no longer burdened with the God, and they took care even to cover it with flowers and ornaments of every kind. You may see it in the rude figures, the designs and sculptures found in the catacombs. To hide the cross beneath an armful of flowers is precisely the marvel realized by religion. And when religions are regarded from this point of view, all ground vanishes for looking with disdain upon the legends which constitute the material of popular faith. They become comprehensible, they become lovable, one feels one’s self enveloped in an “infinite tenderness” for this spontaneous product of naïve thought in quest of goodness, in pursuit of the ideal, for these fairy-tales of human morality, profounder and sweeter than all other fairy-tales. It was necessary that religious poetry should prepare the earth long beforehand for the coming of the mysterious ideal; should embellish the place where it was to descend, as the mother of the Sleeping Beauty, seeing the eyes of her daughter grow heavy with the sleep of a hundred years, placed with confidence at the side of the bed the embroidered cushion, on which the enamoured prince would one day kneel to reawaken her with a kiss. [56] Besides Mr. Matthew Arnold, consult M. L. Ménard, _Sources du dogme Chrétien_ (_Critique religieuse, janvier, 1879._) [Sidenote: Historical religions to be regarded historically.] We have come a long way in all this from the servile interpretation of the blind leaders who fasten upon particular texts and lose sight of their subject as a whole. If one approaches a picture too near, the perspective disappears and all the colours lose their proper value; one must stand back a certain distance and see it in a favourable light: and then alone the richness of the colours and the unity of the work appear. Religions must be looked upon in the same way. If the spectator stands sufficiently above them and aloof from them, he loses all prejudice, all hostility, in respect to them; their sacred books come even in time to merit in his eyes the name of sacred, and he finds in them, Mr. Arnold says, a providential “secret,” which is the “secret of Jesus.” Why not recognize, adds Mr. Arnold, that the Bible is an inspired book, dictated by the Holy Spirit? After all, everything that is spontaneous is more or less divine, providential; whatever springs from the very sources of human thought is infinitely venerable. The Bible is a unique book, corresponding to a peculiar state of mind, and it can no more be made over or corrected than a work of Phidias or Praxiteles. In spite of its moral lapses and its frequent disaccord with the conscience of our epoch, it is a necessary complement of Christianity; it manifests the spirit of Christian society, it represents the tradition of it, and attaches the beliefs of the present to those of the past.[57] The Bible and the dogmas of the Church, having been formerly the point of departure for religious