M& mm^ s THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BEQUEST OF PROFESSOR JOHN S. P. TATLOCK /^^. 'T^L^.-tJ z::^ /-tA- ■' ^^^^ vz ^ - THE SEVEN LAMPS ARCHITECTURE. T II R SEVEN LAMPS ARCHITECTURE, JOHN RUSKIN, A.I.-THOR or " MODERN .'AlNTl.l.B." WITH ILLUSTRATIONS, DRAWN AND ETCHED BY THE AUTHOR. NEW YORK: WILEY k H A L S T E D , No. 361 BROADWAY, 1857. CONTENTS Introductory .... PAOI 1 Chapter I. The Lamp of Sacrifice 7 n. The Lamp of Truth . . 25 m. The Lamp of Power . , 67 IV. The Lamp of Beauty . . 85 V. The Lamp of Life 123 VI. The Lamp of Memory . 146 vn. The Lamp of Obedienck 165 Notes 179 2226952 LIST OF PLATES Plate I. Ornaments from Rouen, St. Lo, and Venice to/ac« page 23 II. Part of the Cathedral of St. Lo, Normandy . . 43 m. Traceries from Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, and Beauvais . 48 IV. Intersectional Mouldings . . . . . .52 V. Capital from the Lower Arcade of the Doge's Palace, Venice 73 VL Arch from the Fa9ade of the Church of San Michele at Lucca 76 VJLl. Pierced Ornaments from Lisieux, Bayeux, Verona, aaid Padua 78 Vm. Window from the Ca' Foscari, Venice ... 80 IX. Tracery from the Campanile of Giotto, at Florence . 85 X. Traceries and Mouldings from Rouen and Salisbury . 105 XL Balcony in the Campo St Benedetto, Venice . .112 XTT. Fragments from Abbeville, Lucca, Venice, and Pisa . 129 XTTT. Portions of an Arcade on the South Side of the Cathe- dral of Ferrara 140 XrV. Sculptures from the Cathedral of Rouen . . .142 P K E F A C E The memoranda which form the basis of the following Essay have been thrown together during the preparation of one of the sections of the third volume of " Modern Painters."* I once thought of giving them a more expanded form ; but their utility, such as it may be, would probably be diminished by farther delay in their publication, more than it would be increased by greater care in their arrangement. Obtained in every case by personal observation, there may be among them some details valuable even to the experienced architect ; but with respect to the opinions founded upon them I must be prepared to bear the charge of impertinence which can hardly but attach to the writer who assumes a dogmatical tone in speaking of an art he has never practised. There * The inordinate delay in the appearance of that supplementary volume has, indeed, been chiefly owing to the necessity under which the writer felt himself, of obtaining as many memoranda as possible of mediaeval buildings in Italy and Normandy, now in process of destruction, before that destruction should be consummated by the Restorer or Revolutionist. His whole time has been lately occupied in taking drawings from one side of buildings, of which masons were knocking down the other ; nor can he yet pledge himself to any time for the publication of the conclusion of " Modem Painters ;" ha can only promise that its delay ehall not be owing to any indolence on hia part. VI PREFACE. are, however, cases in which men feel too keenly to be silent, and perhaps too strongly to be wrong ; I have been forced into this impertinence ; and have suffered too much from the destruction or neglect of the architecture I best loved, and from the erection of that which I cannot love, to reason cautiously respecting the modesty of my opposition to the principles which have induced the scorn of the one, or directed the design of the other. And I have been the less careful to modify the confidence of my statements of principles, because in the midst of the opposition and uncertainty of our architectural systems, it seems to me that there is something grateful in any positive opinion, though in many points wrong, as even weeds are useful that grow on a bank of sand. Every apology is, however, due to the reader, for the hasty and imperfect execution of the plates. Having much more serious work in hand, and desiring merely to render them illustrative of my meaning, I have sometimes very completely failed even of that humble aim ; and the text, being generally written before the illustration was completed, sometimes naively describes as sublime or beautiful, features which the plate represents by a blot. I shall be grateful if the reader will in such cases refer the expressions of praise to the Architecture, and not to the illustration. So far, however, as their coarseness and rudeness admit, the plates are valuable ; being either copies of memoranda made upon the spot, or (Plates IX. and XI.) enlarged and adapted from Daguerreotypes, taken under my own superintendence. Unfortunately, the great distance from the ground of the window which is the subject of Plate IX. renders even the Daguerreotype PREFACE. indistinct ; and I cannot answer for the accuracy of any of tlie mosaic details, more especially of those which surround the window, and which I rather imagine, in the original, to be sculptured in relief The general propor- tions are, however, studiously preserved ; the spirals of the shafts are counted, and the effect of the whole is as^ near that of the thing itself, as is necessary for the purposes of illustration for which the plate is given. For the accuracy of the rest I can answer, even to the cracks in the stones, and the number of them ; and though the looseness of the drawing, and the picturesque character which is necessarily given by an endeavor to draw old buildings as they actually appear, may perhaps diminish their credit for architectural veracity, they will do so unjustly. The system of lettering adopted in the few instances in which sections have been given, appears somewhat obscure in the references, but it is convenient upon the whole. The line which marks the direction of any section is noted, if the section be symmetrical, by a single fetter ; and the section itself by the same letter with a line over it, a. — a. But if the section be unsymmetrical, its direction is noted by two letters, a. a. a^ at its extre- mities ; and the actual section by the same letters with lines over them, a. d. a^ at the corresponding extremities. The reader will perhaps be surprised by the small number of buildings to which reference has been made. But it is to be remembered that the following chapters pretend only to be a statement of principles, illustrated each by one or two examples, not an essay on European architecture ; and those examples I have generally taken either from the buildings which I love best, or from tha Vin PREFACE. schools of architecture which, it appeared to me, have been less carefully described than they deserved. I could as fully, though not with the accuracy and certainty derived from personal observation, have illustrated the principles subsequently advanced, from the architecture of Egypt, India, or Spain, as from that to which the reader will find his attention chiefly directed, the Italian Romanesque and Gothic. But my affections, as well as my experience, led me to that line of richly varied and magnificently intellectual schools, which reaches, like a high watershed of Christian architecture, from the Adriatic to the Northumbrian seas, bordered by the impure schools of Spain on the one hand, and of Germany on the other : and as culminating points and centres of this chain, I have considered, first, the cities of the Val d'Arno, as representing the Italian Roman- esque and pure Italian Gothic ; Venice and Verona as representing the Italian Gothic colored by Byzantine elements ; and Rouen, with the associated Norman cities, Caen, Bayeux, and Coutances, as representing the entire range of Northern architecture from the Romanesque to Flamboyant. I could have wished to have given more examples from our early English Gothic ; but I have always found it impossible to work in the cold interiors of our cathedrals ; while the daily services, lamps, and fumigation of those upon the Continent, render them perfectly safe. In the course of last summer I undertook a pilgrimage to the English Shrines, and began with Salisbury, where the consequence of a few days' work was a state of weakened health, which I may be permitted to name among the causes of the slightness and imperfection of the present Essay. TUB SEVEN LAMPS AEOHITECTURE INTRODUCTORY. Some years ago, in conversation with an artist whose works, perhaps, alone, in the present day, unite perfection of drawing -with resplendence of color, the writer made some inquiry respecting the general means by which this latter quality was most easily to be attained. The reply was as concise as it was comprehensive — " Know what you have to do, and do it" — comprehensive, not only as regarded the branch of art to which it temporarily applied, but as expressing the great principle of success in every direction of human effort ; for I beheve that failure is less frequently attributable to either insufficiency of means or impatience of labor, than to a confused imderstanding of the thing actually to be done ; and therefore, while it is properly a subject of ridicule, and sometimes of blame, that men propose to themselves a perfection of any kind, which reason, tempe- rarately consulted, might have shown to be impossible with the means at their command, it is a more dangerous error to permit the consideration of means to interfere ^vith our conception, or, as is not impossible, even hinder our acknowledgment of goodness and perfection in themselves. And this is the more cautiously to be remembered ; because, while a man's sense and conscience, aided by Revelation, are always enough, if earnestly directed, to enable him to 1 2 INTRODUCTORY. discover what is right, neither his sense, nor conscience, n»]- foeling, are ever enough, because they are not intended, to determ :^ for him ■what is possible. He knows neither his own strength ti n- that of his fellows, neither the exact dependence to be placed on hii allies nor resistance to be expected from his opponents. These ar- -^iiestions respecting which passion may warp his conclusions, and :.^ 'lorance must limit them; but it is his own fault if either interfere with the apprehension of duty, or the acknowledgment of right. And, as far as I have taken cognizance of the causes of the many f^i'iares to which the efforts of intelligent men are liable, more e£:)eeially in matters political, they seem to me more largely to spring liom this single error than from all others, that the inquiry into the doubtful, and in some sort inexplicable, relations of capabihty, chance, resistance, and inconvenience, invariabh' precedes, even if it do not altogether supersede, the determination of what is absolutely desirable and just. Nor is it any wonder that sometimes the too cold calculation of our powers should reconcile us too easily to our short comings, and even le.-'d us into the fatal error of supposing that our conjectural utmost is in itself well, or, in other words, that the necessity of offences renders them inoffensive. What is true of human polity seems to me not less so of the distinctively pohtical ai't of Architecture. I have long felt con\-inced of the necessity, in order to its progress, of some determined effort to extricate from the confused mass of partial traditions and dogmata with which it has become encumbered during imperfect or restricted practice, those large principles of right which are applicable to every stage and style of it. Uniting the technical and imaginative elements as essentially as humanity does soul and body, it shows the same infti'mly balanced liabihty to the prevalence of the lower part over the higher, to the interference of the constructive, with the purity and simphcity of the reflective, element. This tendency, hke every other form of materiahsm, is increasing with the advance of the age ; and the only laws which resist it, based upon partial precedents, and already regarded with disrespect as decrepit, if not with defiance as tyrannical, are evidently inapplicable to the new forms and functions of the art, which the necessities of the day demand. How many these necessities may become, cannot be conjectured ; they rise, strange and impatient, out of every modern shadow of change. How £ar it may be possible to meet them without a sacrifice of the essential INTRODUCTORY. 3 tliaracters of architectr! /al art, cannot be determined by specific calculation or observance. There is no law, no principle, based on past practice, which may not be overthrown in a moment, by the arising of a new condition, or the invention of a new material ; and the most rational, if not the only, mode of averting the danger ol an utter dissolution of all that is systematic and consistent in our practice, or of ancient authority in our judgment, is to cease for a httle while, our endeavors to deal with the multiplying host of par- ticular abuses, restraints, or requirements ; and endeavor to determine, as the guides of every effort, some constant, general, and irrefragable laws of right — laws, which based upon man's nature, not upon hia knowledge, may possess so far the unchangeable ness of the one, as that neither the increase nor imperfection of the other may be abla to assault or invalidate them. There are, perhaps, no such laws peculiar to any one art. Their range necessarily includes the entire horizon of man's action. But they have modified forms and operations belonging to each of his pursuits, and the extent of their authority cannot surely be considered as a diminution of its weight. Those peculiar aspects of them which belong to the fii-st of the arts, I have endeavored to trace in the following pages ; and since, if truly stated, they must necessarily be, not only safeguards against every form of error, but sources of every measure of success, I do not think that I claim too much for them in calling them the Lamps of Architecture, nor that it is indolence, Ol endeavoring to ascertain the true nature and nobility of their fire, to refuse to enter into any curious or special questioning of the innu- merable hindrances by which their light has been too often distorted or overpowered. Had this farther examination been attempted, the work would have become certainly more invidious, and perhaps less useful, as liable to errors which are avoided by the present simplicity of its plan. Simple though it be, its extent is too gTeat to admit of any adequate accomplishment, unless by a devotion of time which the writer did not feel justified in withdra\ving from branches of inquiry in which the prosecution of works already undertaken has engaged him. Both arrangements and nomenclature are those of convenience rather than of system ; the one is arbitrary and the other illogical : nor is it pretended that all, or even the greater number of, the principles necessary to the well-being of the art, are included in the inquiry 4 INTRODUCTORY. Many, however, of considerable importance will be found to develope themselves incidentally from those more specially brought forward. Graver apology is necessary for an apparently graver fault. It has been just said, that there is no branch of human work whose constant laws have not close analogy with those which govern every other mode of man's exertion. But, more than this, exactly as we reduce to greater simplicity and surety any one group of these practical laws, we shall find them passing the mere condition of connection or analog}^, and becoming the actual expression of some ultimate nerve or fibre of the mighty laws which govern the moral world. However mean or inconsiderable the act, there is something in the well doing of it, which has fellowship with the noblest forms of manly virtue ; and the truth, decision, and temperance, which we reverently regard as honorable conditions of the sphitual being, have a representative or derivative influence over the works of the hand, the movements of the frame, and the action of the intellect. And as thus every action, down even to the drawing of a line or utterance of a syllable, is capable of a pecuhar dignity in the manner of it, which we sometimes express by saying it is truly done (as a line or tone is true), so also it is capable of dignity still higher in the motive of it. For there is no action so shght, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore ; nor is any purpose so great but that shght actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasmg of God. Hence George Herbert — " A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine ; Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws. Makes that and the action fine." Therefore, in the pressing or recommending of any act or manner of acting, we have choice of two separate lines of argument : one based on representation of the expediency or inherent value of the work, which is often small, and always disputable ; the other based on proofs of its relations to the higher orders of humau virtue, and of its acceptableness, so far as it goes, to Him who is the origin of virtue. The former is commonly the more persuasive method, the latter assuredly the more conclusive ; only it is liable to give offence, as if there were irreverence in adducing considerations so weighty in INTRODUCTORY. f treating subjects of small temporal importance. I believe, however, that no error is more thoughtless than this. We treat God with irreverence by banishing Him from our thoughts, not by referring to His will on slight occasions. His is not the finite authority or intelligence which cannot be troubled with small things. There is nothing so small but that we may honor God by asking His guidance of it, or insult Him by taking it into our own hands ; and what is true of the Deity is equally true of His Revelation. We use it most reverently when most habitually : our insolence is in ever acting without reference to it, our true honoring of it is in its univei-sal apphcation. I have been blamed for the familiar introduction of its sacred words. I am grieved to have given pain by so doing ; but my excuse must be my wish that those words were made the ground of every argument and the test of every action. We have them not often enough on our lips, nor deeply enough in our memories, nor loyally enough in our hves. The snow, the vapor, and the stormy wind fulfil His word. Are our acts and thoughts Hghter and wilder than these — that we should forget it ? I have therefore ventured, at the risk of giN'ing to some passages the appearance of irreverence, to take the higher hue of argument wherever it appeared clearly traceable : and this, I would ask the reader especially to observe, not merely because I think it the best mode of reaching ultimate truth, still less because I think the subject of more importance than many others ; but because every subject should surely, at a period like the present, be taken up in this spirit, or not at all. The aspect of the years that approach us is as solemn as it is full of mystery ; and the weight of e\'il against which we have to contend, is increasing hke the letting out of water. It is no time for the idleness of metaphysics, or the entertmnment of the arts. The blasphemies of the earth are sounding louder, and its miseries heaped heavier every day ; and if, in the midst of the exertion which every good man is called upon to put forth for their repression or relief, it is lav\^ul to ask for a thought, for a moment, for a lifting of the finger, in any direction but that of the immediate and over- whelming need, it is at least incumbent upon .is to approach the questions in which we would engage him, in the spirit which has become the habit of his mind, and in the hope that neither his zeal nor his usefulness mav be checked bv the vvithdrawal of an hour INTRODUCTORY. which has shown him how even those things which seemed mechani- cal, indifferent, or contemptible, depend for their perfection upon the acknowledgment of the sacred principles of faith, truth, and obedience, for which it has become the occupation of his hfe to contend. CHAPTER I. THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. I. Architecture is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for ^Yhatsoever uses, that the sight of them contribute to his mental health, power and pleasure. It is very necessary, in the outset of all inquiry, to distinguish carefully between Architecture and Building. To build, literally to confirm, is by common undei-standing to put together and adjust the several pieces of any edifice or receptacle of a considerable size. Thus we have church building, house building, ship building, and coach building. That one edifice stands, another floats, and another is suspended on iron springs, makes no dif- ference in the nature of the art, if so it may be called, of building or edification. The persons who profess that art, are severally builders, ecclesiastical, naval, or of whatever other name their work may ustify ; but building does not become architecture merely by the stability of what it erects ; and it is no more architecture which raises a church, or which fits it to receive and contain with comfort a required number of persons occupied in certain religious offices, than it is architecture which makes a carriage commodious, or a ship s>vift. I do not, of course, mean that the word is not often, or even may not be legitimately, applied in such a sense (as we speak of naval architecture) ; but in that sense architecture ceases to be one of the fine arts, and it is therefore better not to run the risk, by loose nomenclature, of the confusion which would arise, and has often fai^i'D, fiom extending princi}>les which belong altogether to building, ]iito the sphere of architecture jiroper. Let us. therefore, at once confine the name to that art wliich, taking up and admitting, as conchtions of its working, the necessities and coimiion uses of the building, impresses on its form certain chaiacter? venerable or beautiful, but other\\Tse unnecessary. Thus, 8 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. I suppose, no one would call the laws ar^ itectural which determin* the height of a breastwork or the position Df a bastion. But if to the stone facing of that bastion be added an unnecessary feature, as a cable moulding, that is Architecture. It would be similarly unreasonable to call battlements or machicolations architect tu*al features, so long as they consist only of an advanced gallery sup- ported on projecting masses, with open intervals beneath for offence. But if these projecting masses be carved beneath into roimded courses, which are useless, and if the headings of the intervals be arched and trefoiled, which is useless, that is Architecture. It may not be always easy to draw the line so sharply and simply ; because there are few buildings which have not some pretence or color of being architectural ; neither can there be any architecture which is not based on building, nor any good architecture which is not based on good building ; but it is perfectly easy, and very necessary to keep the ideas distinct, and to understand fully that Architecture concerns itself only with those characters of an edifice which ar above and beyond its common use. I say common; because a building raised to the honor of God, or in memory of men, has surely a use to which its architectural adornment fits it ; but not a use which limits, by any inevitable necessities, its plan or details. II. Architecture proper, then, naturally arranges itself under five heads : — Devotional; including all buildings raised for God's service or honor. Memorial ; including both monuments and tombs. Civil ; including every edifice raised by nations or societies, for piu-poses of common business or pleasure. Military; including all private and pubhc architecture of defence. Domestic ; including every rank and kind of dwelling-place. Now, of the principles which I would endeavor to develope, while all must be, as I have said, apphcable to every stage and style of the art, some, and especially those which are exciting rather than directing, have necessarily fuller reference to one kind of building than another ; and among these I would place first that spirit which, having influence in all, has nevertheless such especial reference to devotional and memorial architecture — the spirit which oflfers for such work precious things, simply because they ire precious ; THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. not as being necessary /,o the building, but as an oflfering, surrender- ing, and sacritice of what is to oui^selves desirable. It seems to me, not only that this feeling is in most cases wholly wanting in those who forward the devotional buildings of the present day ; but that it would even be regarded as an ignorant, dangerous, or perhaps criminal principle by many among us. I have not space to enter into dispute of all the various objections which may be urged against it — they are many and specious ; but I may, perhaps, ask the reader's patience while I set down those simple reasons which cause me to bcheve it a good and just feeling, and as well-pleasing to God and honorable in men, as it is beyond all dispute necessary to the production of any great work in the kind with which we are at present concerned. lU. Now, first, to define this Lamp, or Spirit of Sacrifice, clearly. I have said that it prompts us to the offering of precious things, merely because they are precious, not because they are useful or necessary. It is a spirit, for instance, which of two marbles, equally beautiful, apphcable and durable, would choose the more costly, because it was so, and of two kinds of decoration, equally effective, would choose the more elaborate because it was so, in order that it might in the same compass present more cost and more thought. It is therefore most unreasoning and enthusiastic, and perhaps best negatively defined, as the opposite of the prevalent feeling of modern times, which desires to produce the largest results at the least cost. Of this feeling, then, there are two distinct forms : the fii-st, the wish to exercise self-denial for the sake of self-discipline merely, a wish acted upon in the abandonment of things loved or desired, there being no direct call or purpose to be answered by so* doing ; and the second, the desire to honor or please some one else by the costhness of the sacrifice. The practice is, in the fii-st case, either private or public ; but most frequently, and perhaps most properly, private ; while, in the latter case, the act is commonly, and with greatest advantage, public. Now, it cannot but at first appear futile to assert the expediency of self-dr-^iai for its own sake, when, for so many sakes, it is every day necessary to a for greater degree than any of us practise it. But I believe it is just because we do not enough acknowledge or contemplate it as a good in itself that we are apt to fail in its duties when they become imperative, and to 1* 10 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. calculate, with some partiality, whether the good proposed to others measures or warrants the amount of grievance to ourselves, instead of accepting with gladness the opportunity of sacrifice as a personal advantage. Be this as it may, it is not necessary to insist upon the matter here ; since there are always higher and mora useful channels of self-sacrifice, for those who choose to practise it, than any connected with the arts. ^Tiile in its second branch, that which is especially concerned with the arts, the justice of the feeling is still more doubtful ; it depends on our answer to the broad question, can the Deity be indeed honored by the presentation to Him of any material objects of value, or by any direction of zeal or wisdom which is not im- mediately beneficial to men ? For, observe, it is not now the question whether the fairness and majesty of a building may or may not answer any moral purpose ; it is not the result of labor in any sort of which we are speaking, but the bare and mere costliness — the substance and labor and time themselves : are these, we ask, independently of their result, accept- able offerings to God, and considered by Him as doing Him honor ? So long as we refer this question to the decision of feehng, or of conscience, or of reason merely, it will be contradictorily or imper- fectly answered ; it admits of entire answer only when we have met another and a far different question, whether the Bible be indeed one book or two, and whether the character of God revealed in the Old Testament be other than His character revealed in the New. IV. Now, it is a most secure truth, that, although the particular ordinances di\anely appointed for special purposes at any given period of man's history, may be by the same divine authority abrogated at another, it is impossible that any character of God, appealed to or described in any ordinance past or present, can ever be changed, or understood as changed, by the abrogation of that ordinance. God is one and the same, and is pleased or displeased by the same things for ever, although one part of His pleasure may be expressed at one time rather than anoJ'^r, and althouo-h the mode in which His plea- sure is to be consulted may be by Him graciously modified to the circumstances of men. Thus, for instance, it was necessary that, in order to the understanding by man of the scheme of Redemption, that scheme should be foreshown from the beginning by the t}^e of bloody sacrifice. But God had no more pleasure in such sacrifice in THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. H the time of Moses tlian he has now ; He never accepted as a propi- tiation for sin any sacrifice but the single one in prospective ; aud that we may not entertain any shadow of doubt on this subject, the worthlessness of all other sacrifice than this is proclaimed at the very time when typical sacrifice was most imperatively demanded. God was a spirit, and could be woi'shipped only in spirit and in truth, as singly and exclusively when every day brought its claim of typical and material service or offering, as now when He asks for none but that of tlie heart. So, therefore, it is a most safe and sure principle that, if in the manner of performing any rite at any time, circumstances can be traced wliich v> 3 are either told, or may legitimately conclude, 2)l€as€d God at that time, those same circumstances will please Him at all dmes, in the performance of all rites or offices to which they may be attached in u-ie manner; unless it has been afterwards revealed that, for some special purpose, it is now His will that such circum- stances shouid be withdra^vn. And this argument will have all the more force it' . " can be shown that such conditions were not essential to the compl-^ioness of the rite in its human uses and bearings, and only were ad lod to it as being in themselves pleasing to God. V. Now, was it necessary to the completeness, as a type, of the Levitical sacrifice, or to its utihty as an explanation of divine pur- poses, that it should cost anything to the person in whose behalf it was offered? On the contrary, the sacrifice which it foreshowed, was to be God's free gift ; and the cost of, or difficulty of obtaining, the sacrificial tjrpe, could only render that t}^e in a measure obscure, and less expressive of the offering which God would in the end pro- vide for all men. Yet this costliness was generally a condition of the acceptableness of the sacrifice. " Neither will I offer unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing."* That costhness, therefore, must be an acceptable condition in all human offerings at all times ; for if it was pleasing to God once, it must please Him always, unless directly forbidden by Him afterwards, which it has never been. • Again, was it necessary to the t}']->ical perfection of the Le^^tical offering, that it should be the best of the flock ? Doubtless the spotlessness of the sacrifice renders it more expressive to the Chris- « 2 Sam. xxiv. 24. Deut. xvi. 16, 17. 12 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. tian mind ; but was it because so expressive that it was actually, and in so many words, demanded by God ? Not at all. It waa demanded by Him expressly on the same grounds on which an eai'thly governor would demand it, as a testimony of respect. " Offer it now unto thy governor."* And the less valuable offering was rejected, not because it did not image Christ, nor fulfil the purposes of sacrifice, but because it indicated a'feeUng that would grudge the best of its possessions to Him who gave them ; and because it was a bold dishonoring of God in the sight of man. "Whence it may be infalhbly concluded, that in whatever offerings we may now see rea- son to present unto God (I say not what these may be), a condition of their acceptableness will be now, as it was then, that they should be the best of their kind. VI. But farther, was it necessary to the carrying out of the Mosaical system, that there should be either art or splendor in the form or ser\dces of the tabernacle or temple ? Was it necessary to the perfection of any one of their typical offices, that there should be that hanging of blue, and purple, and scarlet ? those taches of brass and sockets of silver ? that working in cedar and overlaying with gold ? One thing at least is e\'ident : there was a deep and awful danger in' it; a danger that the God whom they so worshipped, might be associated in the minds of the serfe of Egypt with the gods to whom they had seen similar gifts offered and similar honors paid. The probability, in our times, of fellowship with the feelings of the idolatrous Romanist is absolutely as nothing compared with the danger to the Israehte of a sympathy with the idolatrous Eg}^- tian ;^ no speculative, no unproved danger ; but proved fatally by their fall during a month's abandonment to their own will ; a fall into the most servile idolatry ; yet marked by such offerings to their idol as their leader was, in the close sequel, instructed to bid them offer to God. This danger was imminent, perpetual, and of the most awful kind : it was the one against which God made provision, not only by commandments, by threatenings, by promises, the most urgent, repeated, and impressive ; but by temporary ordinances of a severity so terrible as almost to dim for a time, in the eyes of His people, His attribute of mercy. The principal object of every insti- tuted law of that Theocracy, of every judgment sent forth in iU * Mai. i. 8. THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. 18 vindication, was to mark to tlie people His hatred of idolatry ; a hatred written under their advancing steps, in the blood of the Ca- naanite, and more sternly still in the darkness of their own desolation, when the children and the sucklings swooned in the streets of Jeru- salem, and the lion tracked his prey in the dust of Samaria.* Yet against this mortal danger provision was not made in one way (to man's thoughts the simplest, the most natural, the most effective), by withdrawing from the worship of the Divine Being whatever could delight the sense, or shape the imagination, or limit the idea of Deity to place. This one way God refused, demanding for himself such honors, and accepting for Himself such local dwelling, as had been paid and dedicated to idol gods by heathen worshippers ; and for what reason ? Was the glory of the tabernacle necessary to set forth or image his divine glory to the minds of His people ? What ! purple or scarlet necessary to the people who had seen the great river of Egypt run scarlet to the sea, under His condemnation ? AVliat ! golden lamp and cherub necessary for those who had seen the fires of heaven falling hke a mantle on Mount Sinai, and its golden courts opened to receive their mortal lawgiver ? What ! silver clasp and fillet necessary when they had seen the silver waves of the Red Sea clasp in their arched hollows the corpses of the horse and his rider ? Nay — not so. There was but one reason, and that an eter- nal one ; that as the covenant that He made with men was accom- panied with some external sign of its continuance, and of His remembrance of it, so the acceptance of that covenant might be mai-ked and signified by use, in some external sign of their love and obedience, and surrender of themselves and theirs to His will ; and that their gi-atitude to Him, and continual remembrance of Him, might have at once their expression and their enduring testimony in the presentation to Him, not only of the firstlings of the herd and fold, not only of the fruits of the earth and the tithe of time, but of all treasures of wisdom and beauty ; of the thought that invents, and the hand that labore ; of wealth of wood, and weight of stone ; of the strength of iron, and of the light of gold. And let us not now lose sight of this broad and unabrogated principle — I might say, incapable of being abrogated, so long as men shall receive eiirthly gifts from God. Of all that they have his • Lam. ii. 11. 2 Kings, xvii. 25. 14 THE LAMP OF SACRIFICE. tithe mi:st be rendered to Him, or in so far and in so much He ig forgotten : of the skill and of the treasure, of the strengrli and of the mind, of the time and of the toil, offering must be made reve- rently ; and if there be any difference between the Levitical and the Christian offering, it is that the latter may be just so much the wider in its range as it is less typical in its meaning, as it is thankful instead of sacrificial. There can be no excuse accepted because the Deity does not now visibly dwell in His temple ; if He is in\'isible it is only through our failing faith : nor any excuse because uth