litical
and philosophical speculation.

The books of the Old Testament, as distinguished from all other early
writings, are thus prepared for an everlasting influence over humanity;
and, finally, Christ himself, setting the concluding example to the
conduct and thoughts of men, spends nearly His whole life in the fields,
the mountains, or the small country villages of Judea; and in the very
closing scenes of His life, will not so much as sleep within the walls
of Jerusalem, but rests at the little village of Bethphage, walking in
the morning, and returning in the evening, through the peaceful avenues
of the Mount of Olives, to and from His work of teaching in the temple.

81. It would thus naturally follow, both from the general tone and
teaching of the Scriptures, and from the example of our Lord himself,
that wherever Christianity was preached and accepted, there would be an
immediate interest awakened in the works of God, as seen in the natural
world: and, accordingly, this is the second universal and distinctive
character of Christian art, as distinguished from all pagan work; the
first being a peculiar spirituality in its conception of the human form,
preferring holiness of expression and strength of character, to beauty
of features or of body; and the second, as I say, its intense fondness
for natural objects--animals, leaves, and flowers,--inducing an
immediate transformation of the cold and lifeless pagan ornamentation
into vivid imagery of nature. Of course this manifestation of feeling
was at first checked by the circumstances under which the Christian
religion was disseminated. The art of the first three centuries is
entirely subordinate,--restrained partly by persecution, partly by a
high spirituality, which cared much more about preaching than painting;
and then when, under Constantine, Christianity became the religion of
the Roman empire, myriads of persons gave the aid of their wealth and of
their art to the new religion, who were Christians in nothing but the
name, and who decorated a Christian temple just as they would have
decorated a pagan one, merely because the new religion had become
Imperial. Then, just as the new art was beginning to assume a
distinctive form, down came the northern barbarians upon it; and all
their superstitions had to be leavened with it, and all their hard hands
and hearts softened by it, before their art could appear in anything
like a characteristic form. The warfare in whi