Hugo’s second Book, which makes the second half of his work, is devoted to the “time of grace” inaugurated by the Incarnation. It treats in detail the Christian sacraments and other topics of the Faith, down to the Last Judgment, when the wicked are cast into hell, and the blessed enter upon eternal life, where God will be seen eternally, praised without weariness, and loved without satiety. This blessed lot flows from the grace of the salvation brought by Christ, and is dependent on the sacraments, the enduring means of grace. On their part, the sacraments, whatever more they are, are symbols, in essence and function connected with the symbolical nature of God’s creation, with the prefigurative significance of the fortunes of God’s chosen people until the coming of Christ, with the import and symbolism of Christ’s life and teachings, and with the symbolism inherent in the organization and building up of Christ’s holy Church. Symbolism and allegory are made part of the constitution of the world and man; they connect man’s body and environment with his spirit, and link the life of this world with the life to come. Hugo has thus grounded and established symbolism in the purposes of God, in the universal scheme of things, and in the nature and destinies of man.[82] CHAPTER XXIX CATHEDRAL AND MASS; HYMN AND IMAGINATIVE POEM I. GUILELMUS DURANDUS AND VINCENT OF BEAUVAIS. II. THE HYMNS OF ADAM OF ST. VICTOR AND THE _Anticlaudianus_ of ALANUS OF LILLE. Under sanction of Scriptural interpretation and the sacraments, allegory and symbolism became accepted principles of spiritual verity, sources of political argument, and modes of transcendental truth. They penetrated the Liturgy, charging every sentence and ceremonial act with saving significance and power; and as plastic influences they imparted form and matter to religious art and poetry, where they had indeed been potent from the beginning. I In the early Church the office of the Mass, the ordination of priests, and the dedication of churches were not charged with the elaborate symbolism carried by these ceremonies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,[83] when the Liturgy, or speaking more specifically, the Mass, had become symbolical from the _introit_ to the last benediction; and Gothic sculpture and glass painting, which were its visible illustration, had been impressed with corresponding allegory. Mediaeval liturgic lore is summed up by Guilelmus Durandus in his _Rationale divinorum officiorum_, which was composed in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and contains much that is mirrored in the art of the French cathedrals. It is impossible to review the elaborate symbolical significance of the Mass as set forth in the authoritative work of one who was a bishop, theologian, jurist, and papal regent.[84] But a little of it may be given.