Chapter XI: Symbols and Sacraments

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HE artist has usually used one of two methods. He has begun with an idea and then selected some specific object to represent his idea; or he has looked upon an object in such a way as to see its ideal significance. In the one case we see his idea objectified, in the other the object idealized. These methods are Classicism and Romanticism in the history of the arts. In religion, they are Symbolism and Sacramentalism.

Almost everyone will readily think of examples of this fact. A mural decoration in a courthouse, for instance, begins with a conception of the majesty of the law and portrays the theme by a series of figures intended to symbolize it. Statues, paintings, tableaux, certain novels, certain music, or other works of art definitely represent "Justice," "Peace," "Autumn," "War," "History." Such works are Scopas' "Demeter," the most of the early Italian Madonnas, Breton's "Gleaner," Puvis de Chavannes' "Physics." Other works seem not to have been conceived in this generic manner. They, rather, picture some specific object, call our notice to the object that we may look upon it until we see that it is infinitely significant. Such objects are "The Dying Gaul," a bowl of "Roses," "Gleaners," as Millet sees them, "Burghers of Calais," persons in the "Spoon River Anthology."

We are not here entering a fine or elaborate discussion of these facts, nor attempting to catalog the arts. Perhaps innumerable works of art do not fall under either of these categories. We are not here discussing decorative, realistic, lyrical, or other sorts of beauty. But a very large part of all the art objects of the world have been fashioned by one of these two processes. In the one case, a great conception of universal range, of far and high reality or import, is communicated by near and specific representation. In the other case, the seer asks us to look upon a near and familiar object, and so por

trays that object that we, too, may see that it is more than it seems to be, investing it with import and significance high and universal. Browning's "Fra Lippo Lippi" describes the effort of the Italian painter's mind to change from one method to the other.

"Suppose I've made her eyes all right and blue,
Can't I take breath and try to add life's flesh,
And then add soul and heighten them threefold?
Or say there's beauty with no soul at all-
(I never saw it-put the case the same―)
If you get simple beauty and naught else,
You get about the best thing God invents:

Just as they are, careless what comes of it?
God's works-paint any one, and count it crime
To let a truth slip.

*

How much more,

If I drew higher things with the same truth!
That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place,
Interpret God to all of you!"

Religion has always used and must always use both of these methods. Symbolism in religion is of the nature and of the perennial need of the classic method in art. The person who claims to have no interest in symbolism talks nonsense. He cannot read the morning paper-for every word is a symbol. He could not sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Some sort of symbolism is necessary to communication of any kind. Heightened and pictorial symbolism is necessary to vivid and forceful communication. The theater, the army, the government, the commercial world, all make constant and varied use of symbols to remind people of their existence and character. Religion also must communicate itself by powerful and beautiful symbols. Even those who do not take kindly to the use of an actual wooden cross upon an

altar or gable of a church readily sing "In the cross of Christ I glory," and "O make thy church a lamp of burnished gold." Christianity is represented to the consciousness of millions of people by the sign of the cross. Should Constantinople again fall under the governance of Christian powers, it will be symbolized in the East by the taking down of the Crescent from the ancient church of Haggia Sophia and the raising of the Cross upon the noble dome. Symbolism is not, of course, confined to the instrumentality of physical objects, but includes also the use of great symbolic conceptions. A creed is not the faith itself, but a symbol of the faith. In his religious teaching, in his attempt to make God conceivable and real and near to ordinary people, Jesus was constantly using the symbol of Fatherhood. The inventor of new and true symbols of the truth is a great benefactor.

If symbols are powerful, they are also weak and inadequate. No symbol can present the fulness of the reality. No particular can contain all the nature of the universal it seeks to represent. It is useful, however, and true, if it leads in the right direction, if its partial and pale reflection is correct so far as it goes.

And if symbols are powerful they are dangerous. They tend to take the place of reality. They tend to become idols. They are likely to attract the devotee to themselves, failing to lead him on to the larger realities they stand for. No one denies this danger, but no strong man or no vitalized community has ever been disposed to reject powerful and useful instruments because they were dangerous. The surgeon's knife may be used for murder, but it must still be kept sharp as an instrument of good. Human passions are dangerous, human liberties are dangerous, but for their several possibilities of good we value them all. If you want an instrument of power, you must risk an instrument of danger, understand it, master it, and use it aright.

And there is something to say for idolatry. It is at least an open question whether it may not be as well for a man to bow to an idol as not to bow to anything at all. An examination of the psychological history of mankind would probably reveal that, up to a certain point, the experience of

people under the sway of heightened emotion is much the same whether set going by a modern rhetorical address or by Aaron's Golden Calf. Whatever takes people up and out of their workaday world to a desirable place of changed outlook, where they are dissatisfied with that ordinary world, where their imagination is expanded with the intimations of an Over World, and sends them back refreshed and revivified, is so far good, whether the apparatus be of one sort or another. The moral value of the experience will be different according to the moral equipment of the society or persons involved; the energizing value may be the same. It is by no means certain that the moral ideas suggested at an opera or even a symphony concert are greatly superior to those which were intimated to the people attending the rites of Ammon-Ra or a Feast of the Passover. Nor is it certain that the moral worth of the fervors of tabernacle devotees is greater than that of the theater. The experience of worship must always be divided into its two parts, its energizing value and its practical value. On the energy side, the idol worshiper may often make a better showing than the intellectualist and, even on the moral side, not all the idolaters have carried away a less humane point of view than some modern religionists who are out of touch with the best morals. I am trying to suggest here that the danger of the symbol becoming an idol is no greater than the danger of impractical and unmoral religious excitement stirred by different means. And also that this danger is no more undesirable than the danger of coldness and hardness and materialism without any emotional stir at all.

If the symbol is at times likely to take the place of the reality, there is also a sense in which the reality does reside in the symbol. A soldier on patrol duty, guarding whatever he is set to guard, might well say, "Strike me and you strike the United States." Christians have always conceived of Christ as the great symbol of God, but also have always conceived of God as being in some profound sense in Christ. To reject him is to reject the Father, to see him is to see the Father. With this suggestion, we turn to the other side of the artistic and religious method.