Behold, thou art as fair as day!’
The lovely vision’s ire awoke,
His voice was loud and proud his mien:
‘Believe not, friend!’ ’twas thus he spoke,
‘That thou my likeness yet hast seen:
The pencil that my portrait made
Was guided by an envious foe;
In Paradise I man betrayed,
And he, from hatred, paints me so.’
Boehme relates that when Satan was asked the cause of God’s enmity to him and his consequent downfall, he replied, ‘I wished to be an artist.’ There is in this quaint sentence a very true intimation of the allurements which, in ancient times, the arts of the Gentile possessed for the Jews and christian judaisers. Indeed, a similar feeling towards the sensuous attractions of the Catholic and Ritualistic Churches is not uncommon among the prosaic and puritanical sects whose younger members are often thus charmed away from them. Dr. Donne preached a sermon before Oliver Cromwell at Whitehall, in which he affirmed that the Muses were damned spirits of devils; and the discussion on the Drama which occurred at Sheffield Church Congress (1878), following Dr. Bickerstith’s opening discourse on ‘the Devil and his wiles,’ shows that the Low Church wing cherishes much the same opinion as that of Dr. Donne. The dread of the theatre among some sects amounts to terror. The writer remembers the horror that spread through a large Wesleyan circle, with which he was connected, when a distinguished minister of that body, just returned from Europe, casually remarked that ‘the theatre at Rome seemed to be poorly supported.’ The fearful confession spread through the denomination, and it was understood that the observant traveller had ‘made shipwreck of faith.’ The Methodist instinct told true: the preacher became an accomplished Gentile.