The Ministry of Art

Schiller, without intending it, perhaps, has described the first picture that the denizens of the new world ever gazed upon. It is an out-door picture, and it is luminous. The new schools of art, the Impressionists and the Luminists, are coming nearer to it, but up to the close of the nineteenth century no artist has yet succeeded in making a copy of it, for it was painted by God himself.

Time does not dim its beauty, nor does admiration pale before its constant reproduction, for the wonderful, mysterious, transitory Rainbow,--the world's first picture--can never become commonplace or common. Do you ask, Why? Then why does Nature ever repeat herself? Why does she not assume new forms? Why is the sun always round? Why are we never weary of the stories that the stars have to tell us every night? Why do the trees renew their verdure every spring, bringing fresh delight to our hearts, and why do they fade away every autumn, with still more brilliant hues? Why do we trample grass and prize the flowers of May? Or, to sum it all up, why did God make the world beautiful?

The answer comes: "He made it for the abode of man, and He endowed man with a faculty to appreciate and enjoy it." Just what this aesthetic element in man is has been discussed from Socrates to the present time. Pagan and Christian writers have disagreed widely in the discussion; but on one point they are all agreed, that the love of the beautiful is an inherent element in man apart from that which bids him provide for his physical needs. And it is this aesthetic element that finds expression through art. Art, therefore, has a mission in the world, and its ministry cannot be overlooked. Art, then, is the effort of the inner man to express something higher than himself. It appears under different forms--Phidias carves it, Raphael paints it, Handel signs it, Shakespeare writes it; but it is all the same--the effort of the inner man to get beyond physical limitations, to find a language for the soul. Since art, then, in every form is the result of intelligent thought, the ministry of art must be an appeal to man's higher, emotional, spiritual nature.

A history of the ministry of art would take us back through the ages of recorded history, then on through the labyrinth of legendary lore, and yet there would be proof of the existence of art anterior to all. As soon as man trod the earth, moist with rain, and saw the impress of his foot, he learned that moist clay could be moulded; when the heat of the sun made the clay dry and the impress of his foot remained, he learned that heat would solidify his moulds of clay, and man became "a potter." The potter's art, called Keramic, from Keramos, the chosen god of potters, is the oldest, the most widely diffused, the most useful, and one of the most beautiful of the arts that have ministered unto man.

Caves in the rocks are reported to have been the earliest abodes of man, wherein he found shelter from storm and heat, and refuge from wild beasts; but as the potter's art grew, he learned that he could build huts upon the plain, out of adobe, or sun-burnt brick. The hut grew into a house, the house into a palace, the palace into a temple, and man became an Architect.

Man became a sculptor when he began to copy form. He could drink from the hollow of his hand; he copied its form and made a cup and other vessels for holding water. Then came clay tablets with forms impressed upon them by which he recorded his thoughts and kept alive the memory of his dead.

Learned men of the nineteenth century are still translating the inscribed tablets of the ancients, and consider them more authentic than written history. But it was reserved for the Greeks to perfect the art of copying the human form. Their gods were as man, and the Sculptor's Art was brought to perfection when it was devoted exclusively to the representation of the gods whom they worshipped.

Greek Architecture and Sculpture reached a perfection that has never been surpassed. But it was not until the immortal Phidias began to tint his statues, with which he adorned the Parthenon, on the Acropolis of Athens, that the people in the valley, passing to and from their daily avocations, began to throw kisses to their gods upon the sacred Mount. Scientists tell us that color is the soul of matter, that nothing exists without it.

When the potter broke branches from the trees and shrubs to make his fire, that he might solidify his moulds of clay, he found his hands stained with color. He had seen the rainbow in the sky; he now found that the same colors existed on the earth, and man became a Painter, or a copier in color. But why should streaks of color over his clay-cups and household utensils give him pleasure? Why did his uneducated mind suggest garments of leaves and the fur of animals and a headgear of gay feathers? Was it not because of his higher nature?

The Arch of Promise might have been black, but would it then have been beautiful? Could it have aroused the emotion of the inner, spiritual man? This brings us, then, a step higher in the Ministry of Art. Man could have been a potter, an architect and a sculptor without the use of color, but the mission of art would have been incomplete. When the potter began to put color on his moulds of clay, he elevated them above the merely useful.

Place a pure white cup of the thinnest china beside one that bears ever so light or delicate a tint; the one suggests the practical use, the other produces an emotion, and we exclaim, "How beautiful!"

"The beautiful" in earth and sky and sea, in mountain, rock and valley, is spread before us, until, at last, looking abroad upon God's beautiful world, we are forced to exclaim: "The Hand that made thee is Divine!"

But it was not until Christianity overspread the earth that Painting, called the "Silent Art," reached its highest development.

The Color Bow had long been in the sky when men, seized at last as by an inspiration, began to transfer its colors to plastered walls and wooden panels and canvas cloth, that they might tell anew "the Story of the Cross." Then, men of every civilized nation heard of the soul-painting in the South of Europe, where men prayed before they began to paint their ideal visions of the blessed Mary and her Holy Child.

And yet the soul of man found a fuller expression when Music, "The Winged Art," burst forth in perfection, with "mingled voices and strings"--an art not bounded by space, requiring no eye to see, only the soul to listen.

It seemed at last that the climax of art was reached; the soul was in touch with the Divine. But the message of Art can never be read to the end so long as the earth remains beautiful and man lives to leave the impress of his foot upon its clay.

Goethe says:

"God appears to us in the first place through the life of the Universe; in the second place, through the mind of man. The second place is not less sacred than the first. The first is called Nature, the second is called Art."