A STUDY OF CHANNING'S "SYMPHONY" AS AN OUTLINE OF THE IDEAL LIFE AND
CHARACTER.
To the revival of learning in the fourteenth century, to the revival of
religion in the sixteenth, and the revival of liberty in the eighteenth
century must now be added the revival of the beautiful in this new era for
art. In former ages man was content if his house was dry, his coat was
warm, his tool strong. But now has come an era when man's house must have
beautiful walls, when woman's dress must have harmonious hues, when the
speaker's truth must be clothed in words of beauty; while in religion if
the worshiper once was content with a harsh hymn, now man best loves the
song that has a beautiful sentiment and a sweet tune. Always the useful had
a cash value. Now beauty has become a commodity. To-day, to hold his place,
the artisan must become an artist. The era of ugliness, with its clumsy
tools and ungainly garments, has gone forever. No longer content with
lending strength to coat or chair or car, manufacturers now vie with one
another in a struggle to make the garment take on lines of grace, and
colors soft and beautiful. Society seems to be standing upon the threshold
of the greatest art movement in history. Best of all this, revival of the
beautiful promises to be a permanent social possession.
Very brief and fitful that first art epoch when Phidias polished statues,
the very fragments of which are the despair of modern sculptors. All too
short also that era when Raphael and Botticelli brought the canvas into
what seemed the zenith of its perfection. It was as if the vestal virgin of
beauty had drawn near to fan the flickering light into a fierce flame only
to allow it quickly to die out again. But if other art epochs have been
soon followed by eras of ugliness and tyranny, it was because formerly the
patrician class alone was interested in the beautiful. In that far-off
time, Pericles had his palace and Athens her temple, but the common people
dwelt in mud huts, wore coats of sheepskin, and slept on beds of straw. The
beauty that was manifest in pictures, marbles, rich textures, bronzes,
belonged exclusively to the cathedral or the palace.
Now has come an era when art is diffused. Beauty is sprinkled all over the
instruments of dining-room, parlor and library. It is organized into
textures of cotton, wool and silk. Even in the poor man's cottage blossoms
break forth upon floor and walls, while vines festoon the humblest door.
Once, at great expense, a baron in France or Germany would send an artist
into Italy to copy some masterpiece of Titian or Tintoretto. Now modern
photography makes it possible for the poorest laborer to look upon the
semblance of great pictures, statues, cathedrals, landscapes--treasures
these once beyond the wealth of princes. Having made tools, books, travel,
home, religion to be life-teachers, God has now ordained the beautiful as
an apostle of the higher Christian life.
Recognizing the hand of God in every upward movement of society, we explain
this new enthusiasm for art upon the principle that beauty is the outer
sign of an inner perfection. Oft with lying skill men veneer the plaster
pillar with slabs of marble, and hide soft wood with strips of mahogany.
But beauty is no outer veneer. When ripeness enters the fruit within a soft
bloom steals over the peach without. When every drop of blood in the veins
is pure a beauteous flush overcasts the young girl's cheek. When summer
hath lent ripeness to the harvests God casts a golden hue over the sheaf
and lends a crimson flush to the autumn leaves. For beauty is ripeness,
maturity and strength. Therefore when the seer says, "God maketh everything
beautiful in its time," he indicates that God's handiwork is perfect work.
When some Wordsworth or Emerson leaves behind men's clumsy creations and
enters the fields where God's workmanship abounds, the poet finds the
ground "spotted with fire and gold in tints of flowers"; he finds the trees
hung with festooned vines; finds the forests uniting their branches in
cathedral arches; finds the winds making music down the long, leafy aisles;
finds the birds pouring forth notes in choiring anthems, while the very
clouds rise like golden incense toward an unseen throne. Though the
traveler journey far, he shall find no bud, no bough, no landscape or
mountain or ocean, that is not overcast with bloom and beauty.
We are not surprised therefore when we see that as man's arts and
industries go toward perfection they go toward beauty. Carry the coarse
flax up toward beauty and it becomes strong cloth. Carry the cocoon of a
worm up to beauty and it becomes a soft silken robe. Carry rude Attic
speech up to beauty and it becomes the language of Homer or Hesiod. Carry
the strange face or form tatooed upon the arm of the savage up to beauty
and it becomes a Madonna or a Transfiguration. Carry a stone altar and a
smoking sacrifice up to beauty and it becomes a Cologne cathedral or a
Westminster Abbey. Indeed, historians might use the beautiful as the
touchstone of human progress. The old milestones of growth were metals.
First came the age when arrows were tipped with flint. Then came the iron
age, when the spear had a metal point. The bronze age followed, lending
flexibility to ore hitherto unyielding. Later came the steel age, when
weapons that bruised gave place to the keen edge that cuts. Perhaps the
divinity chat represents our era will stand forth plated with oxide of
silver.
But his ideas of beauty would measure man's progress quite as accurately.
In that first rude age beauty was external. Man twisted gay feathers into
his hair, painted his cheeks red or yellow, wore rings of bright shells
about his neck. But our age is high because beauty has ceased to be mere
personal adornment. Man now seeks to make his books beautiful for the
intellect, his library and gallery beautiful for taste and imagination, his
temple beautiful for worship, his home beautiful in the interest of the
heart, his song and prayer not simply true, but beautiful with praise to
the unseen God. If in rude ages beauty was associated with physical
elements, the glory of our era is that beauty, unfolding from century to
century, is now increasingly associated with those moral qualities that
lend remembrance to mother and martyr, to hero and patriot and saint.
To-day, fortunately for society, this world-wide interest in art is
becoming spiritualized. From beautiful objects men are passing to beautiful
thoughts and deeds. We begin to hear much of the art of right living and
the science of character building. Having lent charm and value to column
and canvas, to marble and masterpiece, beauty now moves on to lend
loveliness to mind and heart. For it seems an incongruous thing for man to
adorn his cottage, lend charm to its walls and windows, make its ceilings
to be like the floor of heaven for beauty, while within his heart he
cherishes groveling littleness, slimy sin, light-winged evasions, brutal
passions. He whose body rides in a palace car must not carry a soul that is
like unto a savage. Having lingered long before the portrait of Antigone or
Cordelia, the young girl finds herself pledged to turn that ideal into life
and character. The copy of the Sistine Madonna hanging upon the wall asks
the woman who placed it there to realize in herself this glorious type of
motherhood.
When the admirers of Shakespeare bought the house in which their hero was
born, they planted in the garden the flowers which the poet loved. Passing
through the little wicket gate the pilgrim finds himself moving along a
perfumed path, while to his garments clings the odor of violets and roses,
sweet peas and buttercups, the columbine and honeysuckle--flowers these,
whose roots are in earth indeed, but whose beauty is borrowed from heaven.
From these grounds men have expelled the poison ivy, the deadly nightshade,
all burdocks and thistles. And the soul is a garden in which truth, purity,
patience, love, long suffering are qualities whiter than any lily and
sweeter than any rose, whose perfume never passes, whose beauty does not
fade. And having succeeded in transforming waste places into centers of
radiant beauty, man encourages the hope that he can carry his own reason,
judgment and ambition up to full symmetry and perfection.
What a transformation man has wrought in matter! Nature says, here is a
lump of mud; man answers, let it become a beautiful vase. Nature says, here
is a sweet briar; man answers, let it become a rose double and of many
hues. Nature says, here is a string and a block of wood; man answers, let
them be a sweet-voiced harp. Nature says, here is a daisy; Burns answers,
let it become a poem. Nature says, here is a piece of ochre and some iron
rust; Millet answers, let the colors become an Angelus. Nature says, here
is reason rude and untaught; man must answer, let the mind become as full
of thoughts as the sky of stars and more radiant. Nature says, here is a
rude affection; man must answer, let the heart become as full of love and
sympathy as the summer is full of ripeness and beauty. Nature says, here is
a conscience, train it; man should answer, let the conscience be as true to
Christ and God as a needle to the pole. Marvelous man's skill through the
fine arts! Wondrous, too, his handicrafts! But no picture ever painted, no
poem ever perfected, no temple ever builded is comparable for strength and
beauty to a full-orbed soul, matured through a widely trained reason and a
sober judgment--mellow in heart and conscience, pervaded throughout with
the spirit of Jesus Christ, the soul's master and model.