VIII. THE REQUIEM 303

123. Yet not with every manner of Beast; for afterwards, when all the Creatures in Heaven and Earth, and the Sea, join in the giving of praise, it is only these four who can say “Amen.”¹

The Ox that treadeth out the corn; and the Lion that shall eat straw like the Ox, and lie down with the lamb; and the Eagle that fluttereth over her young;² and the human creature that loves its mate, and its children. In these four is all the power and all the charity of earthly life; and in such power and charity “Deus ipse notatur.”

124. Notable, in that manner, He was, at least, to the men who built this shrine where once was St. Theodore’s;³-not betraying nor forgetting their first master, but placing his statue, with St. Mark’s Lion, as equal powers upon their pillars of justice;-St. Theodore, as you have before heard,⁴ being the human spirit in true conquest over the inhuman, because in true sympathy with it-not as St. George in contest with, but being strengthened and pedestalled by, the “Dragons, and all Deeps.”⁵

125. But the issue of all these lessons we cannot yet measure; it is only now that we are beginning to be able to read them, in the myths of the past, and natural history of the present world. The animal gods of Egypt and Assyria, the animal cry that there is no God, of the passing hour, are, both of them, part of the rudiments of the religion yet to be revealed, in the rule of the Holy Spirit over the venomous dust, when the sucking child shall play by the hole of the asp, and the weaned child lay his hand on the cockatrice’ den.⁶

126. And now, if you have enough seen, and understood, this eastern dome and its lesson, go down into the

¹ [Revelation v. 13, 14.]

² [Deuteronomy xxv. 4; Isaiah xi. 6, lxv. 25; Deuteronomy xxxii. 11.]

³ [The church of St. Theodore was built about 552, on part of the site now occupied by St. Mark’s. When St. Mark’s body was brought to Venice in 828, the Doge assigned a place near the chapel of St. Theodore on which to build a church in honour of the Evangelist.]

⁴ [See above, § 23, p. 226.]

⁵ [Psalms cxlviii. 7.]

⁶ [Isaiah xi. 8.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]