The 'Spirit' lives by an analogous process; but its proper food is the
wisdom of God.
In a like manner lives the 'Soul;' its tender instincts are to be
pastured upon the love of God.
Oh, marvellous condescension! The Infinite deigns to be appropriated as
the source of all life and growth by the finite!
In close connection with the threefold being of man, stand the Fine
Arts.
'Body.' Sculpture is the art of corporeal form, appealing to the eye as
the necessary medium for satisfying the corporeal sense of touch. It
gratifies this sense that 'ideal beauty' should breathe through solid,
tangible, and material forms. For the triune man longs for perfection in
his triune being. It should not astonish us that this art attained its
greatest perfection in the ages of classical antiquity; and that music
and painting, the symbolic arts of soul and spirit, should have attained
their highest excellence only after the advent of our sublime ideal
Christ.
'Spirit.' As seeing is the sense holding the closest relation with the
spirit or intellect, and light is the most spiritual element of
nature,--so painting, addressing itself to the spirit of man, must be
regarded as the most spiritual of the arts. Classic art became romantic
during the Christian era; Christianity impressed it with an almost
painful longing for the divine. Classic beauty was indeed there, but
with the expression of inadequacy to its internal consciousness,
oppressed with the grief of its fallen existence, and with the sadness
of an infinite longing on its ethereal countenance.
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