Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-06-19
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 1891
WASHINGTON, June 1S.-Dr. Talmage
shows in this discourse how art may
Become one of the mightiest agencies
for the elevation and salvation of the
human race. The text is Isaiah ii, IL,
16, 1.-THE day of the Lord of hosts shall
be = upon all pleasant pictures"
Pictures are by some re1egated to
the realm Of the trivial, accidental,
sentimental or worldly, but my text
shows that God scrutSaizes pictures,
and, whether they are good or bad,
whether used for right or wrong pur-
poses, is a matter of divine observa-
ton 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
Seryient 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-
ers 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 triumph, and they have,
when in some respectable parlor or
public art gallery they can hang can
vas embarrassing to the good but fas-
cinating to the evil.
1t is not in a spirit of prudery, but
backed up by Gods eternal truth,
when l say that you have no right to
hang in your art rooms or your dwell
ing houses that which would be often
sive to good people il the figures pic
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 a public hall
you cannot with a group of friends
deliberately stand before and discuss,
ought to have a knife stabbed into 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
pictorials and unbecoming art CALLER
les. DeSpoil mans Imagination and
he becomes mere carcass. The show
windows of English and American cit
les, 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 it has not been carried Da-
yid'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 its 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 Pictures.
What a poor world this would be if
it were not for what my text calls
pleasant picturesr' / refer to your
memory and mine when l 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 cur minds were not gotten
from the Bible typology, but from the
Bible pictures. To prove the truth of
it in my own case, the other day took
up the old family Bible which l inner
tied. Sure enough, what 1 have car
ried 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 Shunammite's son, the massacre of
the innocents, Christ blessing little
children, the crucifixion and the last
judgment. My idea of all these is that
Of the old Bible engravings which !
scanned before l could read a word.
That is true with nine-tenths of you.
If I could swing open the door of your
foreheads, 1 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 it but little, if they read it at
ali; 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
ment. First, painters pencil for the