initely in their sight, and
ought not to have their help. And consider how the arts have thus
followed the worship of the crowd. You have paintings of saints and
angels, innumerable;--of petty courtiers, and contemptible or cruel
kings, innumerable. Few, how few you have, (but these, observe, almost
always by great painters) of the best men, or of their actions. But
think for yourselves,--I have no time now to enter upon the mighty
field, nor imagination enough to guide me beyond the threshold of
it,--think, what history might have been to us now;--nay, what a
different history that of all Europe might have become, if it had but
been the object both of the people to discern, and of their arts to
honour and bear record of, the great deeds of their worthiest men. And
if, instead of living, as they have always hitherto done, in a hellish
cloud of contention and revenge, lighted by fantastic dreams of cloudy
sanctities, they had sought to reward and punish justly, wherever reward
and punishment were due, but chiefly to reward; and at least rather to
bear testimony to the human acts which deserved God's anger or His
blessing, than only, in presumptuous imagination, to display the secrets
of Judgment, or the beatitudes of Eternity.

59. Such I conceive generally, though indeed with good arising out of
it, for every great evil brings some good in its backward eddies--such I
conceive to have been the deadly function of art in its ministry to
what, whether in heathen or Christian lands, and whether in the
pageantry of words, or colours, or fair forms, is truly, and in the deep
sense, to be called (idolatry)--the serving with the best of our hearts
and minds, some dear or sad fantasy which we have made for ourselves,
while we disobey the present call of the Master, who is not dead, and
who is not now fainting under His cross, but requiring us to take up
ours.

60. I pass to the second great function of religious art, the limitation
of the idea of Divine presence to particular localities. It is of course
impossible within my present limits to touch upon this power of art, as
employed on the temples of the gods of various religions; we will
examine that on future occasions. To-day, I want only to map out main
ideas, and I can do this best by speaking exclusively of this localising
influence as it affects our own faith.

Observe first, that the localisation is almost entirely dependent upon
human art. You must at least take a