her due meed of wisdom to Pallas, to distinguish the swiftness of Hermes from the strength of Heracles, or to contrast the virginal grace of Artemis with the abundance of Aphrodite’s charms.  At the same time the spirituality that gave its character to each Greek deity, was not such that, even in thought, it could be dissociated from corporeal form.  The Greeks thought their gods as incarnate persons; and all the artist had to see to, was that this incarnate personality should be impressive in his marble.

Christianity, on the other hand, made the moral and spiritual nature of man all-essential.  It sprang from an earlier religion, that judged it impious to give any form to God.  The body and its terrestrial activity occupied but a subordinate position in its system.  It was the life of the soul, separable from this frame of flesh, and destined to endure when earth and all that it contains had ended—­a life that upon this planet was continued conflict and aspiring struggle—­which the arts, insofar as they became its instrument, were called upon to illustrate.  It was the worship of a Deity, all spirit, to be sought on no one sacred hill, to be adored in no transcendent shape, that they were bound to heighten.  The most highly prized among the Christian virtues had no necessary connection with beauty of feature or strength of limb.  Such beauty and such strength at any rate were accidental, not essential.  A Greek faun could not but be graceful; a Greek hero was of necessity vigorous.  But S. Stephen might be steadfast to the death without physical charm; S. Anthony might put to flight the devils of the flesh without muscular force.  It is clear that the radiant physical perfection proper to the deities of Greek sculpture was not sufficient in this sphere.

Again, the most stirring episodes of the Christian mythology involved pain and perturbation of the spirit; the victories of the Christian athletes were won in conflicts carried on within their hearts and souls—­“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers,” demoniac leaders of spiritual legions.  It is, therefore, no less clear that the tranquillity and serenity of the Hellenic ideal, so necessary to consummate sculpture, was here out of place.  How could the Last Judgment, that day of wrath, when every soul, however insignificant on earth, will play the first part for one moment in an awful tragedy, be properly expressed in plastic form, harmonious and pleasing?  And supposing that the artist should abandon the attempt to exclude ugliness and discord, pain and confusion, from his representation of the Dies Irae, how could he succeed in setting forth by the sole medium of the human body the anxiety and anguish of the soul at such a time?  The physical form, instead of being adequate to the ideas expressed, and therefore helpful to the artist, is a positive embarrassment, a source of weakness.  The most powerful pictorial or sculpturesque