If it is true that man creates God in his own image, it is no less true that for religious devotion he must remain [p036] unconscious of that fact. Once he knows that he has created the image of God, the reality of it vanishes like last night’s dream. It may be that to anyone who is impregnated with the modern spirit it is almost self-evident that the truths of religion are truths of human experience. But this knowledge does not tolerate an abiding and absorbing faith. For when the truths of religion have lost their connection with a superhuman order, the cord of their life is cut. What remains is a somewhat archaic, a somewhat questionable, although a very touching, quaint medley of poetry, rhetoric, fable, exhortation, and insight into human travail. When Mr. Santayana says that “matters of religion should never be matters of controversy” because “we never argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion,” he expresses an ultimate unbelief. For what would be the plight of a lover, if we told him that his passion was charming?—though, of course, there might be no such lady as the one he loved. CHAPTER III [p037] THE LOSS OF CERTAINTY 1. _Ways of Reading the Bible_ It is important to an understanding of this matter that we should not confuse the modern practice of redefining God with the ancient use of allegory. From the earliest days the words of the Bible have been embroidered with luxuriant and often fantastic meanings. In Leviticus it says, for example, that the meal offering may be baked in an oven, fried in a pan, or toasted on a plate. This passage, says Origen, proves that Scripture must have three meanings. It came to have any number of meanings. Thus St. Augustine explained that Eden meant the life of the blessed, and its four rivers the four virtues; farther on in the same chapter he declares that Eden is the Church, and that its four rivers are the four Gospels. In the same manner Wyclif in a later age preached a sermon explaining the parable of the Good Samaritan. The man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho represents Adam and Eve; the robbers are the fiends of hell; the priest and Levite who went by on the other side are the patriarchs, saints, and prophets who failed to bring salvation; the Good Samaritan is Jesus; the wine which he pours into his wounds is sharp words to prick men from sin, and the oil is hope.... Savonarola, we are [p038] told, preached during the whole of Lent, 1492, taking as his text Noah’s Ark and “giving each day a different interpretation of the ten planks of which the Ark was composed.”