many, occasionally some of eminence,
who set their faces against the connexion of worship with art; thus
Tertullian of old had manifested his displeasure against Hermogenes, on
account of the two deadly sins into which he had fallen, painting and
marriage; but Gnostic Christianity had approved, as Roman Christianity
was now to approve, of their union. To the Gnostics we owe the earliest
examples of our sacred images. The countenance of our Saviour, along
with those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, appears on some of their
engraved gems and seals. Among the earlier fathers--Justin Martyn and
Tertullian--there was an impression that the personal appearance of our
Lord was ungainly; that he was short of stature; and, at a later period
Cyril says, mean of aspect "even beyond the ordinary race of men." But
these unsuitable delineations were generally corrected in the fourth
century, it being then recognised that God could not dwell in a humble
form or low stature. The model eventually received was perhaps that
described in the spurious epistle of Lentulus to the Roman senate: "He
was a man of tall and well-proportioned form; his countenance severe and
impressive, so as to move the beholders at once with love and awe. His
hair was of an amber colour, reaching to his ears with no radiation, and
standing up from his ears clustering and bright, and flowing down over
his shoulders, parted on the top according to the fashion of the
Nazarenes. The brow high and open; the complexion clear, with a delicate
tinge of red; the aspect frank and pleasing; the nose and mouth finely
formed; the beard thick, parted, and of the colour of the hair; the eyes
blue, and exceedingly bright." Subsequently the oval countenance assumed
an air of melancholy, which, though eminently suggestive, can hardly be
considered as the type of manly beauty.

[Sidenote: and of the Virgin.]

At first the cross was without any adornment; it next had a lamb at the
foot; and eventually became the crucifix, sanctified with the form of
the dying Saviour. Of the Virgin Mary, destined in later times to
furnish so many beautiful types of female loveliness, the earliest
representations are veiled. The Egyptian sculptors had thus depicted
Isis; the first form of the Virgin and child was the counterpart of Isis
and Horus. St. Augustine says her countenance was unknown; there
appears, however, to have been a very early Christian tradition that in
complexion she was a brunett