martyrs, pictures of
crucifixions, dying saints, pale, faint sufferers, drooping heads,
long, thin arms, meager bones, poor, awkwardly hung dresses,
emaciated features celestially illuminated by faith and love,
expressed the Christian self denial and unearthliness.
Architecture enforced the same lesson as sculpture and painting.
Entering a cathedral, we at once feel the soul exalted, the flesh
degraded. The inside of the dome is itself a hollow cross, and we
walk there within the very witness work of martyrdom. The gorgeous
windows fling their red and green lights upon us like drops of
blood and decay. Funereal music wails and fades away along the dim
arches. Under our feet are gravestones and corruption. With the
colossal columns the soul climbs aloft, loosing itself from the
body, which sinks to the floor as a weary weed. And when we look
on one of these vast Gothic structures from without, so airy,
graceful, tender, transparent, it seems cut out of one piece, or
may be taken for an ethereal lace work of marble.

6 Die Romantische Schule, buch i.

Then only do we feel the power of the inspiration which
could so subdue even stone that it shines spectrally possessed,
and make the most insensate of materials voice forth the grand
teaching of Christianity, the triumph of the spirit over the
flesh.

In these six ways, therefore, by placing a tangible image of it in
the imagination through the resurrection of Christ, by the
powerful stirring of the springs of moral faith through the
persecutions that attended its confession, by the apparent
inspiration of the martyrs who died in its strength, by calling
out the latent force of the heart's affections that crave it, by
the moulding power of establishment, custom, and education, by the
spiritualizing, vision conjuring effect of its worship and art,
has Christianity done a work of incalculable extent in
strengthening the world's belief in a life to come.7

A remarkable evidence of the impression Christianity carried
before it is furnished by an incident in the history of the
missionary Paulinus. He had preached before Edwin, King of
Northumbria. An old earl stood up and said, "The life of man
seems, when compared with what is hidden, like the sparrow, who,
as you sit in your hall, with your thanes and attendants, warmed
by the blazing fire, flies through. As he flies through from door
to door, he enjoys a brief escape from the chilling storms of rain
and snow without.