The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-11-02


 midst one greater than the Temple, | the object of it's love and adoration. The imposing sacrifices of the Temple l fingered yet in their minds But the ! Christians had b1oodless sacrifice, | of whose sad reality there were yet many eye-witnesses. Through Jesus Christ and in Him all She types and | A Aforeshadowings of the Old Testament had been fulfilled, and to Him and to His worship were henceforth ap- plicable all that the passages from Moses to Caiphas had brought forth in honor of the Divinity. The Jew ish sacrifice was rightly offered only at Jerusalem, but the Christian sac tions, from the rising of the to the going down thereof. Therefore there were to be as many temples as there were places of sacrifice, as there were communities of believers in Christ Therefore from the very beginning and by the very nature of Christian worship it was destined to less ways that love -of the beautiful which was inherent indeed in the old Jewish religion, but which that mar lrow and imperfect worship confined to one site and by immobilizing it robbed it of all that large freedom which is necessary to the artistic in stinct.
 From the earliest times the church has 1avished upon the House of God all that industry and art could accomplish. It is true that the first churches were plain uppor rooms in some private house, and that the riv- er-side, the sea-shore, the house-tops. the prison. and the desert were good enough for the devotionS and the re- 1igious acts of the first followers of society obtained a footing in the ] world, we see that the spirit of de- votion to the beauty of Gods house rose uppermost in the minds of the believers. They dwe1t yet for the most part. in the humble quarters of great cities; when driven out they worshipped in caves and cemeteries, or in lonely places. Christ Himself, the object of their adoration, had not disdained to be born in cave on a cold night and His followers could not pretend to more glorious be- ginning of the Church's life. But as the light that went out from Him gradually illumined the souls of all men, so the Church in the course of ages put forth a splendor and a dig
 nity of which her earliest origin gave but faint hope. What more un- ies of underground corridors and examiners. cShambers. in which the primitive and adore and listen to the word of God and the law of Christ! Y ct they beautified the cold walls with endless frescoes whose subjects, ment, illustrated the Christian dogma and filled the Christian heart with sentiments of hope and love. They carved in marble the tombs of martyrs on which they celebrated the Holy Mass, and they enriched these low and narrow chapels with objects tions that the classic technique was able to suggest. They were yet ~poor and persecuted races but they had the promises of the future. Their rites and ceremonies were only in embryonic state, but they felt that Christ had come as master of this world, and that one day the eternal hills would not hold marble or gems i shrined. upon the bleeding breast of His martyr, They knew that the glory of Lebanon and Carmel and sharon" all the rich and picturesque . prophecy of the Old Testament con- corning the external grandeur of Jerusalem, had its fulfilment in the Church of Christ. With time it grew I, clear to them that day was coming when the Gentiles would walk in her light and kings in the brightness of her rising, when the children of them that afflicted her would come bowin g down to her, and all that slandered her would worship the steps of her feet and call her the city of the Lord the Sion of the Holy One of Israel We may easily imagine that their souls were thrilled with holy de- light when from the readers place there echoed through the silent dim corridors of the catacombs the inn pressive words of Isaias: "The glory of Libanus shall come to thee; the fir tree. and the box-tree. and the pine tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary. and I will glorify the place of my feet. For brass will bring gold, and for iron will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron, and I will make thy visita tion peace and thy overseers justice" (Is. 1x.)
 So it came to pass the Roman Elm pire became Christian, and suddenly at all points there arose magnificent churches in honor of the persecuted Jesus. The masters of the world poured forth their inexhaustible wealth upon the churches of Rome and Constantinople, Alexandria and wealthy initiated East and West their magnificent generosity. Strange coin cidence! Just as the arts were per- ishing from the face O fthe earth they were all pressed into the service of the Church, and from that period she has been their only great, unfailing inspiring and prompting protectress. From the day they entered her ser vice they were transformed. Where as formerly they fattered the baser passions and seduced the souls of men through the innate love of the beauti- full, they became now the handmaids of the Church, and they learned from her how to instruct, elevate, and de- light our tainted nature without welding to it's unhappy and unholy instincts. The artist learned that in art as in all things there is no en- during success without basis of morality; that art for arts sake is an impiety; that there is no art without an ideal. and that there is no real beauty when it is separated from what true and good; that what is opposed to Christian truth and mor- ality cannot be worthy of the artists pencil or the sculptor's chise1. much less of popular admiration. Here, as in so many other things, the divine philosophy of Christ indicated the remedy for an age suffering like our own from corruption of refinement and excess of luxury and wealth. In the bowels of the earth the Christians had already evolved some principles of architectural style. And now they took the ancient Roman basilica, a model of regularity and massive strength, but cold and hard and un- sympathetic in it's outlines, like the