The parabolic expression, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” has been applied with force to the destruction of Judaism, and the reconstruction upon its ruins of a living Christianity. It may be applied with equal justice, though in more recondite sense, to the death of the old literature and art, and the resurrection of the beautiful creations of the human mind in new form. The three days were more than a thousand years, and during that long sleep what had become of those indestructible forces of imagination and reason which combine in literature and art? Roughly speaking, they were disjoined, and only when reunited did they again assert themselves in living form. The power which kept each in abeyance was structural Christianity, and only when that began to be burst asunder by the vital force inherent in spiritual Christianity was there opportunity for the free union of the imagination and reason. As the Jewish temple could no longer inclose divinity, but was thrust apart by the expansive power of the Christianity which was fostered within it, so the Christian church, viewed as an institution which aimed at an inclosure of humanity, was in its turn disrupted by the silent growth of the human spirit which had fed within its walls upon the divine life. After the birth of Christianity the parallel continuity of the old world was broken. The Greek, the Roman, and the Hebrew no longer carried forward their separate movements. Christianity, professing to annul these forces, had taken their place in history. Again, at the Renaissance, it was found that the three great streams of human thought had been flowing underground; they reissued to the light in a generous flood, each combining with the others.