the least understanding of what
Christianity came to do in the world, they still offer his person and
words a sincere if inarticulate worship, trying to transform that
sacrificial and crucified spirit, as much as their bungling fancy can,
into a patron of Philistia Felix. Why this persistent adoration of a
character that is the extreme negation of all that these good souls
inwardly value and outwardly pursue? Because the image of Christ and the
associations of his religion, apart from their original import, remain
rooted in the mind: they remain the focus for such wayward emotions and
mystic intuitions as their magnetism can still attract, and the value
which this hallowed compound possesses in representation is transferred
to its nominal object, and Christ is the conventional name for all the
impulses of religion, no matter how opposite to the Christian.

[Sidenote: Pathetic idealizations.]

Symbols, when their significance has been great, outlive their first
significance. The image of Christ was a last refuge to the world; it was
a consolation and a new ground for hope, from which no misfortune could
drive the worshipper. Its value as an idea was therefore immense, as to
the lover the idea of his untasted joys, or to the dying man the idea of
health and invigorating sunshine. The votary can no more ask himself
whether his deity, in its total operation, has really blessed him and
deserved his praise than the lover can ask if his lady is worth pursuing
or the expiring cripple whether it would be, in very truth, a benefit to
be once more young and whole. That life is worth living is the most
necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible
of conclusions. Experience, by its passive weight of joy and sorrow, can
neither inspire nor prevent enthusiasm; only a present ideal will avail
to move the will and, if realised, to justify it. A saint's halo is an
optical illusion; it glorifies his actions whatever their eventual
influence in the world, because they seem to have, when rehearsed
dramatically, some tenderness or rapture or miracle about them.

Thus it appears that the great figures of art or religion, together
with all historic and imaginative ideals, advance insensibly on the
values they represent. The image has more lustre than the original, and
is often the more important and influential fact. Things are esteemed as
they weigh in representation. A _memorable thing_, people say in their
eulogi