"The strong desire natural to the middle ages to give a palpable form to the mystery of the Incarnation, was shown curiously in the notion of a conception by the ear. In a hymn, ascribed to St. Thomas à Becket, occur the lines:-- "Ave Virgo, Mater Christi, Quae per aurem concepisti, Gabriele nuntio." And in an old glass window, now I believe in one of the museums of Paris, the Holy Ghost is represented hovering over the Virgin in the form of a dove, while a ray of light passes from his beak to her ear, along which ray an infant Christ is descending."--Langlois, _Peinture sur Verre_, p. 157. And our readers will remember remarks of a like bearing in the quotation last given. Such criticisms are, however, to us merely evidence of so many curious misapprehensions. They merely show that an acquaintance with the history of religious art is but a very inadequate preparation for writing the history of religious dogmas. It is perfectly impossible to represent spiritual things in painting and sculpture otherwise than by material images. Nothing is more common than so to represent them even among Protestants of the present day; nothing was more common in the Old Testament, the very stronghold of the ancient anthropomorphites. We feel no inclination to deny that it is exceedingly difficult for the poor and the ignorant to rise to the conception of a spirit, and almost all mankind represent to themselves even the very Deity under some refined material image; but when such representations occupied a prominent position in public worship, there was an opportunity, and that frequently made use of, of correcting an untruthful imagination. {84}