Now, methinks, ye have fathomed to what my words are tending. To-day ye have been hearing the wonder performed at the marriage, beginning indeed of the Lord’s tokens, even as a story sufficiently wonderful, and in significance still richer in gladness. Great indeed was the sign of the heavenly power, that water turned into wine at the Lord’s bidding; but far better that other changing at the right hand of the Highest which in this one is prefigured. We are bidden every one to the spiritual marriage at which of a truth the bridegroom is Christ our Lord. Wherefore we sing in the Psalter: _And he as a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber_ [Psalm xviii. 6]. Spouse indeed are we to him, if this seem not to you incredible, both all together one spouse and every soul by itself a spouse singly. But when can this be conceived of its God by human weakness, that we should be his beloved as a bride is beloved by her bridegroom? Far enough is this bride below her bridegroom in origin, below in her nature, below in her dignity. Nevertheless for that ancient Æthiop woman the son of the eternal king from far made his advent, and that for his own he might espouse her, feared not even to die for her. Moses, indeed, took to wife an Æthiop woman, but his marriage availed not to change the Æthiop’s color: Christ will present his bride, whom he loved in her baseness and all her foulness, glorious with his own glory, his Church without spot or wrinkle. Aaron may murmur; Miriam (Maria) may murmur, not the new, but the old, not the Lord’s mother, but Moses’ sister; not, I say, our Mary, she who shows her solicitude if some lack perchance is found at the marriage. Ye, therefore, as is meet, amid the murmurs of the priests, amid the murmurs of the synagogue, give your entire devotion to these our common acts of praise and thanksgiving. _Dominica Prima post Octavam Epiphaniæ_, II. 2; PL 183: 158. Such preaching shows the same preoccupation as the symbolic windows of the cathedrals, their carved capitals, above all the thronged but harmonized groups of their great porches. It is not merely conventional illustration; it is a constant and consistent reminder of the history of mankind as a scheme of redemption. E. COMPOSITION 1. Imaginative Method The most conventional form of symbolism is allegory. This may be no more than what Lowell calls “personification by capital letters,” as in the Vice and Virtue, the Reason, Feeling, or Nature, of the eighteenth century. Even so it has more point when the convention is as instantly recognizable as the seven deadly sins of medieval capitals and poems, or the four cardinal and the three theological virtues, or even the seven liberal arts, each with appropriate costume, attitude, gesture, or action. How pleasant allegory may be in verse is evident in the wide popularity of the _Roman de la Rose_.