And the reflecting, devout Catholic will see in that picture even more than the thoughts it suggests to the poet. It will speak to him of the angelic salute to a Virgin fair at Nazareth; it will touch a chord of tender confidence and hope in the Madonna's help and sympathy; it will arouse a feeling of gratitude for the mystery of the Redemption. And all this difference of judgment arises from the varying degrees of intelligence and knowledge with which we approach the image. Now the Sacred Scriptures present just such a picture, only larger, more comprehensive, truer, deeper, containing all the fair delineation of God's own image, the pattern according to which we are to correct the same divine likeness in our souls, spoiled somewhat and blurred by sin. Let us look at the outline. There are words and a fact. In the words truth is enunciated, in the fact those words are exhibited as being a divine utterance. In their _literal_ meaning the word affects us just as a picture would at first sight. In the one case we have a precept or an incident or a scene in the life of our Lord; in the other case we have an act of prayer or a scene from the daily life of French peasants. But just as in the picture we may, by reason of artistic and spiritual culture, recognize not simply an ordinary scene of peasant life, but a poetic thought, or a practical moral lesson calling for imitation, or, finally, a mystery of religion, so in the Sacred Scriptures we may see below the literal sense one that is internal, hidden, and in its character either simply figurative, or moral, or mystically spiritual. An old ecclesiastical writer has given us a Latin hexameter which suggests these various senses in which the sacred text may at times be understood: Litera _gesta_ docet, quod credas _allegoria_; _Moralis_ quid agas, quo tendas _anagogia_.