usual logic, is totally unsupported by proof, we content ourselves with denying it; giving, however, the very good reason for our denial, that the assertion is derogatory to our Saviour's character. and his apostles. It would collect and exhibit their testimony, incidental, and often indirect, but ample and incontrovertible, to the Old Testament Scriptures, and especially to the books of Moses; Another of Mr. Powell's assertions is, showing that He, whose word constitutes that in the Sermon on the Mount, our the highest test of truth, ascribes to those Lord, taking the Decalogue as his text, books exactly the character they claim enlarged upon it, "giving new precepts for themselves of being the faithful expressly in addition to it, not as unfold-records of express verbal communications ing any thing already contained or implied from Jehovah. If any one denies the in it, but expressly contrasting his own authority of our Lord's own teaching teaching with what was 'said of old.'" over our faith and conscience, we have no (The italics, as in our previous quotations, common ground with such a person on are the author's own.) We give this which to argue the question. The inquiry merely as a specimen of the author's in- would then advance to consider the actual sight into Scripture and soundness of judg- contents of Judaism, as a system of reliment, not deeming it worth while to reply gious truth thus authenticated; and to to it here. Our ungracious task must ascertain, still in the light of Christ's close. The conclusion of the whole work, teaching, how far the doctrines and ethics of course is, that Gentile Christians have of the New Testament are identical with nothing to do with Judaism (except it be the Old. In ethics it would take as its to quote the Old Testament, as St. Paul key the declaration of St. John, that "sin used to do in writing to the Jews, just in is (avouía) nonconformity to law;" and of the same way, Mr. Powell teaches us, as he St. Paul, that "love is the fulfilling of the quoted Greek plays to his Grecian hear- law." With these it would compare the ers;) that Puritanism rests upon an irra- declaration of our Saviour, (slurred over tional confusion of ideas; and lastly and by Professor Powell in a most helpless, foremost, that the grand Puritan institu- unsatisfactory manner, p. 121,) that "On tion of the Sabbath is a baseless supersti- these two commandments "-love to God tion, forthwith to be discarded by the en- and love to man-" hang all the law and lightened age of which the Savilian Pro- the prophets." It would show, that under fessor of Geometry is an enlightened re- great modifications of language and cirpresentative. cumstance, there is the most perfect iden The title of the book carries its own tity between the fundamental idea of condemnation. It implies the denial of holiness in the Old and in the New Tes manifest heroic fact; ignorance of one of taments. In both, the perfection of human the main characters of the divine admin- virtue is exhibited under the twofold asistration, to which unity is not less essen- pect of obedience to divine law and liketial than progress; and inability to ness to divine character, while the law, distinguish between the forms of the Old even in its severest manifestations, is Dispensation which were transient, and its shown to be love, and to have its foundaspiritual truths, which are permanent. It tion not in an arbitrary divine will, but would be a noble task to expound, in its in an immutable divine nature. Examin fullness of evidence, and in a form suited ing the bearing of these fixed principles of to the present day, the great truth which morality upon the facts of God's recorded this title impugns-the spiritual identity dealings with his people and with their eneof the religion of the Bible from Genesis mies, we should find that those terrific but to the Revelation, the unbroken unity of righteous judgments, which Mr. Powell the divine dealings and revelations, and ventures to describe as "bloody atrocithe consequent unity of the Church of ties," were based on precisely the same God in all ages. Such an inquiry would principles as those judicial and military not begin by studying the Old Testament punishments without which human gov in its own light, which is nothing better ernment could not exist; and as the final than fumbling at the lock while the key punishment of sin, which the New Testalies close at hand. It would start, as the ment so clearly foretells. Passing from Christian moralist and theologian always the nature, demands, and penalties of law, must start in reality, and ought to start to the great theme of Christian theology avowedly, from the teachings of our Lord the restoration of the transgressor to - perfectly and purely spiritual church. favor and to holiness, the religious system | the leaven of Judaism; the Jewish nation, of the Old Testament would be shown to in its last decay, ruled nominally by the be, under much superficial dissimilarity, law of Moses, really by the "traditions" essentially one with that of the Gospel. which had "made the Word of God of In both, man's position is that of a con- none effect." It would show the reason demned transgressor and a fallen creature. of the separation of the Jewish nation, In both, repentance, faith, the influence of and the manner in which they were divine truth, and the grace of the Holy trained to be the teachers of mankind. It Spirit, occupy the same relative places; would trace the principle of social religion and the atonement of Christ, as the New through the various forms of the family, Testament plainly teaches, was at once the theocratic commonwealth, the kingthe real ground of the forgiveness of sins dom, the hierarchy, to its perfect develunder the Old Dispensation, and the sub-opment in the New Testament idea of a stance signified by its shadows. The difference between the two Dispensations lies only in the mode of teaching these truths, especially in the substitution of literal statement for symbolic exhibition, of historic narrative for prophetic promise; and in the far greater clearness, consequently, with which the theory of salvation is set forth in the Gospel. Lastly, such an inquiry would consider the bearings of the two Dispensations upon society, nations, and the whole human race; which branch of this great argument would include the theory of the Church. It would describe the condition, and the causes of the condition, in which Christianity found the world-the Gentile nations under the combined rule of philosophy, superstition, and infidelity, yet largely pervaded by The result of such a complete, profound, and reverent inquiry would be to show that a living unity of spiritual truth pervades the whole Bible; that all which was really essential in Judaism survives in the better system which it foreshadowed, and that the change from the one to the other was but such a change as when the many-tinted petals fall away for the fruit to ripen. "Christianity without Judaism" is an abstract idea, not an historical reality. Even as an idea, it is maimed and incomplete. It is a tree without a root, a fruit without a bud, a stream with no fountain, manhood without childhood, summer without spring, day without dawn. From Blackwood's Magazine. ITALY OF THE ARTS THE CRADLE AND THE GRAVE. ART was cradled in the sunny south-flocks to pasture in the plain-to gambol in those latitudes where man found himself on the mountain-side-to rest beneath in Eden-where God gave forth his revelations where heaven itself seems to touch the earth, clothe all things in beauty, and promise all high delight. The language of the earth seemed poetry, and the work and the pastime of man broke forth into art. The same sun which made the earth fertile in fruits made the imagination of man florid in flowers; sunshine laughed within his heart; the blue sky overhead became the canopy to his thoughts, which he led as a shepherd his the shadow of a rock, or beside a shadowy stream. In the south, existence becomes art; and yet that art is nature. What wonder, then, that man should burst into song and dance-that his tongue should use itself to metaphor-that the house for his dwelling, and the temple for his worship, should be dedicated to beauty? We have stood in the temple-citadel of Athens when the sunshine danced upon the distant sea, and moulded by light and shade the marble mountains into massive sculp 66 ture. We have seen the same temple- | Nations perish-art decays; yet these mount glow in the sunset sky-faint into sunset splendors, fleeting as they are with twilight-and again stand forth to com- the passing moment, are of all earth's mand the plain, when the moon rose above passing shows the most unchanging. The the hills, and all was of so much beauty sunset of this present hour is such a one that, even in a nation's overthrow, nature as that when first the Campanile of Torstill lingered fondly in the chosen haunts cello knolled the knell of parting day. It -weaving for her own delight a poetry, has often struck us with wonder that the and making out of daily life a beauteous land of Italy, after so great calamity and art. In the further south, the sunny im- suffering, remains so far unchanged. agination of the Arab pointed the arch, Mountain districts there are, it is true, and reared the dome. The romance of which are widely tossed and tortured as the "Arabian Nights," cast into stone, be- by tempests-symbols of the mob riot, came, when night was ended, like the and of that turbulent sea of troubles written words, an "entertainment" suit- which raged in the city life of the middle ed for the day. Imagination took a ages. Such bandit nature threw itself heavenward flight in the minaret, and impetuously into art in the savage picfancy, in its subtlety, wove arabesques tures of Salvator Rosa. For the most for mosque or hareem, where the Arab, part, however, the land of Italy reposes waiting upon Destiny, called on the in tranquil loveliness, as if gladness, and name of God, the Compassionate, the not sorrow, had been the current of exMerciful," or where the victim of south- istence. To this, hour the pictures of ern voluptuousness, art, became his minister Claude live before the eye-the clear blue to enjoyment. Thus, in Egypt, the tropic sky-the tender distance--the wide plain sun, taking no delight in desert sands, or valley, fertile with wine and oil-the wandered in search of a kindred fertility, river flowing gently through the midstand found in the genius of man an oasis and the gracefully-bending ilex giving to which blossomed in the lotus and the lily. the foreground the repose of shade, in But it is specially in Italy that art has which the peasant and his flocks find reseemed to us indigenous to the soil. The fuge from the heat of day. Claude, too, dying glory has not yet wholly faded might have been but yesterday to this from the sky. It is true the sun has set, shore of Baiæ, so gently does the sea clouds gather on the hills, and night set- ripple on the sand-so tender and so pure tles in the plain; but the glory of the day is the far distance-so wholly do love and is still remembered, and the twilight hour beauty still hold possession of the landscape. which now steals so gently over all things, Thus does the traveler find, whether by mellows the turbulence of active life into sunset or by noonday-in the valley, by tenderness, as we watch over the expir- the sea, or by the mountain-side-how ing moments of one too beautiful to live. art in Italy arose into spontaneous birth. The lover of nature or art will do well The genius of the people too is temnever to miss a sunset, especially in Italy. pered by the aspect of this land in which In Italy the setting of the sun is express- they live. Brilliant as the sky, yet tuive of her sunken condition. The length-multuous as the mountain storm, their life ening shadows, the rising mists, the confusion of distinct shapes and outlines in the coming darkness- these, with the beauty of that vesper hour, the hour of prayer and love, are all symbolic of Italy in her loveliness and decline. Then the traveler feels how Italy became the cradle of the arts. In Venice he has been gaz ing on the golden glories of Veronese in the Doge's Palace; and at sunset he mounts the Campanile of St. Mark-sees the lagoons a molten fire-the snows of the distant Alps flushed with hectic red; and in this triumph of color he finds the origin of that Venetian art which clothed the earth and man in rainbow glory. has the beauty of romance with its vicissitudes and plots. Their land a poem, they themselves a picture-they live less for the duties of life than to decorate creation. Their costume is that of the stage; their pose and bearing that of the studio. To this people art is no effort, and what in other lands is a forced product, in Italy is thus seen as a spontaneous growth and outburst. It is true that the fire which once burned with so much splendor is now in its expiring ashes; that the entire nation is fallen and in all points degraded, and their art itself, once the greatest of revivals, has in these days reached its last decadence. It is true that impulse, passion, and imagination, which are the soul and very eloquence of art, now fallen into diseased excess, at once incapacitate this people for self-control and national government, and give to their present art the pretension of youthful presumption, the extravagance of frenzy, and the faltering feebleness of debilitated age. Yet the ruling passion is strong in death; and the arts, though fallen in common with the nation, still live in the life and aspiration of the people. Imagination, vagrant and fugitive though it be, still bursts into metaphor, loses itself in visions, and pictures a bright ideal now that the reality is no more. In order to understand art and Italy in their greatness, it is necessary now to see them in their fall; to see impulse and poetry, the plastic and the pictorial faculties, gambol in the free play of infancy or garrulous in the imbecility of age-to see them in their spontaneous outbursts unfettered by judgment, unconscious of decay. It is needful even thus to see them in humiliation in order to judge of their days of power, when the artist poured out his very soul upon the canvas, and burst into eloquence that entranced the world. Thus does the student understand how Italy became the cradle of the arts; how the same people, now so feebly sensitive to beauty, found, when strong, free, and prosperous, that architecture, sculpture, and painting, were native to their hearts, and indigenous to their country. Between the north and the south of Europe how great is the contrast. In the south, art is a continuance and prolongation of the daily life, in form doubtless more subtle and ornate, a realization, however, of life's ideal rather than its actual reversal. In the north, on the contrary, art comes more as a reaction than as a natural function, an escape from an existence of anxious toil, a kind of fairy fancy-fashioned land in which the mind may lose its habitual consciousness and take on a condition foreign to itself. In the south, art is the outburst of an overflowing impulse, and the work thus warmly glowing from the artist-soul, in the minds of others arouses the same ardor. The picture receives homage in the church, becomes part of the religion, and is interwoven with the worship. In the north, on the other hand, the arts are not owned by the church; are not the ardent outburst of any national, popular, or religious impulse- and, accordingly, not indigenous to the soil, they are but petted and pampered exotics of a mere dilettante taste. For the north the artepoch is dawning, but not yet come, and the sun which has set in Italy may yet find its meridian in our land. Before that day can open, many things, however, must be reversed: the very climate changed. In the south, the sun which renders nature prolific makes the imagination pictorial: but in the north, man, instead of basking in the sun, plods through the snow; intellect and energy aid him, when by imagination he must perish. The fire of fancy is of little avail when he stands in pressing need of fuel for his body. In the south, both man and nature are, as we have seen, intent on the making of pictures. In the north it is the tailor which makes the man, and for all art-purposes, even a poet is spoilt. Men as they go about this great world-and, what is still more sad, women, too-with all their adornings, are no longer pictures; the artist verily does not know what to do with them on canvas, and for their own fame with posterity it is well that they should not seek perpetuity in marble. Thus do we see that the south especially, when contrasted with the north, is the cradle of art; that Italy, wherein the arts sprang, as it were, into spontaneous birth, is the only land wherein can be now traced the laws which govern their development and accelerate their decline. Having thus spoken of Italy as a soil fertile in art, we shall devote the remainder of this essay to those early days when Christian art first struggled into birth. The cradling of Christian art in Italy has always been to us a subject of mysterious interest, dimly to trace how it obscurely rose out of darkness and persecution. At the outset, we find that the first Christian days were without art at all, as if too near the glorious reality itself-the presence and the aspect of Christ and the Apostles-to stand in need of the symbol and the shadow. But as the outward reality died from the remembrance of believers, and their religion receded into. the invisible regions of faith and hope, the Church naturally sought to preserve some record of the great revelation which had been actually seen and enacted upon earth. This revelation had come, not as a shadowy vision of angels appearing in a dream— not as a small voice issuing from a cloud, or as thunder proclaiming the law given from a mount; but it was the revelation of the Godhead in a visible person and an actual life. Christ and his Apostles walked year after year openly among men, taught upon the Mount, fed the multitudes, healed the sick, raised the dead, and thus, if we may be permitted the expression, reduced to pictorial demonstration truths which had otherwise remained the vague objects of faith. And all these picturesChrist as he stood by the grave of Lazarus, as he entered Jerusalem in triumph, as he rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven pictures which in their reality had brought salvation to men, were day by day growing more obscure in the mind's vision, till the last man who who had seen these things was laid in the grave, and Christianity, losing its hold upon the senses, henceforth took its stand in the region of faith. How gladly would the early believer, in his persecution and suffering, have hung round his neck some slight memorial sketch of the Christ who had died for him! How fondly would the Church have treasured any outline, however hasty, of Christ as he was transfigured on the Mount, or when he lay in agony in the garden! But these aids being denied, the Christian artist, ere long, sought to supply their need. How mighty was the task! To bring forth Christ once again before the eyes of men -to enable him to walk the earth and teach among the people to lead him on his way to Calvary, or show him as he rose to glory. It was perhaps inevitable that the early Church should neglect and ignore the arts which had been subservient to paganism; but the needs of human nature were too strong to be suppressed. The multitude in all ages, countries, and religions, have demanded an outward form and symbol of their faith; and Christianity, as soon as it had claimed to be a world's religion, falling under the same law, necessarily joined alliance with the arts. The invisible truths of the new religion demanded some outward form of beauty which might be loved-of grandeur which might be venerated. Written or spoken words were too shadowy and vague. The multitude required not only to hear of heaven, but to see it. And even the more gifted minds, who in their watchings might look upon the heavenly glory, see the vision of angels, or earth the abode of saints, would yet find aid to their higher and more abstract strivings in those art creations where purity of soul was made visible to the eye through the beauty of form. Thus did Christian art set itself the task of giving to the angels their beauty and blessedness; to the company of the Apostles, the fellowship of the Prophets, the army of Martyrs, their dignity, inspiration, and fortitude; and thus having made heaven glorious, the Christian architect built upon earth a Church worthy of the worship of that God whom the heavens could not contain. This being of Christian art the vocation, we look, as we have said, to its first birth and cradling in Italy with a mysterious interest. Truly its birth was dark with mystery, for it took its origin among tombs. The blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christian art no less than of the church. In the darkness of the catacombs, the sanctuaries of refuge, art took its first precarious rise; a strange birth-place for a thing of beauty these endless underground streets, winding and stretching hither and thither, almost too narrow for walking abreast, and almost too low for walking upright. On either side graves, mostly opened and rifled, three rows in succession, one above the other-small children's graves crowded in, filling vacant spaces-bones crumbling, and damp, and cold, scattered about; then, at intervals, this house of death converted into a house of God-the grave and charnel-house a shrine! The church itself a grave, cold, damp, the light of day shut out, the altar a grave, the very walls graves. The life of these early believers had become so wretched, and dark, and tormented, that death might well be looked on as a refuge and rest, and to live and worship among the dead was to make companionship with a future happier than the present tempestlife. To live thus in the midst of darkness, in vast sepulchres, with the flickering lamp suspended as a ray dimly shining in an unknown future, rather than rendering the present life visible-to kneel to evening prayer, the sunset marking not the hour, to lie down at night in a charnelhouse; to rise again to morning prayer, the darkness of the night still shadowing the day, thus praying to the God of death rather than of life and light; thus to live and die was indeed to make the martyrs' blood the seed of the Church. |