280. To-day I have little enough time to conclude,—none to review—what I have endeavored thus to say; but one instance, given me directly in conversation after lecture, by one of yourselves, will enable me to explain to you precisely what I mean.
After last lecture, in which you remember I challenged our physiologists to tell me how a bird flies, one of you, whose pardon, if he thinks it needful, I ask for this use of his most timely and illustrative statement, came to me, saying, "You know the way in which we are shown how a bird flies, is, that any one, a dove for instance, is given to us, plucked, and partly skinned, and incised at the insertion of the wing bone; and then, with a steel point, the ligament of the muscle at the shoulder is pulled up, and out, and made distinct from other ligaments, and we are told 'that is the way a bird flies,' and on that matter it is thought we have been told enough."
I say that this instance given me was timely; I will say more—in the choice of this particular bird, providential. Let me take, in their order, the two subjects of inquiry and instruction, which are indeed offered to us in the aspect and form of that one living creature.
281. Of the splendor of your own true life, you are told, in the words which, to-day, let me call, as your Fathers did, words of inspiration—"Yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove, that is covered with silver wings and her feathers with gold." Of the manifold iris of color in the dove's plumage, watched carefully in sunshine as the bird moves, I cannot hope to give you any conception by words; but that it is the most exquisite, in the modesty of its light, and in the myriad mingling of its hue, of all plumage, I may partly prove to you in this one fact, that out of all studies of color, the one which I would desire most to place within your reach in these schools, is Turner's drawing of a dove, done when he was in happy youth at Farnley. But of the causes of this color, and of the peculiar subtlety in its iridescence, nothing is told you in any scientific book I have ever seen on ornithology.
282. Of the power of flight in these wings, and the tender purpose of their flight, you hear also in your Fathers' book. To the Church, flying from her enemies into desolate wilderness, there were indeed given two wings as of a great eagle. But the weary saint of God, looking forward to his home in calm of eternal peace, prays rather—"Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then should I flee away, and be at rest." And of these wings, and this mind of hers, this is what reverent science should teach you: first, with what parting of plume, and what soft pressure and rhythmic beating of divided air, she reaches that miraculous swiftness of undubious motion, compared with which the tempest is slow, and the arrow uncertain; and secondly, what clew there is, visible, or conceivable to thought of man, by which, to her living conscience and errorless pointing of magnetic soul, her distant home is felt afar beyond the horizon, and the straight path, through concealing clouds, and over trackless lands, made plain to her desire, and her duty, by the finger of God.
283. And lastly, since in the tradition of the Old Covenant she was made the messenger of forgiveness to those eight souls saved through the baptism unto death, and in the Gospel of the New Covenant, under her image, was manifested the well-pleasing of God, in the fulfillment of all righteousness by His Son in the Baptism unto life,—surely alike all Christian people, old and young, should be taught to be gladdened by her sweet presence; and in every city and village in Christendom she should have such home as in Venice she has had for ages, and be, among the sculptured marbles of the temple, the sweetest sculpture; and, fluttering at your children's feet, their never-angered friend. And surely also, therefore, of the thousand evidences which any carefully thoughtful person may see, not only of the ministration of good, but of the deceiving and deadly power of the evil angels, there is no one more distinct in its gratuitous, and unreconcilable sin, than that this—of all the living creatures between earth and sky—should be the one chosen to amuse the apathy of our murderous idleness, with skill-less, effortless, merciless slaughter.
284. I pass to the direct subject on which I have to speak finally to-day;—the reality of that ministration of the good angels, and of that real adversity of the principalities and powers of Satan, in which, without exception, all earnest Christians have believed, and the appearance of which, to the imagination of the greatest and holiest of them, has been the root, without exception, of all the greatest art produced by the human mind or hand in this world.
That you have at present no art properly so called in England at all—whether of painting, sculpture, or architecture[179]—I, for one, do not care. In midst of Scottish Lothians, in the days of Scott, there was, by how much less art, by so much purer life, than in the midst of Italy in the days of Raphael. But that you should have lost, not only the skill of Art, but the simplicity of Faith and life, all in one, and not only here deface your ancient streets by the Ford of the waters of sacred learning, but also deface your ancient hills with guilt of mercenary desolation, driving their ancient shepherd life into exile, and diverting the waves of their streamlets into the cities which are the very centers of pollution, of avarice, and impiety: for this I do care,—for this you have blamed me for caring, instead of merely trying to teach you drawing. I have nevertheless yet done my best to show you what real drawing is; and must yet again bear your blame for trying to show you, through that, somewhat more.
285. I was asked, as we came out of chapel this morning, by one of the Fellows of my college, to say a word to the Undergraduates, about Thirlmere. His request, being that of a faithful friend, came to enforce on me the connection between this form of spoliation of our native land of its running waters, and the gaining disbelief in the power of prayer over the distribution of the elements of our bread and water, in rain, and sunshine,—seedtime, and harvest. Respecting which, I must ask you to think with me to-day what is the meaning of the myth, if you call it so, of the great prophet of the Old Testament, who is to be again sent before the coming of the day of the Lord. For truly, you will find that if any part of your ancient faith be true, it is needful for every soul which is to take up its cross, with Christ, to be also first transfigured in the light of Christ,—talking with Moses and with Elias.
The contest of Moses is with the temporal servitude,—of Elijah, with the spiritual servitude, of the people; and the war of Elijah is with their servitude essentially to two Gods, Baal, or the Sun God, in whose hand they thought was their life, and Baalzebub—the Fly God,—of Corruption, in whose hand they thought was the arbitration of death.