a
material expression, a tangible demonstration of itself. Like the fabled
Narcissus, it yearned for its own image. Hence the joy and luxury of the
ecclesiastical buildings of that period. They were the very blossoming
of the tree of knowledge. This was, indeed, an unenlightened, perhaps
a superstitious principle of worship; but it was enthusiastic,
self-sacrificing, and chivalrous. It, indeed, sent the stylite to his
pillar, the hermit to the wilderness, the ascetic to the scourge and
hair-cloth shirt; but it also led the warrior to the Holy Land, the
beggar to the castle-hearth, and the workman to the building of the
House of God. It is no wonder that a religion born thus in childlike
fervor, and seeking expression in outward signs, built upward. It is
no wonder that out of the prosaic elements of the roof it made the
spiritual essence of the spire. If we look through the whole range of
architectural forms in classic or mediaeval times, we shall find no one
so indicative of any human emotion as this simple outline is of the
highest of all emotions,--prayer. It is a significant fact, that the
sentiment of aspiration is nowhere hinted at in Classic Art, and we look
in vain for it in all pagan architectures. This is not surprising.
The worshippers who built in those schools demonstrated there all the
noblest ideas they were capable of,--intellectual beauty, dignity,
power, truth, chastity, courage, and all the other virtues cherished in
their theologies; but their personal relations with any higher sphere of
existence, vague and undefined as they were, called for no expression in
their temples, and obtained none.

The pyramidal form has ever possessed peculiar fascinations for men,
and, from its simplicity, grandeur, and power, has been used in all ages
with innumerable modifications in those structures whose object was to
impress and overawe,--as in the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of India
and Mexico, and in all the earliest funereal monuments. It involved a
rude symbolism, which recommended itself to the barbarous childhood
of nations. But it was not until the pyramid was sharpened and
spiritualized into the spire that it gained its completest triumph over
the secret emotions of men. The Egyptians made the nearest approach
to it in the obelisk. That mysterious people felt very keenly the
suggestiveness of the pyramidal form, and refined the language of
its sentiment into some very beautiful expressions. Yet between