man unanswerable testimony of nature against the Mosaic account of the creation, and professed to read, in the strata which compose the crust of our planet, a revelation entirely opposed to that of the written word. But they read each with different eyes; they broached the most absurd and puerile speculations concerning the primeval origin of our globe; they exposed their science to ridicule and contempt, and well nigh brought it to an inglorious grave. But just at this epoch a new and better race of inquirers took the inspired historian for the " of their counsel;" and, as the crippled giant of old received new strength the moment he touched his mother earth, so no sooner had geology embraced the holy mother of science, than she started into new and healthy life and vigorous progress. And now the book of Genesis is received as the basis of geological theories, as a map to guide inquiry, as a divine and perfect compend of results, in which every research and investigation must terminate. Geology and revelation now go hand in hand, geology compensating Moses for the new life, which she has drawn from him, by the clearness, with which she interprets his records, and the resistless proof, which she affords of his inspiration. II. We pass now to the fine arts; and would ascertain the extent of their indebtedness to the inspired volume. And first we will speak of music. This divine and heaventaught art early reached, under the religion of the Bible, a fuller maturity, than it ever attained in the Pagan world. The music of classic antiquity was sweet, soft, tender, polished to the last degree of refinement. But it lacked soul, fire, power. It was light and voluptuous in its style. Its syren strains were well suited to the feast and the dance, were the chosen language of earthly love, and floated as a gossamer veil over what was disgusting and repulsive in licentiousness and debauchery. Music was not regarded as an elevated and ennobling pursuit, but simply as an amusement for the idle and the gay, and a solace for the sad; and its cultivation was often left entirely to slaves, as unworthy the dignity of freemen. It formed indeed at times a part of worship; but then it frequently sank below, instead of rising above its wonted tone; for the altars of Bacchus and of Venus demanded lighter and more wanton lays, than were deemed decent for the domestic revel. But long before the rudest essays of the Attic lyre, the banks of the Red Sea had resounded with the choral anthem of a nation's gratitude to the God of Abraham, performed with a dignity, majesty, and perfectness of melody, which the theme alone could have inspired, and which no Pagan powers of song could have emulated. And long ere the halcyon days of Grecian minstrelsy, was gathered and established in Judea the most majestic and perfect choir that the world ever saw, a choir composed of the very élite of the people, embracing the whole tribe of Levi, arranged with skill and care into separate vocal and instrumental bands, furnished in magnificent profusion with the means of cultivating their sacred. art, supplied with music, led in song by the royal minstrel himself. Art too was here employed for a higher purpose than mere amusement. The monarch's harp was one of the most effectual means of elevating his countrymen from the barbarism in which he found them, to the comparative refinement, in which he left them. "It softened men of iron mould, It gave them virtues not their own: Till David's lyre grew mightier than his throne." In estimating the dignity and influence of music at this period, it must be borne in mind that the Psalms, now extant in the Bible, constituted for the most part the basis of this majestic national minstrelsy. In modern times, sacred music has been a distinct and superior branch of the art, a branch on all hands allowed to demand purer taste and loftier powers than any other, both in the composer and the performer. To the services of religion we are indebted for the noblest of all musical inventions, the organ, which could not have lent its slow and solemn tones to lighter than sacred lays, and would hardly have been sought out for the performance of profane melodies. Indeed the style of music, which is consecrated to sacred subjects and purposes, could never have existed without religion, or under a religious system less sublime than that of the Bible; for nothing else affords themes of sufficient magnitude and dignity to call it into being. Music is but the transcript in sound of the emotions of the human soul; and it is the immeasurable distance between fervent devotion to the infinite Creator and Father, and the loftiest and purest of earthly passions, that exalts sacred music so vastly above the highest grade of secular music. Thus the great masters of the art have chosen sacred themes, as alone capable of embodying their conceptions, and doing justice to their powers. Nor could their masterpieces have possibly been suggested, except by the spirit of the Bible; nor would they, now that they are produced, if they could be connected with any other class of themes, excite aught but a painful sense of irrelevancy and perversion. Let us imagine, for instance, the "Dead March in Saul," the "Stabat mater dolorosa" of Pergolesi, or the music of any of our truly sacred tunes or anthems, connected with any words or ideas other than those of fervent devotion; and we shall at once perceive that music owes its highest inspiration, its noblest achievements, solely to the Bible. We pass now to the arts of design, to painting and sculpture. In these, the superiority of Scripture subjects will appear from the fact, that modern artists have made choice of them, almost to the entire exclusion of those afforded by ancient history and mythology. Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and numerous other celebrated European painters and sculptors, expended all their fire of genius and their intensity of effort, and based their undying fame, on scenes drawn from the world-long drama of man's redemption. And those, of whose culminating stars America's infant Muse grows proud, Allston and Greenough, are following in the same path, and laying deep the foundations of their renown in the religious sensibilities of an admiring world. Merely physical beauty and grandeur are the highest attributes, that belong to the masterpieces of ancient art yet extant. To unite in an Apollo or a Venus the utmost symmetry of countenance and contour, and grace of attitude, to bring forth in prominent relief the brawny strength and lion-like ferocity of a Hercules, to corrugate with savage sternness the brow of a Jupiter, or (greatest achievement of all) to temper justly the eagle and the dove in the azure-eyed, but hard-featured Minerva; this was the highest aim of those, who in classic days sought the honors of the pencil and the chisel. But to portray the deep workings of the soul, the healing pangs of penitence, the holy calm of resignation, the earnest faith of prayer, the rapture of praise, the sunlight of heavenly love,—to catch and embody in ever-breathing canvass, or marble, those shadowy aspirations, those glimpses of a higher spirituality, which, rare as angels' visits, come and go as on the wings of the wind, to place before the eye traits of the godlike so warm with life, that the devout cannot gaze without pausing to adore the Invisible, this has been the aim and the achievement of none but Christian artists. Indeed, Christianity has introduced new and more divine forms of beauty and grandeur, even those of which piety in its various modifications is the soul and essence. To illustrate this, we need only name side by side several parallel subjects of classic and of Christian art. Compare then Venus and the Madonna; the former no more than the belle ideale of a modern coquette, and incapable of awakening other associations than those, which float around the mazes of the dance or the saloon of fashion; the latter, beaming with the mild light of devotion, a being partaking more of heaven than of earth, subduing the soul into that reverential affection, which we should feel for a chance visitant from a higher sphere; and this, in whatever posture the artist exhibits her, whether receiving with the upturned glance of faith the archangel's benediction, or caressing with a young mother's fondness the infant King of Kings, or standing in mute affliction by the cross, or stooping piteously from her radiant throne to succor trembling suppliants. Compare also the dying gladiator and the dying martyr; the former the personification of bare, brawny strength, with rigid muscles, clenched teeth, stoic brutality of visage, without a ray of moral beauty to relieve the gigantic, amazing, but repulsive outline the latter, with the light of faith beaming from his eye, the prayer of forgiveness or the song of triumph quivering on his parched lips, his countenance and attitude, that of a victor assuming his laurels, reaching for his crown. And then the groups, which the sacred scenes of Scripture furnish, how far do they surpass the most vaunted scenes of classic antiquity in grandeur, in pathos, in those elements of moral beauty, that touch the fountain of tears, and awaken the deepest feelings of the heart! We need here barely remind our readers of the Last Supper, as every one has seen it copied from the original of Leonardo da Vinci; and ask whether it be in the painter's power to choose a group, which could on his part demand equal vividness of conception, compass and originality of genius, or skill in execution, or which could so irresistibly entrance the senses, sympathies, and soul of the beholder. One of the most interesting departments of sculpture is that, whose office it is to adorn the spots consecrated to the ashes of the dead. In this department antiquity was singularly defective, garnishing sepulchres with the exploits of heroes, the wars ; of the gods, the effigies of Mercury, or some equally inane and puerile theme, which could never suggest a thought capable of drying a mourner's tears, or of assuaging their bitterness. In a little Swiss church, in a rude hamlet, a few miles from Berne, over the grave of a young and obscure mother and her infant, is erected an infinitely more noble monument of genius, than the mausoleums of all the statesmen and monarchs of Paganism could boast. Over the grave is placed a simple slab, which appears irregularly fractured as from beneath, and so widely cleft as to reveal what lies there; and under it is sculptured the mother in the habiliments of the grave, but with a countenance beaming with pious exultation; on one arm reposes the smiling, sleeping infant, the other is gently uplifted with a gesture of welcome to the descending Redeemer. The sublime conception, which the artist intended to embody, was of that day of final resurrection, when the earth shall quake, the tombs be rent, and the graves of the righteous yield up their dead. Who could gaze at such a monument, without feeling for the moment lifted above the fear and the power of death? Has classic mythology such inspiration for its artists? Before leaving this division of our subject, we would say a word on architecture. Here the Bible prescribes no form, suggests no model. But we are indebted to the religion and the spirit of the Bible, probably for the origin, certainly for the perfection and perpetuity, of the most grand and impressive of the architectural orders, the Gothic. Temples have in all ages been the chief representatives of the prevalent architectural taste and style; and the structure of temples among different nations has always borne a close analogy to the national religion. Thus the cavern is the element of the Egyptian style, and doubtless suggested the low, massive, immense, but tasteless structures, in which ancient Egypt abounded; and it was from the caverns of the earth or the deep, that she sought most of those loathsome deities, whose effigies filled her temples. The Grecian polytheism was anthropomorphic in its character, that is, its gods were in the likeness of men, and were indeed for the most part deified men. The Grecian architecture is accordingly strictly terrestrial in its style. The log cabin, man's first dwelling, was its element; and in all its modifications and refinements it retains the proportions of this element. This style is beautiful, chaste, elegant. By its faultlessness of symmetry it defies criticism. It is admirably VOL. XXXIII. 3D S. VOL. XV. NO. II. 21 |