42 EMBLEMATIC TEACHING. 



" Father," said he, " what would have become of all these 

 flying creatures, if when, as you tell me, they were crawling 

 caterpillars, they had not ate their fill? Methinks their 

 bravery would have been finely clipped. See, some of them 

 are bigger than the others, those, I warrant, who had a place 

 nearest to the cabbage heart. If your comparison held good, 

 the more a man indulged his carnal appetites, the better angel 

 he would make." 



" Satan, avaunt !" inwardly exclaimed the holy man, 

 shocked at the irreverent idea instilled into a yet darkened 

 mind, from, he believed, a darker source. " Saint Dominick, 

 save us!" he presently returned, and somewhat pettishly 

 " thou speakest as if the carnal man were in reality a cater- 

 pillar, with no better teaching than his own craving appetites 

 the immortal spirit really a short-lived Butterfly. Did I 

 not explain how these are only emblems? But, even thus 

 considered, thy objection is but vain. Perhaps thou knowest 

 not (and here my teaching was in fault) that no Butterfly ever 

 yet issued from a caterpillar's skin no crawling worm ever 

 yet changed, at once, into a glorious flutterer. The greedy 

 caterpillar must put off, first, his gross and grovelling nature ; 

 his sensual delights of cabbage or of nettle must become to 

 him as nothing. 



" Look here," he continued, plucking from off an angle of 

 the castle wall a suspended chrysalis " look at this seemingly 

 lifeless creature this aurelia, shut up in its gilded skin, and 



