METHODIST

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1871.

ART I.-MONUMENTAL THEOLOGY.

THE present century has been a period of sharpest intellectual strife. Perhaps no seventy years of the history of the Christian Church have witnessed more really earnest struggles. Specially fierce have been the encounters on the field of historic criticism. Not an original authority that has not been subjected to the most searching scrutiny; not a single early witness has passed unchallenged. The result is just what might have been anticipated, namely: a multitude of fables, sacred and profane, have been swept away, and the historic edifice has been reared on more enduring foundations. Doubtless the Tübingen School, even, has indirectly contributed to the true interests of Christianity by brushing away many secondary means of reliance, and causing the Church more clearly to apprehend the foundation of the apostles and prophets, and Jesus Christ himself- the true corner-stone-"in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord." Eph. ii, 20, 21.

A division of literary labor is another necessary consequence of these critical investigations. So exhaustive must be these inquiries that a single mind during a short life-time is able to explore but a very limited field. Hence the many new departments of study that have, during the century, vindicated their claim to distinct sciences. This is the case not in theology alone, but in every sphere of inquiry; as, for example, "ComFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXIII.—1

parative Anatomy," "Ethnology," "Anthropology," "Comparative Philology," etc., etc.

Again, the meagerness of original historic material pertaining to the first three centuries of the Christian Church is surprising even to those who have made these studies a specialty. From slightest fragments of one writing preserved as a quotation in another; from a few incidental statements found in other fragments; from scattered references in authors widely removed in time and space from the events of which they treat-from these, as materials, to construct a consistent and harmonious whole that gives a picture of the Christian Church, in its inner life and power as well as its outer form and circumstances, must be a task that demands the rarest combination of the powers of imagination and thought as well as the utmost patience and sterling honesty in research.

Indeed, after the vast expenditure of study upon the history of the early Christian Church we may, without hesitation, say there is even yet much lacking to complete the portrait of this heroic age of Christianity.

The excavator on some site of ancient civilization sometimes exhumes a statue with arms and legs half gone, with nose and chin effaced, and brow indented by time, yet enough remaining in treatment to convince us of rarest artistic skill and an ideal of exquisite beauty. So in the history of the first three centuries of the Christian Church sufficient remains to show the beautiful simplicity and general purity of its doctrines, and the moral grandeur of its life; but the attempts at restoration, as in these exquisite statues, have been as diverse as the genius and opinion of writers. Often have elements been put into unwarranted relations, and produced results strangely contradictory or offensively grotesque. The meagerness of historic authorities, and the paucity of records from which even Eusebius could draw, are most noteworthy. For a period of more than a century and a half there is a nearly total lack of professedly ecclesiastical historic writing. For the period previous to the year 161 he relies almost entirely on Hegesippus, only merest scraps of whose works are preserved even in Eusebius.* Further, the history of the early Church is mostly lacking in an advantage pertaining specially to the history of periods sub* Baur, "Die Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung," p. 9.

sequent to the Dark Ages. It is this: The events of later periods were recorded by different contemporary writers, who occupied widely different stand-points. Original material is vastly more rich and varied, and this material has been treated by writers of every historic school. Each has placed these records into the crucible of his own theory and judgment. By a careful comparison and patient weighing of the results thus reached the student can therefore adjust differences, harmonize contradictions, and gain a fair photograph of the age. But for the first three centuries we must study the history of the Christian Church through the eyes of Jewish Christians. We find here, therefore, few compensations, fewer counter-statements. We are at a loss how far to rest in the recorded facts of such a writer as Eusebius; more difficult is it to be assured of the justness of his generalizations. In this historian the supernat ural is strangely exaggerated. The struggle against Christianity is conducted by the direct agency and instigation of the devil; every persecution, every heresy, every martyrdom, is the work of unseen powers of evil.* Hence, his history is largely a history of Christian martyrdom. "The martyrs are the athlete of Christ, the champions of the grand Christian host, in whom, as in the heroes of a Homeric battle scene, the general struggle is individualized in the most varied manner in single combats, which again bring to notice a new form and situation of the whole."+

In the solution of these problems pertaining to the early centuries of Christianity (as, indeed, of all others in human action and thought) historic criticism has been most successful. "This is emphatically the method of the nineteenth century." The historian of philosophy, for example, discovers the true in philosophy by noting what is abiding, constant, and necessary; not an element unduly magnified in one age yet disappearing in the next, but what, though partially obscured for the time, again and again reasserts itself, thrusts itself into notice, and establishes its claim as the true.t

Thus is the real discriminated from the apparent, the true sifted from the false. Whatever contributes to this discovery must be worthy of our special attention. Whatever more

Baur, "Epochen," etc., p. 9.

Farrar, "History of Free Thought," p. 31.

+ Baur, p. 20.

clearly reveals the inner life and thought of the Church of Christ, as distinguished from the merely outward form, must be invaluable. Welcome, indeed, must be every obscurest foot-print in the sand that marks the onward march of this militant host! thrice welcome will be some unconscious record of the deepest convictions of the Church, her supporting faith, and her far-reaching hopes!

This record and this testimony, we claim, are found preeminently in monuments. Their value as indices of civilization and religious opinion has long been recognized; but to combine into skillful groupings the testimony of these mute yet eloquent witnesses to the state of society and the Church in a far-off age has been largely the work of the present century. The claims of "Monumental Theology" to take rank as a distinct "Discipline," though rejected by most encyclopedists, have been skillfully urged by that profound scholar and genial Christian gentleman, Dr. Ferdinand Piper, of the University of Berlin. His work, "Introduction to Monumental Theology," creates great expectations in relation to the richness of the results of his most laborious studies.

"Monumental Theology" is a convenient name for the science which has for its object "the determination of the principles, thought, belief, and life of the Christian Church from Christian monuments." The term "monument" is used in no* strained or unnatural sense, but includes any thing that perpetuates the memory of persons, events, or principles. These monuments may fall into two general classes, namely: 1. Lingual, including oral and written language; 2. Material, including coins and consular diptychs; gems and rings and tombs and cemeteries; churches and cloisters; utensils of churches; church adornings, as mosaics and paintings; and monuments of free creative art. Of the first class it has been usual to include under the term "monument" only such language as is found inscribed on the second class; therefore only that of an epigraphic character.

Inasmuch as the second class of monuments partakes so largely of the nature of art works, "Monumental Theology" would necessarily connect itself very closely with the subjects of "Christian Art" and "The History of Christian Art." Hence the questions of the essence of Christian art, the relation

of the Church to art itself, the relation of Christian to heathen art, the language of art, the interpretation of the language and symbolism of art works, the relation of the artist to the ecclesiastical office, and, vice versa, the practical utility of Christian paintings,* etc., etc., would necessarily belong to this discussion.

One chief reason why this department of religious history and evidence has been too much neglected is the erroneous idea of art itself that has been too widely entertained; for many have supposed that art is chiefly a pleasing luxury, a merest incident of civilization, that has appeared only when circumstances were most favorable, as when a people had attained a certain degree of leisure or wealth. It has been regarded too much as a mere bubble on the sea of human history, coming to the surface only soon to disappear; when, in truth, these art works are the product of the heavings of a force that is vital and inherent. Art belongs to the necessary expressions and phenomena of humanity, since no people has ever lacked its capacities or the products of their exercise. Indeed, art every-where carries with it the idea of representing in corporeal form the life of the soul. "Its highest end is to realize in the phenomena of the corporeal world spiritual emotions and thoughts; to objectify in the transient the enduring; to represent in the earthly and perishing the abiding and eternal."† Art is also the completest and most important expression of a people's life. Much can be learned from the record of political history, but this is too often merely outward. It is also too individual. Scientific life is too abstract. Art life reveals most clearly the spirit of the people, since here there seems to be nothing accidental. Hence a continuous history of these monuments (they belonging largely to the class of art works) gives a clear view of the progressive development of the human intellect.

We now inquire how this study of monuments is related to theology. None doubt the importance of the education of our esthetical nature.. All concede that the idea of the "beauti

*For a complete syllabus of this subject see Piper, "Einleitung in die Monumentale Theologie," pp. 55, 56.

+ Kugler, "Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte," p. xii.

See Schnaase, "Geschichte der bildenden Künste," vol. i, pp. 80-88.