The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1875-05-01

NiSSt hhu host apiuihs eApciiSuSSoi VI hoeto
of other souls. Here If we have natures
rich and sensitive enough to be capable of
such height, we experience the sublime
ecstacy of self annihilation in God, the
sense Of our nothingness in the sense of
his infnitude. Despite our evenescance
as pilgrims fitting across this slender
isthmus of middle state, We reach out each
way over the long generations of the past
and future and appropriate the diyinest ele-
ments of their experience, make their
grandcst inspirations and triumphs our
own, dilate and burn with the raptures of
their faith, are healed with the consola-
tion they knew and filed with Fremont
tions of the heavenly peace into which
they have passed
The ecclesiastical idea chained the whole
epoch from the eleventh to the fifteenth
century, rolling wave after wave of its
contagious fervor through the Christian
nations, and leaving these peerless edifces
scattered over half of Europe as its tro-
phies. Tho doctrines and hopes of Chris.
tianity were taken into the social imagin-
alton Of Christendom with such realizing
vividness that il took FIRE under them with
creative impulse, and the people began to
build. Moved by common desire to per-
petuate their faith in sensible forms, entire
populations toiled at the sacred task age
after age, lavishing all that they held most
precious on the work. The results which
they produced were less the products of
individual designers than exhalations of
the Imagination, concretions Of tho feeling
of society, symbolical embodiments of a
common faith, and public inspiration.
The great artists in whom this impulse of
the age rendered its height, who contrived
and oversaw the marvellous erections, are
in most instances utterly unknown. This
lofty self abnegation, this hiding away of
pride and vanity in sacred oblivion, this
fusion Of private feeling in public feeling,
of man in God, is profoundly religious and
is most appropriate in work symbolical
of religion, and surely those meek and
patient builders have their reward.
Let me now endeavor to enforce the
foregoing thoughts by special illustration.
The influence of the mere architecture
itself Of the finest medieval churches, and
the meaning it mutcly struggles to arti-
culate, repeatedly produced an almos,
entrancingly religious effect. Pausing be.
fore the grand perspectives Of Salisbury,
Rouen, Strasburg, one feels in each inst
ance, while he gazes, as if the aspirations
of millions of believing souls had suddenly
materialized themselves on their way to
heaven and stopped cathedral. "The
music-like sweetness Of some of these
structures suggest that they are transla-
tions into visible forms of the delicate
caroling of some band of celestials. The
chords of exquisite lines of small arches
that sweep along in successive ranges flow
out with effects like audible harmonies.
They are successive waves Of beauty,
which rolled along after one another till, in
the distance, they dissolved into light
When an American, representative of
this young and rash Democracy, confronts
the venerable antiquity, the accumulated
beliefs and affections aud sorrows, the
victorious perseverance, the awful authori.
ty typifed in the old churches Of Europe
he experiences religious impression in
the feeling that although he and his are
but momentary vapors, these are things
which endure forever. Though he arose
but yesterday, and dies tomorrow, there
were shadowy ayes full of men before, and
will be mysterious ages full Of men after.
| well remember with what vivid energy
this truth was taught me us listened to a
chant Of the monks in the Church Of San
Lorenzo at Florence. leaned against
marble pillar alone, and gave myself up to
the sentiment Of the place and the music.
crashes of echo, slowly faded in
the distant arches, and were lost in the
swallowing dome. Yonder choir are not
aeeting men, here to-day, gone tomorrow,
who sing transient strains of sadness and
sxultation. They are an everlasting priest
hood, singing the glory aud grief of the
world. 1t is humanity herself giving voice
10 her plans and plants, and she will still
be giving them the same voice when l
shall have been in the dust a thousand
years.
AT Bologna turned aside one day from
'tiaing dust and glare of the noon and sat
down on the marble steps of a side chapel,
N solemn old church, whose mighty spaces
we're filed with GOODNESS aud shadows
orooded over by the spirit Of quiet and
'anctity. The multitudiuous clainor and
'ustlo Of the city stole in and rolled fad
ngly along the dim arches and vaults over.
head like an ocean of sighs. Under my
Get the worn Inscriptions vainly sought to
ell the names Of those who for many
sentury had been sleeping there 50 we'll.