86 IMAGE-WORSHIP, BARRENNESS OF HEART

sympathetic nature has been found insufficient to meet the cravings of the natural man for a divinity still nearer allied to himself. Accordingly the Roman Church has deified the woman Mary, embodying in this modern goddess the beauty, maternity, and chastity of the pagan Venus, Horus, and Diana, coupled with the purer standard of female character developed by Christianity.

The Immaculate Virgin is now the most popular object of worship of Romanism, whose tendency is to still farther retrograde from a spiritual faith by the multiplication of other intermediates between God and man, in the shape of saints, relics, and the numerous objects consecrated by the Roman hierarchy to the devotion of its unenlightened disciples. In this renewed theological movement, with its consequent atheism on the one hand and increasing polytheistic feeling on the other, may be detected the dawning decrepitude of papacy, as an effete system, unsuited to the riper requirements of the human race. It presages a mental revolution, out of which religion and art shall emerge with renewed vigor for a fresh cycle of progress. Mind demands an inward, living faith. Externals in religion are everywhere losing their original significance and authority. The necessity of imageworship denotes barrenness of heart. Nowhere are madonnas and crucifixes more abundant than in the haunts of licentiousness and amid the homes of banditti. In proportion as the inner life is sinful and ignorant does it put faith in idols and talismans. After the same manner, the

WHEN ART SUGGESTS GOD.

87

general immorality or insecurity of a country may be estimated by the abundance of its police, prisons, glass-incrusted walls, iron bars, and thieftraps; also by the extreme caution with which private property is guarded from the public eye. When the human mind rises above the level of image-worship, art improves by being restricted to its legitimate sphere. Animated by loftier views of God, it perceives more clearly its duties and capacities, and aspires, not to represent the Unrepresentable, but to suggest his attributes.

CHAPTER IX.

Architecture, the Culmination of Art, is to Man what Nature is to God. - Nature not Perfect, but Progressive. — Definition of Perfection.

HE culmination of plastic art is architect

ure.

Comprehending all other art, it is

at once its beginning and end, its primary purpose and its full knowledge. Singly, painting and sculpture address themselves to man socially. They are individual thoughts, speaking to individual souls, and men find in them companionship as they accord with their particular affinities. We look at them specifically as revelations of one human being to another, in friendly speech. True, we may misapprehend, by not putting ourselves at the same point of vision as the speaker, and therefore do him injustice and ourself a wrong, because it is only by receiving truth in the sense that it is uttered that we can appreciate the intended instruction. To some a lamb has only the savor of mint-sauce; with others it is incarnated innocence; while a few, like Swedenborg, see in its snowy fleece and dainty limbs a correspondence with some divine dogma or celestial joy. So a pigeon to one person symbolizes a god, and to another suggests a pie. Bread and

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89

wine are Christ's flesh and blood, to be approached only with awe and reverential worship, when held aloft by a priest; but if shown by an inn-keeper to the same individual, they simply excite carnal appetites. The essential difference of things lies, therefore, within ourselves. Every distinction is true in itself, but all distinctions cannot be true at the same moment to ourselves. We accept each according to the predominating affinity of thought, passion, or sentiment. Art approaches us in a like way, presenting a scale ranging from the tangible and organic to the deep mysteries of the Godhead. As the animal, intellectual, or spiritual nature predominates in our faculties, so do we receive in kind; and the same object may be stone to one, meat to another, science to a third person, and spiritual sustenance to a fourth.

Architecture is comprehensive in the same sense as nature. Indeed, it is to man the material expression of his mind, as nature is that of the mind of God. It speaks to us, unless we study it by detached parts, as one great whole, as we view a landscape. Mere building is the anatomy or geological structure; founded on strict science; while sculpture and painting unite to cover it, as vegetation clothes the earth, with forms and colors, that suggest alike the sensuous harmonies of material things, and the loftiest aspirations of the human soul. We view architecture, therefore, in its noblest efforts, as the universal art, not only because it includes all others, but, like the structure of the earth itself, while exhibiting infinite variety, it refers all production to a common

90 NATURE IS GOD'S ARCHITECTURE.

cause.

By architecture the Almighty has provided for man scope for his noblest development of beauty in matter. As he uses the means given, so does he make his strength and freedom felt to the entire race. Hence it is that his greatest works have the effect of the corresponding efforts of nature. Like vast expanses of glorious landscape, mountain grandeur, and the solemn ocean, they thrill, lift, or subdue our spirits to their own moods. In the presence of noble architecture we are conscious of a greater degree of spiritual life, for men recognize in architectural greatness the spirit of something akin to their own souls. In the degree that our intelligence is cultivated, are we awed or elated at its suggestiveness of power, beauty, and wisdom.

Nature bears towards God another similitude with architecture to man. Both are the material evolvement of a common principle of construction. Man's handicraft grows out of God's creation, through analogy, and for like purposes; namely, first, to manifest himself spiritually; and, secondly, for uses in connection with physical being. God wills, and nature appears. It is his speech for man to interpret, and thereby learn. Without it, man could have no existence, for it is the germ of his being. God changes not; but his work, or material nature, does change its aspect towards man, by man's influence upon it, and by the interaction of its own laws, in accordance with its revolving necessities. Nature, as we see it, is, therefore, no more the final perfection of God's work than is our architecture the