No one in fact was fonder and more intelligently fond of this symbolical form than the Christ; He never wished to employ any other. This preference did not arise, as is supposed, merely from the fact that He found it a happy means of popularity to adapt Himself to all minds. He also knew that no language was more natural or more conformed to the moral exigencies of piety. He saw in it an institution ordained by God Himself. And it is the truth. The Parable addresses itself, not to the pure understanding, but to the active faculty of the ego, to "the heart." It appeals to our subjective life; it awakens the religious need before satisfying it. The soul which hears it meditates, and experiences the living content that it contains. On the contrary, the soul that is inert and dead finds nothing in the symbol and receives nothing from it even theoretically, so that it is literally true that the symbolic form, a shining revelation unto some, remains a dull and empty letter for others. It is from this point of view alone that it is possible to understand that other saying of Jesus, so paradoxical to common sense, so rich and just to the eyes of experience and of faith: "To him that hath shall be given; from him that hath not shall be taken away that which he hath." The gift of God comes only to the felt need and the active desire of man. 7. _Conclusion_ The conclusion from all that has now been said is that religious knowledge is subject to the law of transformation which regulates all the manifestations of human life and thought. As there is disproportion and disparity between the object of religion and its means of expression, it will always be possible and necessary to distinguish, in all its creations, between the form and the substance, the body and the soul. Religious symbolism will therefore always be very variable _de facto_, but subject, _de jure_, to new interpretations. This variability, however, is not unlimited. It is necessarily confined within limits which, while not easy to define theoretically, are none the less precise and fixed; for the great religious creations are organisms, and every organism carries in itself, determined by its own nature, the exact capacity of its metamorphoses.