaching by figures that
it contains, we ought also to have had the Patriarch's two wives carved
on the supporting pillar or plinth, and his other son Ishmael. For, as
you know, these two women are emblems, Hagar of the Old Dispensation,
and Sarah of the New; the former disappears to make way for the second,
the Old Law being merely the preparation for the New; and the two sons
born of these two mothers are by analogy the children of the Books, and
thus Ishmael represents the Israelites, and Isaac the Christians.

"Next to Abraham, the father of believers, stands Moses, as a symbol of
Christ; for the deliverance of Israel is an image of the Redemption of
Man snatched by the Saviour from the devil, jus