and progressive stages, was for the sole purpose of making statues of the gods; and when it forsook this purpose, and sophisticated itself into a preference of other ends, it went into a decline.  The Greek architecture, also, had its force, motive, and law in the work of building religious temples and shrines.  That the Greek Drama took its origin from the same cause, is familiar to all students in dramatic history.  And I have already shown that the Gothic Drama in England, in its upspring and through its earlier stages, was entirely the work of the Christian Church, and was purely religious in its purpose, matter, and use.  That the same holds in regard to our modern music, is too evident to need insisting on:  it all sprang and grew in the service of religion; religious thought and emotion were the shaping and informing spirit of it.  I have often thought that the right use of music, and perhaps that which drew it into being, could not be better illustrated than in “the sweet Singer of Israel,” who, when the evil spirit got into King Saul, took harp and voice, and with his minstrelsy charmed it out.  Probably, if David had undertaken to argue the evil spirit out, he would have just strengthened the possession; for the Devil was then, as now, an expert logician, but could not stand a divine song.

Thus the several forms of Art have had their source and principle deep in man’s religious nature:  all have come into being as so many projections or outgrowths of man’s religious life.  And it may well be questioned whether, without the motives and inspirations of religion, the human soul ever was, or ever can be, strong and free enough to produce any shape of art.  In, other words, it is only as the mind stands dressed in and for religion that the Creative Faculty of Art gets warmed and quickened into operation.  So that religion is most truly the vivifying power of Art in all its forms; and all works of art that do not proceed from a religious life in the mind are but imitations, and can never be any thing more.  Moreover the forms of Art have varied in mode, style, and character, according to the particular genius and spirit of the religion under which they grew.  There is a most intimate correspondence between the two.  This is manifestly true of the old Egyptian and Grecian art.  And it is equally true of Christian art, save as this has been more or less modified by imitation of those earlier works, and in so far as this imitative process has got the better of original inspiration, the result has always been a falling from the right virtue of Art.  For the Christian mind can never overtake the Greek mind in that style of Art which was original and proper to the latter.  Nothing but the peculiar genius of the Greek mythology could ever freely and spontaneously organize or incarnate itself in a body of that shape.  The genius of Christianity requires and naturally prompts a different body.  Nor can the soul of the latter ever be made to take on the