with regard to the second object, which it is thus proposed to ensure, the question will have to be met. Whether what will thus be gained is a sufficient counterbalance for that which must inevitably follow their universal adoption; viz., first, the omission of that which, whether the subject chosen be a person, or an event, must always in such subjects be an essential element; and, secondly, the liability to have introduced into our paintings that which not being required by the subject, would by its introduction be injurious to the reverent effect of the whole.

I. If we turn our thoughts backward for a moment, and try to recollect any particular picture of this kind which we may have seen, and then try to analyse in our own minds what that was which rendered a naturalistic representation—say, of our LORD-not merely unworthy, i.e., one which failed to give us all the ideas which are demanded in our conception of His Person, but positively offensive to us, it will be seen that what in all such cases was wanting, was the Divine element,—the absence of any sign, the symbol of His Godhead—that He is aught beyond what His form would proclaim Him to be. Where, in fact, a mere human representation of CHRIST Would fail in giving any adequate conception of Him to our minds, would be in its failing to mark that union of the Divine with the human nature, which is, to speak reverently, the great characteristic of CHRIST: that which, to our minds at least, distinguishes Him among the Divine Three, and, equally raises Him far above all of that race whose nature He has assumed into Himself. And it is just this point-this union of the two natures—which naturalistic principles must always fail in reaching, for the simple reason that there is nothing like it in all nature. Men cannot here copy or imitate, simply because there is nothing from which to copy their favourite principle of "direct imitation," is, in this instance at least, at fault; and they disdain to have recourse to non-natural expedients, consistently on their principles, because none such exist in

nature.

How then do they attempt to meet this difficulty? Not by the reverent expedient, adopted of old, of the nimbus or glory encircling the head, while there is infused into the form and countenance as much of majesty and dignity, as well as patient godlike sweetness, as art can compass: no such expedient as this necessary for the expression of that which is above nature, meets their favour, consistently, as has been observed because no such nimbus or glory was seen in His life on earth to enwrap His head; but the result is, what in fact is an untrue representation-a representation of only His human character; a suf fering dignified person, it is true, stands before us; but still only a dignified person-not " GoD manifest in the flesh."

And the same remark will apply, though of course with much less force, to their representations of saints. These fail, chiefly, in also what may be called the Divine element: they are, it may be, good men, and holy and true and patient men; men who have hazarded their lives for the faith; yea, and who would do so again, were it required of them. All this is marked in their figures and countenances, and we can see it and trace it, and admire its truthfulness. But when all this is done, is there not something more than this still wanting? It is

not so much good and holy, and true and patient men that we are thinking of when we name the worthies of old, but saints: not such men as we see around us, and meet every day and know, but something far higher than these more Godlike, more like Him Whose eminent servants they in life were. We desire to have in their representations something to mark that they are now not merely washed and sanctified, as we believe, such men are on earth, but glorified also with the light of that blessedness which is to be enjoyed only in the immediate presence of CHRIST. A saint, in its peculiar and technical sense, in the sense in which it becomes a word of art, is not merely a good and holy man, but a visibly glorified being.

Now to apply this to the question more immediately in hand: there is a similar want found in naturalistic representations of the great scenes and events of Scripture. In fact, here, in what is more peculiarly their own special field, the condemnation of naturalistic principles, as applied to devotional paintings, (and to such a class glass painting must be held to belong,) will be seen to be most strong.

These principles are satisfied if the events selected, as the subject of the picture, are given faithfully in all their details just as they occurred, or if that should be impossible, just as we may conceive them to have occurred. Now there is in all such scenes an element—to us the most important element-which, in neither of these ways, can naturalistic principles ever reach, for the very simple reason that it never could have met the eye of a spectator, but which, if it be omitted, entirely changes their character; i.e. the light in which these events affect men in their relationship to GOD. The view which a naturalistic painter takes of his subject is, in all cases, just that view, and no more, which a spectator, were he present at those scenes, might be conceived to take: whatever would not fall, or may be conceived not to have fallen, within the range of vision occupied by a man so placed would not, by his principle of direct imitation, fall within his view, and therefore could not legitimately be represented in his picture. Whenever, then, his subject be of such a nature that its real character could not be ascertained at the time by those who were present, there will always be danger, at any rate, of his version falling below the true dignity of his original, even if he is not guilty of positive mis-representation. And of such a nature, it can be shown, the events of Scripture really are.

Let his subject be that in which modern art more especially delights, and which is, in truth, the most momentous event which the world ever saw- -the Crucifixion. How very different does this now appear to us who know its true value and meaning from what it must have seemed to them who stood by and were witnesses of it! To us it stands forth as the highest and grandest moral act that the world has ever witnessed; to them who were present at it, either as spectators, and of course still more to them who were actors in it, all its finer features the moral constituents of the scene, the undying love which prompted it, the unflinching constancy that went through with it, the unhesitating submission to His FATHER'S will, the total absence of self, or any thought of self that marked the sacrifice-all these would be hidden, unseen, not because they were not there, but because there

were also there other elements which for the time would be of a more prominent character.

It can easily be conceived that, among the crowds who must have been present at that last and most impious scene, there may have been present many of vastly different shades of character and ways of thinking, and whose feelings, with regard to the act itself then being put into execution before their eyes, would also be vastly different. There would be there the energetic, earnest Peter, yet with his energy somewhat tempered and subdued by what had passed between himself and his LORD, and its consequent sorrow; and rising mingled with it and struggling into existence within his breast, the unwelcome consciousness of weakness: to a certainty there would not be wanting the faithful, loving John-type of a far different class of mind-conscious only of his own strong, unchanging love, and, in the strength of this, feeling and owning no weakness which that could not supply; to such the scene before them would be an act of the darkest blasphemy, an open defiance of GOD. To the earnest, hearty believer in the law, such as S. Paul before his conversion, it would be an act of simple merited justice, a becoming sacrifice to the majesty of the outraged law to the calculating practical Roman, in whose view everything must be sacrificed to the maintenance in its integrity of the Imperial sway, it would be a wise concession to the infuriated passions of the mob, a mere question of words and of their law, to which it was well for a ruler to give way at the cost of a single life, sooner than to risk an outburst among the people: to the soldiers it would be merely obeying their superior officers, without concern whether He were innocent or guilty of the charge laid against Him; their orders were plain and must be obeyed; they must put Him to death: to the half disciple, the undecided halter between two opinions, who could see much on both sides, and who therefore though not prepared to give up his faith in the law, was yet ready to acknowledge that the teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees, the accredited leaders of the people, was deficient in spirituality, savoured more of this world than of GOD, and who could also see what that was which made the Pharisees so clamorous for His death, it would be an act of murder: lastly, and marking most predominantly the character of the crowd, would be those who would enter heart and soul into what was being done, the bitter and malignant enemies of CHRIST: but to none of all these, not even to the most instructed of His disciples, would it be what it really was the closing scene of that which was to be the reconciliation of man to God.

Now it can be very readily imagined that in such a crowd, as it swayed to and fro under the influence of these various passions, heaving and swelling with a hoarse murmur as such crowds only can heave and swell, that which would most readily catch the eye of a spectator, supposing any such to have been present, would be this conflict of feelings, contrasted with one suffering and prostrate form, borne down with the weight of a superhuman sorrow; and could we further suppose such a spectator-supposing such a thing were possible-contemplating the scene with an artist's eye, this contrast would be the point he would select to bring out in his picture.

we

But, it may well be asked, should we relish such a picture?

Could

even say that it represented, truly for us, the Crucifixion? Could, i.e., such a picture of evil triumphant over good-and this would be its true character-represent man's triumph over evil? And such a triumph of man, in the Person of his great Representative and Head, the second Adam, a triumph over evil, the Crucifixion in reality was, even at the moment when to the eye of sense it seemed to be his final defeat. It may very safely be said that in such a picture would be wanting the to us most important element of a spiritual meaning; there would be truly there the conflict of human passions, elements most easily comprehended by the eye of sense; but there would be wanting every indication that might help to mark, like CHRIST's own mysterious words, "It is finished," that there was more in that sacrifice than men thought; every thing that might serve as the distant signs of the coming victory—the first yielding of the banded powers of evil, unseen as yet but by the eye of faith, the far-off sounds that herald the approaching conqueror, the first faint flushes, as it were, of the dawn on the world's long night of sin.

Or to take the same scene again, at another point of time, which is also a favourite moment with the painter: after the sacrifice is complete, and the lifeless form hangs from the cross in all the flaccidity of recent death, with every muscle and tendon relaxed, except those that are distorted with the unnatural position of the body. Here is what is, in fact, the most appalling feature of death-the total absence of all power and energy; the sign that man has indeed become that which the curse pronounced on him willed that he should become, a mere clod of earth, insensible as the soil beneath the feet of his fellow man. It is this which even in ordinary cases of death is so revolting to the thoughts of the natural man, before he has begun to look upon death in the light which revelation throws on it; and the effect of which is best seen in the shrinking fear of a child when suddenly made acquainted with death for the first time. But when to this, which is in itself revolting enough, there is added a representation of death in another stage of its progress, when it is as it were battling with its victim, in the writhing contortions of the bodies of the two thieves, can it be thought that this either represents faith's view of the sacrifice of CHRIST ? It may represent truly enough the usual features of death, such as we see it, and were it the object to depict its victory over man, and not on the contrary the victory of man over death, such a representation might be allowed. But when the very reverse of all this is the case, surely some other characteristic than powerlessness and defeat should be conspicuous. Yet this last is the prevailing characteristic in such pictures-powerlessness displayed in His Form Who is the sole fount of life.

Another instance is furnished to us in what is equally with the Crucifixion a favourite subject for pictorial illustration-the Nativity. It may well be a question whether naturalistic representation could ever be equal to the reverent treatment of so high and mysterious a subject. The traditional treatment of this subject, which is familiar to us, partakes largely of an ideal character: the scene of the event variously

rendered as a cave, or as an open shed, or again as in a rich flowery landscape with broken ruins, typical of the ruined state of men which the Child just born was again to restore; the symbolical ox and ass gazing on the Divine Infant, sometimes kneeling in His Presence ;-the Virgin Mother, not in the distressing weakness which accompanies the natural birth, but sitting up and fondling her Infant, or adoring Him as He lies before her: the Infant lying before her in the rude manger, or in its cradle, or on the ground, sometimes pillowed on a sheaf of wheat, typical of that mystical union which should hereafter make the material bread a mean for conveying His spiritual Presence to the faithful soul; with an allusion, also, doubtless, to His own words, "I am the Bread of Life :" by His side also the crown of thorns; or, perhaps, the same truth is otherwise expressed by the cross held in his hand; or again His relationship to the souls of men is hinted at in the bird— the type of the soul-resting on his hand; the lamb lying on the floor, as though it had been brought by the shepherds, a symbolical offering, to the Mysterious Child: in the distance, perhaps, the same shepherds attending their flocks, with the Angels, sometimes in the mystic number, Three, appearing to them: a thing, in point of time, naturalistically impossible to be given in one and the same picture. All these are familiar to us; and though they be all of such a nature as to be, in the modern view, liable to be called in question, some of them to be peremptorily banished as in the nature of things impossible: it may very fairly be doubted whether the mode, which a rigid regard to historical accuracy would in this case substitute in their place, as more in accordance with the course of nature which, it is said, is never unnecessarily interrupted, would as well represent what the Nativity really was to us an event out of the usual course of nature-the Advent of the LORD of Life, as many of the older representations; even though these be of so rude a character as to be symbols, to be looked upon as conventionally suggestive of the Nativity rather than as actually representative of it.

In point of fact, it may be said that the events recorded in Scripture, at least in their effects, are of so stupendous a kind-are so completely above aught else in time, as to be out of the reach of a principle which might still be perfectly adequate to the correct delineation of the ordinary events of human life. Though, even here, there may very well be a question whether the moral life of men does not always certainly it will in its grander features-present elements of a higher grade than can, at first, be seen even by the closest observer. Perhaps

1 A curious instance of a blending of two different principles of representation is exhibited in a window, lately put up in the parish church of Halifax, Yorkshire. In the upper compartment of a window in the lower compartments of which the Crucifixion, with two of its attendant scenes, our LORD before Caiaphas, and our LORD before Pilate, is given evidently on naturalistic principles,-there is represented the Resurrection, in which our LORD is seen rising from the tomb,-in this instance an open grave, not a cave, as the usual places of sepulture among the Jews were, and as we know this was, also, from what is recorded of it in Scripture, and as it is, also, rendered in the picture from which the window painting is copied,—and bearing in His hand the banner of the cross,--a thing certainly not true to nature; and the whole represented under a Gothic canopy.