I alluded, in speaking before of this Stonehenge, to Turner’s use of the same symbol in the drawing of Pæstum for Rogers’s Italy; but a more striking instance of its employment occurs in a Study of Pæstum, which he engraved himself before undertaking the Liber Studiorum and another in his drawing of the Temple of Minerva, on Cape Colonna: and observe farther that he rarely introduces lightning, if the ruined building has not been devoted to religion. The wrath of man may destroy the fortress, but only the wrath of heaven can destroy the temple.
§ 21. Of these secret meanings of Turner’s, we shall see enough in the course of the inquiry we have to undertake, lastly, respecting ideas of relation; but one more instance of his opposed use of the lightning symbol, and of the rain of blessing, I name here, to confirm what has been noted above. For, in this last instance, he was questioned respecting his meaning, and explained it. I refer to the drawings of Sinai and Lebanon, made for Finden’s Bible. The sketches from which Turner prepared that series were, I believe, careful and accurate; but the treatment of the subjects was left wholly to him. He took the Sinai and Lebanon to show the opposite influences of the Law and the Gospel. The Rock of Moses is shown in the burning of the desert, among fallen stones, forked lightning cleaving the blue mist which veils the summit of Sinai. Armed Arabs pause at the foot of the rock. No human habitation is seen, nor any herb or tree, nor any brook, and the lightning strikes without rain.[12] Over the Mount Lebanon an intensely soft gray-blue sky is melting into dewy rain. Every ravine is filled, every promontory crowned, by tenderest foliage, golden in slanting sunshine.[13] The white convent nestles into the hollow of the rock; and a little brook runs under the shadow of the nearer trees, beside which two monks sit reading.
§ 22. It was a beautiful thought, yet an erring one, as all thoughts are which oppose the Law to the Gospel. When people read, “the law came by Moses, but grace and truth by Christ,” do they suppose that the law was ungracious and untrue? The law was given for a foundation; the grace (or mercy) and truth for fulfilment;—the whole forming one glorious Trinity of judgment, mercy, and truth. And if people would but read the text of their Bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of superstitiously, they would see that throughout the parts which they are intended to make most personally their own (the Psalms) it is always the Law which is spoken of with chief joy. The Psalms respecting mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost; but those respecting the law are always full of delight. David cannot contain himself for joy in thinking of it,—he is never weary of its praise:—“How love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. Thy testimonies are my delight and my counsellors; sweeter, also, than honey and the honeycomb.”
§ 23. And I desire, especially, that the reader should note this, in now closing the work through which we have passed together in the investigation of the beauty of the visible world. For perhaps he expected more pleasure and freedom in that work; he thought that it would lead him at once into fields of fond imagination, and may have been surprised to find that the following of beauty brought him always under a sterner dominion of mysterious law; the brightness was continually based upon obedience, and all majesty only another form of submission. But this is indeed so. I have been perpetually hindered in this inquiry into the sources of beauty by fear of wearying the reader with their severities. It was always accuracy I had to ask of him, not sympathy; patience, not zeal; apprehension, not sensation. The thing to be shown him was not a pleasure to be snatched, but a law to be learned.
§ 24. It is in this character, however, that the beauty of the natural world completes its message. We saw long ago, how its various powers of appeal to the mind of men might be traced to some typical expression of Divine attributes. We have seen since how its modes of appeal present constant types of human obedience to the Divine law, and constant proofs that this law, instead of being contrary to mercy, is the foundation of all delight, and the guide of all fair and fortunate existence.
§ 25. Which understanding, let us receive our last message from the Angel of the Sea.
Take up the 19th Psalm and look at it verse by verse. Perhaps to my younger readers, one word may be permitted respecting their Bible-reading in general.[14] The Bible is, indeed, a deep book, when depth is required, that is to say, for deep people. But it is not intended, particularly, for profound persons; on the contrary, much more for shallow and simple persons. And therefore the first, and generally the main and leading idea of the Bible, is on its surface, written in plainest possible Greek, Hebrew, or English, needing no penetration, nor amplification, needing nothing but what we all might give—attention.
But this, which is in every one’s power, and is the only thing that God wants, is just the last thing any one will give Him. We are delighted to ramble away into day-dreams, to repeat pet verses from other places, suggested by chance words; to snap at an expression which suits our own particular views, or to dig up a meaning from under a verse, which we should be amiably grieved to think any human being had been so happy as to find before. But the plain, intended, immediate, fruitful meaning, which every one ought to find always, and especially that which depends on our seeing the relation of the verse to those near it, and getting the force of the whole passage, in due relation—this sort of significance we do not look for;—it being, truly, not to be discovered, unless we really attend to what is said, instead of to our own feelings.
§ 26. It is unfortunate also, but very certain, that in order to attend to what is said, we must go through the irksomeness of knowing the meaning of the words. And the first thing that children should be taught about their Bibles is, to distinguish clearly between words that they understand and words that they do not; and to put aside the words they do not understand, and verses connected with them, to be asked about, or for a future time; and never to think they are reading the Bible when they are merely repeating phrases of an unknown tongue.