In short, this method of analogies was a bidding to everybody to watch and pray better.
Thus utilized, symbolism became a break to check the forward march of sin, and at the same time a sort of lever to uplift souls and help them to overleap the stages of the mystical life.
This science, translated into so many languages, was no doubt intelligible only in broad outline to the masses, and sometimes, when it percolated through the labyrinthine maze of such minds as that of the worthy Bishop of Mende, it appeared overwrought, full of contradictions, and of double meanings.

It seems then as if the symbolist were splitting a hair with embroidery scissors.

But, in spite of the extravagance it tolerated and smiled at, the Church succeeded, nevertheless, by these tactics of repetition, in saving souls and carrying out on a large scale the production of saints.
Then came the Renaissance, and symbolism was wrecked at the same time as church architecture.
Mysticism in the stricter sense of the word, more fortunate than its handmaidens, survived that period of festive dishonour; for it may be safely asserted that, though it was unproductive while living through that period, it flourished anew in Spain, producing its noblest blossoms in Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa.
Since then doctrinal mysticism seems dried up at the source.

Not so, however, as regards personal mysticism, which still dwells acclimatized and flourishing in convents.
As to the Liturgy and plain-song, they too have gone through very various phases.

After being dissected and filtered in the numberless provincial Uses, the Liturgy was brought back to the standard of Rome by the efforts of Dom Gueranger, and it may be hoped that the Benedictines at last will also bring all the churches back to the strict use of plain-song.
"And this church above all!" sighed Durtal.
He looked at his cathedral, loving it better than ever now that he was to part from it for a few days.