"Tradition reveals the past to us, and consequently it reveals to us also the future. It is the tie which binds the past, the present, and the future together, and is the science of them all. If we possessed the memory of mankind, as we do that of our personal existence, we should know all. But if we have not the memory of mankind, does not mankind possess it? Is mankind without memory, without tradition?... There is no nation which does not exist through tradition, not only historical traditions relative to its earthly existence, but through religious traditions relative to its eternal destiny. To despise this treasure, what is it but to despise life, and that which constitutes its connection, its unity, its light, as we have just seen?... When God spoke to men His Word passed into time ... Happily tradition seized upon it as soon as it left the threshold of eternity; and tradition is neither an ear, nor a mouth, nor an isolated memory, but the ear, the mouth, and the memory of generations united together by tradition itself, and imparting to it an existence superior to the caprices and weakness of individuals. Nevertheless, God would not trust to oral tradition alone ... Symbolical tradition was to add itself to oral tradition by sustaining and confirming it ... The five terms constituting the mystery of good and evil: the existence of God, the creation of the world and of man by God, the fall of man, his restoration by a great act of divine mercy, and, lastly, the final judgment of mankind ... and that which oral tradition declared, symbolical tradition should repeat at all times and in all places, in order that the obscured or deceived memory of man might be brought back again to truth by an external, a public, an universal, all-powerful spectacle. [Lacordaire is speaking principally with reference to sacrifice and the sacrifice of Mount Calvary.] ... Each time that oral tradition underwent a movement of renovation by the breath of God, symbolical tradition felt the effects of it. The sacrifice of Abel marks the era of patriarchal tradition; the sacrifice of Abraham marks the era of Hebrew tradition; the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the final and consummating sacrifice, marks the era of Christian tradition.... Such is the nature of tradition, and such its history. Tradition is the connection of the present with the past, of the past with the future; it is the principle of identity and continuity which forms persons, families, nations, and mankind. It flows in the human race by three great streams which are clearly perceptible--the Christian, the Hebrew, and the patriarchal or primitive; in all these three it is oral and symbolical, and whether as oral or symbolical it speaks of God, the creation, the fall, reparation and judgment.... Without occupying ourselves with the question as to whether Scripture was a gift from above or an