and customs and to hold them up to ridicule or contempt as outmoded anachronisms. Through such attacks against symbols, they expect to hurt religion itself, and the more strange and conspicu- ‘ous those views and customs are, the easier it is for the atheists to score a success, Many a religious soul has succumbed to these tactics. Against this peril there is no beer defense than to understand clearly and thoroughly that a religious symbol, be it ever so venerable, never represents an absolute value but is always only a more or less imperfect sign of something higher and not directly accessible to human senses, Under these circumstances, it is quite under- standable that the history of religions records the frequent recurrence of the idea to restrict or even climinate completely the use of religious symbols and to treat religion more as a matter of abstract, reasoning. But even a brief reflection shows such am idea to be entirely inadequate, Without sym- bols, human beings could not communicate with each other at all. This applies not only to re- ligious communication, but to all human trans actions in secular daily life as well. Language it- self is actually nothing else than a symbol for