Connecticut western news., 1899-06-22
DIR. TALMAGE ON ART.
A MIGHTY AGENCY FOR THE SALIVA
 TON OF MANKIND.

Pictures Potent For Good or Evil as
 the Subjects Are Good Bad.
 Praise For American Artists-Need
 of Art Galleries.
 [Copyright. Louis Klopsch, 1S99.l
 WAsHINGToE, June 1S-Dr. Talmage shows ia this discourse how art may become one of the mightiest agencies for the elevation and salvation of the human race. The text is Isaiah H. 12, 16, ''The day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon all pleasant pictures"
 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 are good or bad, whether used for right or wrong pur- poses, Is a matter of divine observa- tion and arraignment. The divine mis- sion of pictures Is my subject. That the artists pencil and the engraver's knife have sometimes been made sub- servient to the kingdom of the bad Is frankly admitted. After the ashes and scoria were removed from Her culaneum and Pompeii the walls of those cities discovered to the explor- CTS a degradation in art which cannot be exaggerated. Satan and all his imps have always wanted the finger ing of the easel; they would rather have possession of that than the art of printing, for types are not so po- tent and quick for evil as pictures. The powers of darkness think they have gained a triumph, and they have, when in some respectable parlor or public art gallery they can hang can vas embarrassing to the good but fas- einating to the evil.
 It 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 dwell ing houses that which would be offen- sive to good people if the figures pie tured were alive in your parlor and the guests of your household. A picture that you have to hang in somewhat secluded place, or that in public hall you cannot with a group of friends deliberately stand before and discuss, ought to have knife stabbed into it at the top and cut clear through to the bottom, and a 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 >tok1 oIa les. Despoil a mans imagination and he becomes a mere carcass. The show windows of English and American cit ies, 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 multitudes of people But so have all the other arts been at times suborned of evil. How has mu- sic been bedraggled? Is there any place so low down in dissoluteness that into 1t has not been carried Da- :v1d's harp, and HandePs organ, and Gottschalk's piano, and Ole Bulls vio- lin? and the flute, which though named after so insignificant a thing as the Sicilian eel which has seven spots on the side like flute holes, yet for thou sands of years has had an exalted mis- sion? Architecture, born in the heart of him who made the worlds, under it's arches and across it's floors, what bacchanalian revelries have been en- acted!- 1t Is not against any of these arts that they have been so led into captivity!
 Pleasant Pfctures.
 What a poor world this would be if 1t were not for what my text calls pleasant picturesv I refer to your memory and mine when I ask if your knowledge of the Holy Scriptures has not been nightly augmented by the woodcuts 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 1t in my own case, the other day I took up the old family Bible which inher- ited. Sure enough, what I have car ried In my mind of Jacobs ladder was exactly the Bible engraving of Jacobs ladder, and so with Samson carrying of the gates of Gaza, Elisha restoring the Shunammite's son, the massacre of the innocents, Christ blessing little children, the crucifxion and the last judgment. My idea of all these is that of the old Bible engravfngs which I scanned before l could read a word. That Is true with nine-tenths of you. If 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 general, reading of the book, for the majority of the peo- pie read 1t but little, If 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 achieve inent. First, painters pencil for the favored few, and then engraver's plate or woodcut for millions on millions!
 What overwhelming commentary on the Bible, what reinforcement for pa- triarcbs, prophets, apostles and Christ, what distribution of Scriptural knowl- edge of all nations, in the paintings and engravings therefrom of Holman Hunts Christ In the Temple" Paul Veronese's "Magdalen Washing the Feet of Christi" RaphaePs Michael the Archangel," Albert Durers Drag on of the Apocalypse" Michael An gelo's Plague of the Fiery Serpents," Tint0retto's Flight Into Egypt" Ru- bens' Descent From the Cross," Leonardo Da VincPs Last Supper" Claude's Queen of Sheba," Bellini's Madonna" at Milan, Orcagna's Last Judgment" and hundreds of miles of pictures if they were put in line, illus trating, displaying, dramatizing, ira diating Bible truths until the Scrip lures are not today so much on paper as on canvas, not so much in ink as in all the colors of the spectrum. In 1883,