Complete. Chapter i., Book I., Part III., of “The Genius of Christianity.”

TO the fine arts, the sisters of poetry, we have now to direct our attention. Following the steps of the Christian religion, they acknowledged her for their mother the moment she appeared in the world; they lent her their terrestrial charms, and she conferred on them her divinity. Music noted down her hymns; painting represented her in her mournful triumphs; sculpture delighted in meditating with her among the tombs; and architecture built her temples sublime and melancholy as her thoughts.

  Plato has admirably defined the real nature of music. “We must not judge of music,” said he, “by the pleasure which it affords, nor prefer that kind which has no other object than pleasure, but that which contains in itself a resemblance to the beautiful.”

  Music, in fact, considered as an art, is an imitation of nature; its perfection, therefore, consists in representing the most beautiful nature possible. But pleasure is a matter of opinion which varies according to times, manners, and nations, and which cannot be the beautiful, since the beautiful has an absolute existence. Hence every institution that tends to purify the soul, to banish from it trouble and discord, and to promote the growth of virtue, is by this very quality favorable to the best music, or to the most perfect imitation of the beautiful. But if this institution is moreover of a religious nature, it then possesses the two essential conditions of harmony: the beautiful and the mysterious. Song has come to us from the angels, and symphony has its source in heaven.

  It is religion that causes the vestal to sigh amid the night in her peaceful habitation; it is religion that sings so sweetly beside the bed of affliction. To her Jeremias owed his lamentations and David the sublime effusions of his repentance. If, prouder under the ancient covenant, she depicted only the sorrows of monarchs and of prophets,—more modest, and not less royal, under the new law, her sighs are equally suited to the mighty and the weak, because in Jesus Christ she has found humility combined with greatness.

  The Christian religion, we may add, is essentially melodious, for this single reason, that she delights in solitude. Not that she has any antipathy to society; there, on the contrary, she appears highly amiable; but this celestial Philomela prefers the desert; she is coy and retiring beneath the roofs of men; she loves the forests better, for these are the palaces of her father and her ancient abode. Here she raises her voice to the skies amid the concerts of nature; nature is incessantly celebrating the praises of the Creator, and nothing can be more religious than the hymns chanted in concert with the winds by the oaks of the forest and the reeds of the desert.

  Thus the musician who would follow religion in all her relations is obliged to learn the art of imitating the harmonies of solitude. He ought to be acquainted with the melancholy notes of the waters and the trees; he ought to study the sound of the winds in the cloister and those murmurs that pervade the Gothic temple, the grass of the cemetery, and the vaults of death.

  Christianity has invented the organ and given sighs to brass itself. To her music owed its preservation in the barbarous ages; wherever she has erected her throne, there have arisen a people who sing as naturally as the birds of the air. Song is the daughter of prayer, and prayer is the companion of religion. She has civilized the savage, only by the means of hymns; and the Iroquois who would not submit to her doctrines was overcome by her concerts. O religion of peace! thou hast not, like other systems, inculcated the precepts of hatred and discord; thou hast taught mankind nothing but love and harmony.