Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/109

v] MYSTERIES AND SYMBOLISM 91 the fact and reason of their being "mysteries." When Christ spoke of the " mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven," He spoke of what was beyond mortal com- prehension — even as there is for man the necessary mystery of God. But men are surrounded by the common things of daily life, which are not mysteries to the ordinary human consciousness. Such, for ex- ample, is the food of man, like bread and wine. Only a thoughtful or poetic nature would see any mystery here; common men are scarcely conscious even that there lies a mystery in the growth of wheat or of the vine. Likewise, the function of food is known to all, — man must eat to live. But when some one says, this bread before us has received strange properties, whereby eating it shall have a marvellous effect, then a mystery has been added. This, mystery is factitious, introduced into a common thing, and the human act, through which mysterious qualities have been im- parted to a common thing, is an act of magic. But there is no magic in the mystery of God, or in the mystery of whatever is naturally recognized by men as beyond their comprehension. Here lies the dif- ference between mystery and mystery. Furthermore, a material object may readily be regarded as the symbol of a spiritual fact ; a material object or a physical human act may be taken as a symbol of the action of God working a spiritual change in man. To conceive an object or a fact to be a symbol of something else is different from conceiving it to embody, or to effect, or &e, that something else. The difference is plain ; how coidd any one ignore it ? Yet a considerable part of the intellectual and religious, as