If the greatest scientist is he who discerns some law of gravity that
explains the forward movement of all stars and planets, if the great
historian is he who unfolds one social principle that governs all nations,
so he is the greatest moral teacher who discovers some unit idea that
sweeps all details into one glorious unity, as did Channing when he said,
"Let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common."
All undefined and indefinable the spiritual glow and beauty that lie upon
the soul, like the soft bloom upon a ripe peach. What song is to the birds,
what culture is to the intellect, and eloquence is to the orator, that the
spiritual is to character. It is the soul made ample in faculty, fertile in
resource, struck through and through with ripeness, and inflected toward
Christ's own sympathy, self-sacrifice and love.
The spiritual element also explains the note of distinction in the highest
life and art. Many of our modern painters have failed, because they have
been fleshly. Mud shows in the bottom of their eyes. Their pictures are
indeed so shallow that "a fly could wade through them without wetting its
feet." Fra Angelico, preparing to paint, entered his closet, expelled every
evil thought, subdued every unholy ambition, flung away anger and jealousy
as one would fling away a club or dagger. Then, with face that shone with
the divine light, upon his knees he painted his angels and seraphs, and the
spiritual breaking through the common lent a radiant glow and an immortal
beauty to his priceless pictures.
Certain pictures of Rubens are of "the earth, earthy." In painting them,
the artist seems to have had no thought save of the flesh tints. The mood
and soul of Rubens' Venus was nothing--her body everything. Here, beauty is
only color deep. Paint is everything--spirit nothing. But with the great
artists in their greatest moods, paint is at best only an incident, and for
the soul aspirations and ideals as seen in vision hours are everything.
Hope, faith, love, joy, peace, sympathy, self-sacrifice,
humility--spiritual qualities these, that shine through the face, and
transform the life.