[213]
This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity; and every habit
of life, and every form of his art developed themselves from the
seeking this bright, serene, resistless wisdom; and setting himself,
as a man, to do things evermore rightly and strongly;[214] not with
any ardent affection or ultimate hope; but with a resolute and
continent energy of will, as knowing that for failure there was no
consolation, and for sin there was no remission. And the Greek
architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, and
self-contained.
Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, which was
essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the
remission of sins; for which cause, it happens, too often, in certain
phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness themselves are partly
glorified, as if, the more you had to be healed of, the more divine
was the healing. The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a
continual contemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states of
purification from them; thus we have an architecture conceived in a
mingled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, partly severe, partly
luxuriant, which will bend itself to every one of our needs, and every
one of our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or
weak ourselves.
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