1891-92.] 377 



bols, however, are coeval with the creation of the first man, of 

 which the Divine covenant itself is an example ; for the trees of 

 life and knowledge were emblematical of life and happiness or 

 misery and death ; the rainbow, of God's covenant with Noah 

 as a perpetual memento of His promise ; the serpent, a fit 

 emblem of guile and subtlety, as the dove is of innocence and 

 peace. 



Our Lord, in His parables, clothes His moral teachings in the 

 form of vivid metaphor and searching paradox. Many of the 

 expressions used in the Sacred Writings are clear, expressive 

 ideas, typifying in words under the similitude of a figure, what 

 to a greater or less extent can also be depicted in art. Francis 

 Quarles quaintly tells us — " An emblem is but a simple parable; 

 let not the tender eye check to see the allusion to our Blessed 

 Saviour figured in these types. In Holy Scripture He is some- 

 times called a sower, sometimes a fisher, sometimes a physician ; 

 and why not presented to the eye as well as to the ear ? Before 

 the knowledge of letters God was known by hieroglyphics ; and, 

 indeed, what are the heavens, the earth, nay, every creature, but 

 hieroglyphics and emblems of His glory ? " 



Sir Samuel Ferguson, in his " Notes on Ornamentation," 

 appended to a work by him, says, regarding these early symbols 

 — " We are contemplating the infancy of art, and find it to 

 contain many attributes which form all the charm of childhood ; 

 that courage which proceeds from perfect trust and all ignorance 

 of cause for fear ; that confidence which gives freedom of ex- 

 pression to the happiest natural faculties. Beyond this, art was, 

 in its earlier manifestations, the hieroglyphic language of the 

 human soul. Men found in the material images that nature 

 gave a vestment for their deepest thoughts and feelings. The 

 globe and the circle embodied their conceptions of the universe 

 and heaven. The Rock and the Lamb and the Pelican tearing 

 her breast open to feed her young with her blood were to them 

 images of Christ. Man in his savage state, when only following 

 the instincts of his nature, converses in figures. Indeed, the 

 farther back we go into history, the nearer we attain to the 



