We must also remember that these legends were eminently popular, that they passed from mouth to mouth round the winter hearth, teaching the young and soothing the children, like the cradle song of a mother, pouring hope into the cell of the captive, teaching the virtuous oppressed that a just God mercifully listened to all their secret sighs, and, leading the poor to look beyond the squalid poverty which surrounded them, pointed to them the legions of angels, which were lovingly camped around them. It is impossible to overestimate the blessed effects of such a literature, or to count the naive hearts which it may have rescued from suicide and despair!
The spirit of the literature of the middle ages culminates in the Christian poet, Dante. History, theology, politics, paganism, sweet and melancholy elegies, flashes of fiery indignation, all men and all generations, meet in his majestic epic. Yet the closest unity is preserved through this astonishing range of subjects; one sublime idea broods over its every line,—the idea of a God of perfect justice—of undying love!
We cite, in corroboration, the following lines from this noble poet, though a prose translation can do but little justice to the glowing original:
'God is One in substance; Power, Wisdom, and Love assume in Him a triple Personality, so that in all tongues singular and plural are alike applicable to Him. He is spirit; he is the circle which circumscribes everything and which nothing ever circumscribes; immense, eternal, immutable, He is the Primal out of which all is darkness. Unlimited by time, without laws save in His own will, in the bosom of eternity, He, who is three in One, acts;—Power executes what Wisdom proposes, and Infinite Love is forever germing into ever new loves. Like a triple arrow from a single bow, from the depths of the Productive thought, spring, whether single or united, matter, form, with the living heart of all finite beings—their own governing laws. Created things are but the splendor of the immutable ideas which the Father engenders, and which He loves unceasingly. Ideas—thoughts—sacred words! Light, which, without being detached from Him who wills it into being, shines from creature to creature, from cause to effect, on—on—until it produces only contingent and transitory phenomena; Light which, repeated and reflected from mirror to mirror, pales as its distance increases from its Holy Source.'
That would surely be an interesting work which would glean for us the multiplied expressions of the faith of the 'laurel-crowned,' who have left their consoling records for humanity, their tracks of light over the dark earth-bosom in which they sleep. But this is not place for such researches; we must confine ourselves to but few quotations, designed to show that religion is the soul of art.
In proof of this we might quote the whole of the fine tragedy of Polyeucte; it is full of ardent religious feeling. The moral is indeed condensed in the following lines:
'If, to die for our king is a glorious destiny,—
How sublime is death when we may die for God!'
Urged by that unconquerable love of the Absolute which possesses all true poets, Racine seeks in God alone the source of all regal power:
'The eternal is his name, the world is his work,
He hears the sighs of the oppressed;
He judges all mortals with equal justice,
From the height of his throne he calls kings to account.'
Our English poet Shakspeare, whose works are full of sublime morality, puts into the mouth of one of his matchless heroines the following exquisite passage, recalling to us the lessons of the New Testament: