Now it is of no consequence whatever, whether the early builders of churches intended this particular arrangement to be symbolical. The arrangement being adopted becomes necessarily, even if unintentionally, symbolical, by the process we have endeavoured to trace, and so things essentially symbolical give rise to intended symbolism: for it is a simple historical fact that the weathercock, whatever practical utility may have first suggested its use and peculiar form, has been for many centuries placed on the church spire for its _intentional symbolism_. [Footnote 20]And the process is repeated: for suppose one only of the conventional symbolical meanings of the weathercock had been discovered: the thoughtful mind {lix} goes on to find out other figurative senses in which its use is appropriate, and these conventional meanings become in their turn intentionally symbolised by future church builders. This may be illustrated also in the following way: The Jews, in the rite of Baptism, had probably no other idea than a reference to 'the mystical washing away of sins.' But when S. Paul had once given to that rite the new idea of a burial with Christ in the Baptismal water, and a rising again with Him, this typical meaning became an example of intended symbolism to all those who should hereafter use it. [Footnote 20: See Rationale, p. 27.] As we began this part of our subject with hesitation, so we finish it with some degree of apprehension. To some what has been said may seem more than ordinarily visionary and ridiculous: yet others, we hope, will feel that, however feebly and inadequately expressed, there is some truth in what has been advanced concerning the relation between the material and immaterial: that the latter welding and moulding the former into an expression of itself, makes it in turn a type of that which it expresses. So that if on the one hand, to take our particular branch of the subject, the theoretical ritual and ordinances of religion imply and require certain peculiar adaptations of the material building in which they are to be celebrated; then in turn the circumstances of the material fabric suggest and symbolise the peculiar conditions of ritual which induced them. In short we have endeavoured to prove that from our very nature every outward thing is symbolical of something inward and spiritual: but, above all things, outward religious actions are sacramental; and particularly _any_ prescribed ritual, of which the first characteristic is that it is figurative: that the Catholic ritual is eminently symbolical, and from its nature very strikingly influences all its material appliances: that church architecture is the {lx} eldest daughter of Ritual: that the process, according to which architecture was influenced by the requirements of Ritualism was at first as simple as that by which the form of a theatre sprang from the conditions which were to be fulfilled by its builder: that thus a church (built in the fully