Yet the too rapid reformer may easily
miss even the simple and superficial parallel between the wooden
pictures of admirals and the wooden pictures of angels.
Still less will he appreciate the intense spiritual atmosphere,
that makes the real difference between an ikon and an inn-sign,
and makes the inns of England, noble and national as they are,
relatively the homes of Christian charity but hardly a Christian faith.
He can hardly bring himself to believe that Syrians can be as fond
of religion as Englishmen of beer.
Nobody can do justice to these cults who has not some sympathy with
the power of a mystical idea to transmute the meanest and most trivial
objects with a kind of magic. It is easy to talk of superstitiously
attaching importance to sticks and stones, but the whole poetry
of life consists of attaching importance to sticks and stones;
and not only to those tall sticks we call the trees or those large
stones we call the mountains. Anything that gives to the sticks of our
own furniture, or the stones of our own backyard, even a reflected
or indirect divinity is good for the dignity of life; and this
is often achieved by the dedication of similar and special things.
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