THE ART TEACHINGS OF THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH.* THERE are in

the present day two distinctive manners of thought, —they may respectively be termed the " progressive " and the " retrospective ;" the one lives in the present and the future, the other, glancing backwards, seeks to explain the present by the past and the past by the present, to evidence that all that has been, is, and will be is a sequence. The subject of Mr. Tyrwhitt's book is one of the links of a chain by which we may reach a distant and long-buried past. Pictorial representations of sacred subjects may be regarded from a threefold point of view,— as art pur et simple, as a powerful means of instruction, and as valuable documentary evidence. Sacred art must, we think, be regarded as the highest development of the artistic mind, and it is the most exacting, since it requires nothing less than an entire absence of self-consciousness. The art student may paint a fairly good secular picture, himself re- taining a considerable amount of self-consciousness and a desire that the stamp of his own individual hand should be recognised, in the pose of this figure and the grace of that drapery ; but it is otherwise with sacred art. As self advances, divine inspiration retires, and the picture becomes a mere representation of men and women, of luscious fruits and fair landscapes, portrayed with more or less appreciation of beauty. The painter of Christian pictures must be himself a Christian, working humbly in simplicity and truth. The object of sacred art should be, as Mr. Tyrwhitt tells us, "not to work on the spectator, but at the great subject," until he has comparatively little inclination to criticise the fore- shortening of an arm or the purity of a flesh-tint. But it is as evidencing the teaching, rather than the art of the Primitive Church, that Mr. Tyrwhitt has given us the results of careful and laborious work ; of inspection of the paintings in the Catacombs at Rome and Ravenna, with mosaics and other pro- ductions of art, and references to the writings of Bosio, Arnighi, and Bottari, and to Mr. Parker's collection of Roman and other photographs.

There has arisen in thoughtful minds, from time to time, a pre- judice against introducing any representations, whether on canvas or on stone, of the human form, or even of any created being, into places destined for worship. The Hebrew believed him- self forbidden to make such similitudes, the Mussulman also, but fancy and a craving to produce form and colour developed itself here in what we still term arabesque; if he might not portray living and breathing creatures, he occupied pencil and brush with scrolls, flowers, and monstrosities, such as never existed, and which must sooner or later degenerate, as they did, into the inventions of a debased taste. Independently of the prohibition contained in the Second Commandment, it was not surprising that the Hebrew should regard with abhorrence representations which were worshipped by the nations around -him, and which even his own people were prone to set up as gods. Our own Puritan forefathers were imbued with a similar feeling, when with an unsparing hand they swept

• The Art Teachings of the Primitive Church. By the Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt. London : Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

from our churches images and pictures, and introduced a severe and to many an unattractive form of worship. It becomes a question worthy of attention, in a day when educa- tion, secular and religious, occupies the thoughts of the people, whether we shall reject a very powerful means of instruc- tion because it is, if carelessly employed, capable of abuse and of bringing certain evils in its train. Let it be understood that the admission that pictures are an aid to instruction is an admis- sion of weakness, not necessarily on the part of the instructor, but on that of the instructed. To the educated, pictures are comparatively unnecessary, save as sources of pleasure ; to the child and the peasant they teach by the eye what the ear might fail to comprehend, and it is the untaught mind—he who needs art-teaching most—who is the most likely to regard art-repre- sentations as a fetiche.

The Primitive Church would be less in danger of falling into the sin of idolatry than the Church at a later period. When Christ had so recently ascended, the incense of his presence still pervaded his Church, and she would have little disposition to regard with adoration representations even of him, much less of his disciples. The early Christians lived in an atmosphere of art, they were sur- rounded by mosaics, frescoes, by inlaid pavements more or less elaborately executed. It is uncertain when first art was employed in the Early Church, but the first art teachings were, in all pro- bability, adaptations from heathen art ; certain symbols which we now regard as belonging exclusively to Christianity were, in reality, objects of common representation among the Gentiles, —such were the vine and the shepherd, which our Lord himself taught us to regard as symbolical of himself and of his Church. The vine and the shepherd were two of the most familiar objects of every-day life, and as such were some of the most frequently represented ; this illustrative adaptation of ob- jects of common life to explain the spiritual life is one of the most powerful means of preaching to the multitude. , In addition to symbolical teaching, the Primitive Church looked to Scripture for subjects for art-representations ; so long as she held fast to Scripture, she was not likely to fall away from Truth. Mr. Tyrwhitt apologises for carrying his subject beyond the Primitive into the Mediaeval Church ; be needs no apology for the chapters in which he leads the reader from the simplicity of the Early Church through various decades, until he is finally landed in the period which cherished representations of Dawes Macabre and parallel horrors. Indeed they are among the most interesting of a very interesting book.

In the absence of any authentic picture of our Lord, two distinct ideals have been represented. In the very early Church he was portrayed as the " Good Shepherd." Then men's minds became divided,—one party read, " He hath no form nor comeliness ;" the other, "Thou art fairer than the children of men." The Fathers differed on this point,—Justin, Clement of Alexandria, 'l'ertul- lian, with Basil, and Cyril of Alexandria, are for the uncomeliideal ; while Gregory of Nyssen, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Chry- sostom, and Theodoret are on the side of beauty. Possibly the distresses of Italy during the period from Alaric to Attila, and the settlement of the Lombards in the northern plains, gave an ascetic turn to the thoughts of the monks and cloistered clergy, who alone were able to keep up a practice of art. Those who suffered from the ravages of Alboin had little spirit for enjoy- ment of beauty. As time went on, it even seemed to them a ' snare and a delusion, and they ceased to wish even to pro- duce it, because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. As they looked for the day of the Lord to end the fury of the oppressor, so he became more and more the avenging Judge. "After the tenth century the Good Shepherd is seen no

more Christ appears more and more melancholy and terrible. He is the Rex tremendte majestatis of a Dies Ire." With this another change is to be observed—the Church has need of a ministry of intercession, the Virgin Mother is gradually intro- duced into the art-teaching of the period, first in conjunction with her Son, afterwards as mediator with that Son, then become the Judge.

The writings of the Middle Ages were of a similarly gloomy cast; it was sought to frighten men into goodness, by displaying what the writer or the painter conceived to be the torments of the con- demned. It is ever to be regarded as indicative of a low tone of thought and feeling, when slavish fear, instead of the higher prin- ciple of love, is employed by the Church as an agent to keep men in the right path. But we may not altogether judge past ages by the standard of our own times. To a half-civilised people, surrounded by tumult and bloodshed, monkish legends of Last Judgments,

terribly ghastly pictures of Douses Macabre, were not as revolt- ing as they are to us.

The introduction into the Medieval Church of vast numbers of pictures of apocryphal saints and miracles, is probably to be attributed to the fact, that the greatest number of art patrons were ecclesiastics, for whom pictures were painted to order ; an individual of unhealthy temperament had a dream which his brethren described as a divine revelation,—it became the subject

of a picture, and the abbey or church in which it reposed was enriched by the offerings of the credulous. We believe we are

right in assuming that wherever sensational pictures are sought to be introduced—and by " sensational " we mean realistic representations of our Lord's sufferings on the Cross, the martyr- dom of saints, &c.—there the teaching of the Church has lost its power, if it has not become positively corrupt, and the faith of the people is weak ; a craving for sensation, whether in litera- ture or art, is never a sign of health, for sensation and vigour are as wide apart as is the garish light of a gas-lit saloon from the full light of the sun. We think we are right in believing that for the first 300 years, whatever pictures may have been pressed into the service of Christ's Church, the Christian worship and sacraments were conducted in a more homely and natural temper ; faith and belief were strong enough to dispense with sensational works of art, which inspire at best but a feverish and unreal devotion. Soon after this period dangers appear to threaten from within, for the Council of Illiberis, about 305, ordains in one of its canons that "no picture shall be in a church, lest that which is worshipped or adored be painted on its walls." There must early have existed a difference of opinion on this subject, as we find at the end of the fourth century Paulinus of Nola ornamenting his Church of St. Felix and painting a catacomb with Scriptural subjects, and with pic- tures syinbolical of the Trinity ; while near the same time Epiphanius, going through a village in Palestine, and observing a curtain on which was painted a figure of Christ, or of some saint, hanging before the door of the church, rent it, and advised its being used as a winding-sheet for some poor man.

We are sorry that the limits of this notice forbid our discussing more fully the chapters devoted to the " Catacombs and their Paintings ;" " Mosaics ;" " The Cross ;" " The Lombards ;" and " The General Chapter," all of which are full of interest. One suggestion of Mr. Tyrwhitt's, which, being novel to ourselves, may be so to some of our readers, we will

give before we conclude. In a fourth or fifth-century relief of the Way to the Cross, in the new Lateran Museum, our Lord appears to be crowned with something resembling flowers. "This," says Mr. Tyrwhitt, " is of great interest, and in

particular to the author of these pages, who thinks it possible that the same idea may have struck the workman, which he re-

members occurred to him during many walks round Jerusalem,—

that the crowning with thorns was not an additional torture, but only a wreath, made in mockery, of the wild hyssop, which springs from the ruined walls of Solomon, and may have grown there as freely, except among Herod's restorations, on that central day of the world's history."

We think Mr. Tyrwhitt's book cannot fail to be acceptable to many, who, in this day of inquiry, desire to make themselves acquainted with the teaching of the Primitive Church, and it is certainly very interesting.