The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1888-10-29
PICTURESHAVEA MISSION
ALL CERTAIN TO BE A POWER
FOR GOOD OR EVIL.

|
Talmage Fixes Standard by Which
the Line Should be Drawn-All the
Arts at Times Suborned to Evil
Every City Needs an Art Gallery.
BROOKLYN, Oct 2S-Rev. T. Dewitt
Talnage, d. D., preached at the tabernacle
this morning. A vast congregation at
tended the service. The pastor expounded
a chapter about the room of imagery In
Ezekiel, after which the hymn beginning
"Thine earthly Sabbaths Lord we love,
But there's a nobler rest above"
was sung. Prof Browne presided at the
grand organ and rendered concerto in B
fiat by Handel. The subject of Dr. Tai
mags's discourse was 1.-THE Divine Mission
of Pictures" HIS text was Isaiah, H., parts
of tue twelfth and sixteenth verses: "The
way of the Lord of Hosts saall be upon all
pleasant pictures" He said:
Pictures are by some relegated to the
realm of the trivial accidental, sentimental
or worldly, but my text shows that God
scrutinizes pictures, and whether they ars
good or bad, whether used for right or
sTrong purposes, is a matter of divine OBJ
servatlon and arraignment.
The divine mission of pictures is my sub
jeot.
That the artists pencil and the engraver.s
knife have sometimes been made SUBJ
servient to the kingdom of the bad is frank
ly admitted. After the ashes and scoria
were removed from Herculaneum and
Pompeii the walls of those cities discovered
to the explorers degradation in art which
cannot be exaggerated. Satan and all his
imps have always wanted the lingering Of
the EASEL they would rather have possession
lfnf hat flofa hn ~ of fnr
are not so potent and quick for evil as pic
lures. The powers of darkness thiuk they
have gained a triumph, and they have.
when in some respectable parlor or public
art gallery they can hang canvas embar-
rassing to the good, but fascinating to the
evil.
1t is not in spirit of prudery, but backed
up by Gods eternal truth when / say that
you have no right to hang in your art
rooms or your dwelling houses that which
would be offensive to good people if the
figures pictured were alive 10 your parlor
and the guests of your household. A pic
ture that you would have to hang in a some-
what secluded place. or that in a public hall
you cannot with group of friends deliber-
ately stand before and discuss, ought to
have knife stabbed tnto it at the top and
cut clear through to the bottom, and stout
finger thrust in on the right side ripping
clear through to the left. Pliny, the elder,
lost his life by going near enough TO see the
inside of Vesuvius, and the farther you can
stand off from the burning crater of sin,
the better. Never till the books of the last
day are opened shall we know what has
been the dire harvest of evil pictorias
and unbecoming art galleries Despoil
mans imagination aud be becomes moral
carcass. The show windows of English and
American cities in which the low theaters
have sometimes hung long lines of brazen
actors and actresses in style insulting TO all
propriety, have made a broad path TO death
for mutitudes Of people. But so have all
the other arts been at times suborned of
evil How has music been bedraggledl Is
there any place so low down in dissolute-
ness that into IL has not been carried David's
harp, and Handel's organ, and Gottschalk's
piano, and Ole Bulls violin; and the
flute, which though named after
so insignificant thing as the
Sicilian eel, which has seven spots on the
side like flute holes, yet for thousands of
years has had an exalted mission. Archi-
lecture, born in the heart of him who made
the worlds, under its arches and across it'd
floors what Bacchanalian revelries have
been enactedl IL is not against any Of these
arts that they have been so led into cap
tivity. What a poor world thic would be
If 1t were not for what my text calls "pleas-
ant picturesp refer to your memory and
mine when | ask il your knowledge of the
mented by the wood cuts or engravings
in the old family Bible, which father and
mother read out of, and laid on the table in
the old homestead when you were boys and
girls. The Bible scenes which we all carry
in our minds were not gotten from the
Bible typology, but from the Bible
pictures. To prove the truth Of
IL in my own case, the other day I
took up the old family Bible which inher-
tied. Sure enough, what have carried in
my mind of Jacobs ladder was exactly the
Bible engraving Of Jacobs ladder; and so
with Samson carrying off the gates of GAIA
Elisha restoring the Summarizes son; the
massacre of the innocents; Christ blessing
little children; the Crucif1ction and the
Last Judgment My idea cs all these is
that of the old Bible engravings which I
scanned before / could read word That
is true with nine-tenths Of you. IL could
swing open the door of your foreheads I
would find that you are walking picture
galleries. The great intelligence abroad
about the Bible did not come from the gem
eral reading of the book, for the majority
OF the people read it but little, II they
read it at all but all the sacred scenes have
been put before the great masses,
and not printers ink but the
pictorial art must have the credit OF the
achievement First, painters pencil for
the favored few, and then engraver's plate
or woodcut for millions on millionsl What
overwhelming commentary on the Bible;
what reinforcement for patriarchs. proph-
cts, apostles and Christ; what distribution
of scriptural knowledge of all nations, in
the paintings and engravings therefrom Of
Holman Hunts "Christ ia the Temples
Paul Veroneses "Magdalen Washing the
Feet of Christ" Raphasl's michael the
Arehangel,n Albert Durers dragon OF tho
Apocalypse Michael Angeles Plague OF
the Fiery Serpents," Tintoret's "Fiignt into
Egypt, Rubens' descent from tue Cross"
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper,n
Claude's Queen Of Sheba," Bellini's ma
donna at Milan" Orcagna's Last Judg-
ment," and hundreds of miles Of pictures, IL
they were put in line, illustrating. display
ing, dramatizing, irradicating Bible truths
until the Scriptures are not to-day so much
on paper as on canvas; not so much In ink
as In all the colors OF the spectrum. In 1888
forth from Strasburg, Germany, there came
child that was TO eclipse in speed and bold
ness and grandeur anything and everything
that the world had seen since the first color
appeared on the sky at the creation, Paul
Gus av Dore At eleven years of age he
published marvellous Autographs OF his own.
Saying nothing of what he did for Milton's
a. "A