Moreover, if the mass of men are to grasp them ever so little, they must wear something which is easily recognized by the human eye and human heart; more, by the primitive, half-conscious folk-soul existing in each one of us, stirring in the depths and reaching out in its own way towards God.
It is a delicate matter to discuss religious symbols.

They are like our intimate friends: though at the bottom of our hearts we may know that they are only human, we hate other people to tell us so.

And, even as the love of human beings in its most perfect state passes beyond its immediate object, is transfigured, and merged in the nature of all love; so too, the devotion which a purely symbolic figure calls forth from the ardently religious nature--whether this figure be the divine Krishna of Hinduism, the Buddhist's Mother of Mercy, the S[=u]fi's Beloved, or those objects of traditional Christian piety which are familiar to all of us--this devotion too passes beyond its immediate goal and the relative truth there embodied, and is eternalized.

It is characteristic of the primitive mind that it finds a difficulty about universals, and is most at home with particulars.

The success of Christianity as a world-religion largely abides in the way in which it meets this need.