But as the spirit of prophecy consisted with the
avarice of Balaam and the disobedience of Saul, so God knows all the
stops of the heaven-gifted but self-corrupted artists, and, in spite of
themselves, has often made them discourse high harmonies, and give the
most eloquent and earnest enunciations of the very sentiments and
principles in which their own condemnation could be found clearly and
vividly written. The good seed, although divine, if there be no blessing
upon it, may indeed bring forth wild grapes, but these grapes are well
discerned, for there is, in the works of bad men, a taint, stain, and
jarring discord, blacker and louder exactly in proportion to their moral
deficiency. At best it is no part of our duty to examine into and
pronounce upon the frail characters of men, but rather to hold fast to
that which we can prove good, and feel to be ordained for our own
benefit.
It can, moreover, be fully proved that the artists, as a class, have
never been false to religion. From the poets of the dark ages sprang a
literature strange and marvellous, but full of naive faith, and bearing
striking witness to the activity of the human spirit even in those dim
centuries: I mean the literature of 'visions and legends.' And to
estimate the importance of these consolatory creations aright, we must
remember how precarious and miserable life then was, passed in constant
privation and poverty, menaced with increasing perils; and then consider
the fact that these legends kept constantly before the mind of the
oppressed people the consoling idea of a superintending Providence, who
numbers all our tears and hears our lightest sighs.
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