n6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



tions, fills the whole sphere of his vision with grand 

 and aspiring spectacles, and embodies itself in struc- 

 tures which exhibit a similar analogy. The religion 

 that will satisfy the soul is a religion that makes provi- 

 sion for its growth and expansion, that shares in the 

 infinitude and indefinite progressiveness of man. The 

 stone must destroy the statue. The stone of the 

 Gospel the Rock Christ Jesus that has no fixed 

 shape, but grows and adapts itself to the growing neces- 

 sities of the race and the individual, must conquer and 

 destroy the statue that has a definite shape and fixed 

 limits the creed of the Pharisee, the Mahometan, and 

 the Pagan, that bounds man's spirit with its hard, 

 monotonous, mechanical lines. 



4. Another point of contrast is the brilliant appear- 

 ance of the statue, and the value of the materials of 

 which it is composed, as compared with the meanness 

 and commonness of the stone, and the worthlessness of 

 its substance. With the exception of the clay, out of 

 which its extremities were partly moulded, all the other 

 materials used in the composition of the statue were 

 exceedingly valuable according to the human standard. 

 The gold and silver of the head and breast were the 

 most precious of all substances, the symbols of human 

 wealth and the representations of human glory and 

 power; the gold, the sacred metal, employed in the 

 sacred services of the world, and the silver employed in 

 the every-day uses of common life as money passed 

 from hand to hand, " the pale and common drudge 

 between man and man." The brass which formed the 



