sure to be blessed. Here the personal relation between God and his child begins to come in. This gives its heavenly charm to the Book of Psalms, their sublime majesty to the strains of the prophets. And the inspiration of the New Testament is in the consciousness of a Divine life in the soul, of intimate and constant union with the Perfect Love, which unites the highest being in the universe with the humblest child. Higher than this it cannot go, for this is the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

§ 7. Art the child of Religion Egyptian architecture.

We will now pass on to consider Art in all religions. Art itself, in all its methods, is the child of religion. The highest and best works in architecture, sculpture, and painting, poetry and music, have been born out of the religious nature. The most sublime structures in all times and in all lands have been temples to the unseen powers.

Some four or five thousand years have passed since the Pyramids were erected, and they are still the grandest architectural work ever accomplished by the genius of man. Through all these centuries they have declared his faith in an invisible world; they stand as records of his belief in immortality and in a resurrection. As they now rise, rude and disjointed, stripped of their casing, they still give the impression of indestructible solidity.

These artificial mountains, in the midst of the vast sandy African plains, have a mountainous grandeur. What must they have been, when their sides were covered from base to summit with polished blocks of granite fitted so exactly that the blade of a penknife could not penetrate the lines of juncture, and their polished surfaces wholly covered with inscriptions and carved with sculpture. Loftier than the highest spire of Europe, the Great Pyramid widened out into a still more enormous base, containing ten millions of cubic yards of stone, enough to build a wall two feet thick and six feet high from Boston to San Francisco. The interior is equally astonishing from the mechanical skill displayed in its construction. An eminent architect, Mr. Fergusson,

says:

"Nothing can be more wonderful than the knowledge displayed in the discharging chambers over the rooms of the principal apartment, to throw off the crushing weight of stone above; in the exact slopes of the galleries; the provision of ventilating shafts; all so precisely arranged that notwithstanding the immense superincumbent weight, no settlement can anywhere be detected to the extent of an appreciable fraction of an inch.”

By the side of the Pyramids stands the colossal Sphinx, of the same period, carved of solid rock, an enormous statue ninety feet long and seventyfour high, image of a funereal god, the genius of the setting sun. "It seems," says Ampère, "like

an eternal spectre. This stone phantom appears attentive; one would say it hears and sees. Its great ear collects the sounds of the past; its eyes, directed to the East, gaze into the future; an image of perfect calm, contemplating the unchangeable in the midst of all change."

The Labyrinth, described by Herodotus, and fifteen hundred years after by Lepsius, was as enormous a work as the Pyramids. It contained three thousand chambers of stone, with vast courts and ranges of columns, and was a vast catacomb for dead princes and priests.

The ruins of the sacred city of Thebes are still so imposing that the French army under Desaix, pursuing the Mamelukes, in want of everything, without food, fainting with the heat, no sooner got sight of the ruins of Thebes, than they forgot their sufferings and their dangerous enemy, and began to clap their hands with delight. "Imagination," says Champollion, "sinks with awe before the one hundred and forty colossal columns of the Temple of Karnak." "Conceive," says Ampère, "a forest of towers, each as large as that in the centre of the Place Vendôme, eleven feet in diameter, the capitals sixty-five feet in circumference, seventy feet high, each as large as the trunk of an enormous tree, in a hall three hundred and nineteen feet long, and one hundred and fifty wide, entirely roofed over with stone, and all the surface carved

with sculpture." And this vast interior is only one building in a city of temples, arcades, avenues of sphinxes, and colossal statues. The Tem

ple of Karnak itself is twelve hundred feet long, and three hundred and sixty wide, twice the area of St. Peter's at Rome, "one of the largest," says Fergusson," as well as the most beautiful in the world." He goes on to say that in its beauty, its massiveness of form, wonderful lights and shadows, and brilliancy of decoration, it is the greatest architectural work of man.

§ 8. Buddhist Architecture.

If we pass from Egypt to Asia we find the most extraordinary and beautiful works of architecture, as the direct product of the Buddhist religion. Though described as atheism, it has built some of the grandest temples for the worship of God; though said to have no belief in a future life, its dagobas, or shrines of saints, are innumerable, and covered with exquisite carvings; though accused of denying the existence of the soul, its monasteries for the devotional life of anchorites, carved out of solid rock, are older than the coming of Christ.

One Buddhist temple in Java, that of Boro Buddor, is a pyramid, rising in nine terraces, covered with carved spires and cupolas of various forms, the chief of which cover four hundred and thirty

six niches, occupied by as many statues of Buddha, as large as life. Between these are numerous basreliefs, and below them, on the lower story, is an immense bas-relief, sixteen hundred feet long, running round the whole building, and representing scenes from the life of Buddha. All these are on the outside, but the inner faces of the five ranges of buildings are still more profusely and minutely ornamented with figures and carvings, to an extent (says Fergusson, from whom this account is taken) unrivaled by any other buildings in any part of the world. Not far off is a group of two hundred and forty temples, all richly ornamented, in every one of which was a seated carved figure.

This Buddhist architecture extends over all of eastern Asia. It early assumed the three forms of topes or pagodas, which are lofty buildings containing the relics of Buddhist saints; monasteries, some of which are so large as to contain ten thousand or twenty thousand monks; and temples, for worship. These buildings are found in India, Ceylon, Burmah, Thibet, Tartary, China, Japan, and every other Buddhist country, and go back for their beginning to two or three centuries before Christ. As soon as the religion was well established, its peculiar architecture sprang up. Every great religion has produced its own special type of architecture. The style of ancient Egypt is massive; its idea is undecaying immortality. The idea