ld seem just a ghastly and "unpardonable"
piece of realism. Realism of the most ghastly truthfulness, as to a
corpse in the grave, it certainly is. But although it may be questioned
whether such a picture should ever be painted, no one who looks through
the form to the thought that shapes it would pronounce even this awful
utterance "unpardonable."

There have been those who could see in this dead Christ,--lying rigid in
a green sarcophagus that throws over the waxen flesh the ghastly threat
of that decay which would follow if no miracle intervened,--there have
been those, I say, who could see in it only superb technique. And others
see only the negation of all idealism, if not of all faith.

Illustration: PLATE 10
CHRIST IN THE GRAVE
_Oils. Basel Museum_

Yet put this painting,--the acme of technical beauty as well as of
ruthless realism,--at the close of the ten Passion drawings, and I
venture to believe that the one coherent conception that runs through
them all will legitimately find its conclusion here.

Here He lies that surrendered Himself to the punishment of Sin and the
penalty of Death--for all men and all time. His pale lips are set with
the superhuman agony of the cry with which He paid the uttermost
farthing of that bond. Man has died for man, martyrs for faith; here God
has died unto Himself, for us. There has been no playing at death. All
the pitiless terrors of the grave are here, with Him who for love of us
has chosen to know Mortality "like at all points" with mortal men. What
He bore for us, shall we shrink from so much as realising? The great
eyes are fixed in a look whose penetrating, almost liquid sweetness
not even the rigor of the final anguish could obliterate. Divine
devotion,--devotion more than mortal,--still lingers in those sockets.
The heart may well dilate before this sight; the soul fall on its knees.
By each of those bloodstained steps, by the sting of this death, we have
been paid for. Here, here only,--as Holbein saw it,--is the leverage the
heathen philosopher vainly sighed for to move the world; God's
leverage, Infinite Love.

This is anything but a theological tangent. A great artist has
bequeathed us his beliefs,--drawn and painted in many works, with every
patient, virile, expressive power at his command. There has been enough
and to spare of shrieks or scoffs. A little humility and a little study
is in place, too. For the rest, let us not forget that this large
paint