There can hardly be a doubt that his tendency to unnatural forms was encouraged by the increase of respect to symbol and ceremony shown at this period by some of the external powers of the church--Bishop Laud in particular. Had all, however, who delight in symbols, a power, like George Herbert's, of setting even within the horn-lanterns of the more arbitrary of them, such a light of poetry and devotion that their dull sides vanish in its piercing shine, and we forget the symbol utterly in the truth which it cannot obscure, then indeed our part would be to take and be thankful. But there never has been even a living true symbol which the dulness of those who will see the truth only in the symbol has not degraded into the very cockatrice-egg of sectarianism. The symbol is by such always more or less idolized, and the light within more or less patronized. If the truth, for the sake of which all symbols exist, were indeed the delight of those who claim it, the sectarianism of the church would vanish. But men on all sides call that _the truth_ which is but its form or outward sign--material or verbal, true or arbitrary, it matters not which--and hence come strifes and divisions. Although George Herbert, however, could thus illumine all with his divine inspiration, we cannot help wondering whether, if he had betaken himself yet more to vital and less to half artificial symbols, the change would not have been a breaking of the pitcher and an outshining of the lamp. For a symbol may remind us of the truth, and at the same time obscure it--present it, and dull its effect. It is the temple of nature and not the temple of the church, the things made by the hands of God and not the things made by the hands of man, that afford the truest symbols of truth. I am anxious to be understood. The chief symbol of our faith, _the Cross_, it may be said, is not one of these natural symbols. I answer--No; but neither is it an arbitrary symbol. It is not a symbol of _a truth_ at all, but of _a fact_, of the infinitely grandest fact in the universe, which is itself the outcome and symbol of the grandest Truth. _The Cross_ is an historical _sign_, not properly _a symbol_, except through the facts it reminds us of. On the other hand, _baptism_ and the _eucharist_ are symbols of the loftiest and profoundest kind, true to nature and all its meanings, as well as to the facts of which they remind us. They are in themselves symbols of the truths involved in the facts they commemorate.