that is, bring what is implicit within the soul, into the right attitude to become explicit—bring about a silent adjustment through sympathy induced by the concrete (it cannot be induced by the abstract); in other words, prepare the way for the apprehension of the truth—
do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word;
that is, Art, so to speak, is the word made flesh,—is the truth, and, as Art, has nothing directly to do with an explicit presentation of the truth. 'The highest, the only operation of Art, as of Nature,' says Goethe, 'is formation' (Gestaltung).
So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,
Beyond mere imagery on the wall,—
So, note by note, bring music from your mind,
Deeper than ever the Andante dived,—
So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.
The greatest moral teachers the world has ever known, have exhibited the least of explicit moralizing. They have embodied their gospels,—clothed them in circumstance,—woven them into a tissue of imagery and incident and, by so doing, have given them that vitality which alone can awaken sympathy, and thus induce a mental preparedness for a reception of the higher truths, and a comprehension of great principles. A deep sympathy with truth is the important thing: this implies a rectification of the spiritual nature—its harmonization with the constitution of things. A great amount of abstract truth may be lodged in one's brain, and this sympathy may be more or less wanting. To secure it, the 'Word' of the teacher must become flesh,—it must be contemplated in the flesh, living and breathing,—it must be represented as militant, subject to accident and antagonism, but assuring men of its unquenchable vitality, its relationship with the divine, through the might of its resistance, and through its final triumph, though not necessarily according to earthly standards of the triumphant. There are novels which exhibit a somewhat low ideal of life through the general squaring up of things at the end—the good being rewarded outwardly and the bad punished. But
In the corrupted 'currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
... but 'tis not so above.
The teachings of Jesus are clothed in circumstance and imagery which were familiar to all whom he addressed. 'All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them.' To use the words of Archbishop Trench in his 'Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom,' 'In his life and person, the idea and the fact at length kissed each other, and were thenceforward wedded forever.'
The liberal-minded reader of the four records which we have of Christ's life and teachings, must admit that he added little or nothing to the previously existing knowledge of truth in the abstract; he rather caused truth which philosophers and moralists had already intellectually recognized, to be known 'by heart.' He presented it concretely, in his own life and in his teachings, and thus worked it into that 'daily bread' for which he commanded us to pray, and which alone will nourish human sympathy and love. In its previous intellectual, abstract form, it did not, and could not, become an element of spiritual life.
In the thirty beautiful little stories in the New Testament, educators of the young, and indeed all educators in the fullest sense, may see the cardinal principle of their calling, namely, that the greatest power of ethical and religious truth can be secured only through the concrete, and the personal, through that which is the truth, and not through an abstract enunciation—through that form which is loved for its own sake; whose beauty is its own excuse for being; and the sense of love and beauty, when awakened, makes all things plain. Ubi caritas, ibi claritas.
Many who have written books for the young professedly to impart Christian instruction, have least observed the mode exhibited in the teachings of him whom they profess to take as their Great Exemplar. Their instruction is too explicit. It is presented without a sufficiency of concrete clothing to keep it warm; sometimes in its abstract nakedness. It is thus powerless to awaken the love and sympathy of young hearts.