But whatever may be said about the intrinsic artistic ineffectiveness of much ecclesiastical plastic and pictorial art, no one can deny the inherent beauty, power, and appropriateness of the music to which the Roman Catholic liturgy is wedded. Of all the arts that were called into the service of the church, music was best suited by its very nature to respond to the new ideals of Christianity. The pictorial and plastic arts were used to appeal to eye and imagination as reinforcements to the inherent symbolism of ceremonial and ritual. But music, which has no recourse to symbols or imagery and which has in its vocabulary no suggestion of the material world outside of man, was far better equipped, even in the infancy of the art, to lay hold of the essential spirit of the liturgy and express it in terms that not only acted directly and powerfully on the hearts and minds of the worshippers, but threw a glamour and fascination over all its allied agencies of expression. The spiritual and emotional appeals of the sublime ideals of the Gospel struck a note in human consciousness which responded in an outburst of artistic rapture that was unknown to pre-Christian periods, and music, as the freest and least material of the arts, was the first to develop a form of expression that was a fitting embodiment of the indwelling religious motive and idea. So wonderfully did the ancient creators of the religious melodies known as plain-song do their work, and so perfectly did they blend word and tone in priestly chant or choral response, that these melodies have not only been held in reverence by the church ever since that far-off time, but they are now the only musical forms permitted for certain important portions of the liturgy.