“There shall be a spiritual body, my mistress,” makes he answer, smiling.
“Truth,” quoth she, “but I reckon it must be somewhere. It seems me, to my small wit, that if my soul and my spiritual body be to dwell in an allegorical city, then I must needs be allegorical also. And I warrant you, that should not like me a whit.”
“Let us not mingle differences,” saith Father. “Be the spiritual and the allegorical but one thing?”
“Nay, I believe there be two,” saith Aunt Joyce: “’tis Sir Robert here would have them alike.”
“But how would you define them?” saith Sir Robert to Father.
“Thus,” he made answer. “The spiritual is that which is real, as fully as the material: but it is invisible. The allegorical is that which is shadowy and doth but exist in the fantasy. If I say of these my daughters, they be my jewels, I speak allegorically: for they be not gems, but maidens. But I do not love them in an allegory, but in reality. Love is a moral and spiritual matter, but no allegory. So, Heaven is a spiritual place, but methinks not an allegorical one.”
“But the New Jerusalem—the Golden City which lieth four-square—that is allegorical, surely!”
“We shall see when we are there,” saith Father. “I think not.”
Sir Robert pursed up his lips as though he could no wise allow the same.
“Mind you, Robin,” saith Father, “I say not that there may not be allegory touching some of the details. I reckon the pearls of the twelve gates were never found in earthly oysters: nor do I account that the gold of the streets was molten in an earthly furnace. No more, when Edith saith she will run and fetch a thing, should I think to accuse her of falsehood if I saw that she walked, and ran not. ’Tis never well to fetch a parable down on all fours. You and I use allegory always in our common talk.”