During the last ten years or so there has been a greatly increased awakening, among Christians all over the world, to the importance of the spiritual sense of Scripture, to the value of the symbolic approach to Scripture, and to a consciousness of the influence of biblical symbolism upon the spiritual life of the Christian. The fact that the deliberations of this meeting are devoted to a study of the relationship of Scripture to the spiritual life is one more witness to this renewed interest. It is all the more important that we should have in our minds clear ideas about the nature of the spiritual sense, especially in view of the neglect of such studies during the nineteenth century and until recent times, and also because of the accusation of fancifulness which is easily levelled against its exponents in the present, as it was in the earlier ages of the Church. Furthermore, great prudence is needed in a spiritual exposition, as the recent papal encyclicals have warned us, so that any irresponsible fancies may be avoided.

In the Rule of St Benedict the monastic day is divided into three unequal periods. The longest is that which is given to manual work, which might amount to as much as seven hours. The others, which were roughly equal and amounted to about half that time, were given to prayer, or the ‘work of God', and to lectio divina or sacred reading. Each of these elements in the monastic life, as we hope to show, were intimately related to one another, but it is with the lectio divina that we are primarily concerned today. There is no doubt of the nature of this reading in the time of St Benedict and in the centuries which followed. It was confined at first to the study of the Bible and the Fathers, especially the Latin Fathers, and above all St Jerome and St Augustine. To these were added later, perhaps through the influence of Cassiodorus, some of the classical writers, but the typical Benedictine study has always remained the Bible and the Fathers.

When St Dominic's successor, Blessed Jordan of Saxony, a man remarkable for shrewd common sense, was asked which was better, studying the Scriptures or praying, he replied: You might as well ask me which is better, eating or drinking. A meticulous critic might argue that liquid nourishment is even more indispensable than solid, that no man can be saved without prayer, that prayer can save those ignorant of the Scriptures. In the concrete, however, for ourselves, Scripture and prayer, like eating and drinking, are indispensable.

Must they however be wholly separated? Can they not be, to a considerable extent at least, combined? They can, because they are.

The liturgy—Mass and Divine Office—is largely (the Office mostly) prayer in the words of Scripture, and both Mass and Office provide lessons from Scripture. The liturgical Gospels cover the greater part of the Fourth Gospel, and for a rough guess two-thirds of St Matthew and a half of St Luke.

I Need first of all to explain my title. The images which I want to think about are primarily images in the mind rather than actual pictures, statues, or such like; or rather I want to think about actual pictures from the point of view of the image which they evoke, and leave behind in the memory, which may live and grow there, and become part—a vital part—of that stock of symbols which in some sense or other exists in all our minds. Because it is in this way that images are part of the life of the Spirit. Or to put it in another way, the activity of the imagination is or should be part of religion—like every other human activity—and needs therefore to be trained and fed. The Church has, we all know, always believed in images; but it is so often thought today that the nature of the image does not matter, provided that it promotes devotion.

That there is a connection between the Old Testament and Modern Psychology may seem a farfetched idea which has no foundation in fact, but both are related in Judaic roots.

The Old Testament is a divinely inspired book written by Jews about Jews, whilst psychology is the science based on the ideas of a Jew—Sigmund Freud. Freud, who is generally accepted as the father of modern psychology, found recognition first among Jews, but when his method— psychoanalysis—proved to be successful in the treatment of nervous disorders, it spread beyond the small group of Jewish enthusiasts into the circles of Christian psychologists.

It is no mere coincidence that a Jew realized the importance of psychological problems in the present world. Centuries of ghetto life had made the Jews extremely sensitive in their reactions to people who lived in freedom. The enforced isolation shaped their mentality into a set pattern different from that of the surrounding European world which was developing its own particular culture.

This is no learned dissertation, in spite of the appearance in the title of the word ‘exegesis’ which is so often associated with the minutiae of textual and historical criticism. The word in question, however, seems properly to bear no less restricted a meaning than that of interpretation, and in that wide sense it is here employed. The paragraphs which follow reflect merely the attitude of a life-long reader of the inspired volume who has never been unconscious of ‘Scripture difficulties’ or of the main results and findings of modern research, but in the light of papal admonitions and with the aid of such theological authors as he was able to consult, has arrived at certain conclusions which he thought might be worth passing on to others, at least for their consideration. Here one point only is dealt with.

Every word of Christ is good it has its missions and its purpose, and does not fall to the ground. It cannot be said that He should ever speak transitory words, who is Himself the very word of God, uttering, at His good pleasure, the deep counsels and the holy will of Him who is invisible…. All His sacred speeches, though clothed in a temporary garb, and serving an immediate end, … yet all have their force in every age, …

These words are Newman's, quoted in Dr Seynaeve's recent Newman's Doctrine on Holy Scripture, an important monument of scholarship in a province hitherto neglected.

On the Continent last year, I was told about someone who, hearing Newman's name mentioned, remarked: ‘Isn't he the man that held the theory of the obiter dicta?’ I was also told by a Roman student of some years back that, in his time at Rome, Newman would be mentioned among the Adversarii, when the question of the plenary inspiration of Scripture was under discussion.

Young Harry Pope, we are informed by the author of this lively and fascinating study of the man, did not shine at the Oratory school in athletics, ‘though midway through his school career he came first in the obstacle race'. The shadow of coming events was then already cast; for this man, who as Father Hugh Pope, O.P., became the leading Scripture scholar in England for many years, did in fact in the middle of his career win the obstacle race set by the modernist attack on the Word of God. Fr Mulvey shows how this race was won first interiorly by bringing Father Hugh to the placid yet pungent holiness which all could recognize in the charming fatherly Dominican from the 1920's onwards. It was surely a clear case of divine purification, call it a ‘dark night’ if you will, leading to a peaceful unity and wholeness of life in God. And that race was won, inevitably, before the victory was recognized by the world outside.