Once Again: Walter Pater

His way of conceiving religion came then to be in effect what it ever afterwards remained--a sacred history indeed, but still more a sacred ideal, a transcendent version or representation, under intenser and more expressive light and shade, of human life and its familiar or exceptional incidents, birth, death, marriage, youth, age, tears, joy, rest, sleep, waking--a mirror, towards which men might turn away their eyes from vanity and dullness, and see themselves therein as angels, with their daily meat and drink, even, become a kind of sacred transaction--a complementary strain or burden, applied to our everyday existence, whereby the stray snatches of music in it re-set themselves, and fall into the scheme of some higher and more consistent harmony...

A description of the character Florian Deleal in Pater's tale "A Child In The House," found in Miscellaneous Studies, p. 193.