Gifts of Genius: A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors
General
Gifts of Genius: A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors
American literature; Gift books
As a theologian, he constantly breathes one engrossing sentiment. With
him, Christianity was the love of God and its morality was the love of the
neighbor. Judged by occasional expressions, his piety might seem too
ascetic and mystical--too urgent of penance and self-crucifixion--too
enthusiastic in emotion, perilling the sobriety of reason in the
impassioned fervors of devotion--sometimes bordering upon that
overstrained spiritualism, which, in its impulsive flights, is so apt to
lose its just balance and sink to the earth and the empire of the senses.
He has written some things that prudence, nay, wisdom, might wish to
erase. But, qualified by other statements, and above all, interpreted by
his own life, his religion appears in its true proportion--without gloom,
without extravagance. To his honor be it spoken, that in an age when
priests and prelates eminent for saintly piety sanctioned the scourging
and death of heretics, and enforced the Gospel chiefly by the fears of
perdition, Fenelon was censured for dwelling too much on the power of
love, that perfect charity that casteth out fear. It may, perhaps, be a
failing with him that he had too little sympathy with the fears and
passions of men, and appreciated too little the more sublime and terrible
aspects of Divine Providence. His mind was tuned too gently to answer to
all of the grandest music of our humanity, and we must abate something of
our admiration of him for his want of loyalty to the new ages of Christian
thought and heroism. He evidently loved Virgil more than Dante, Cicero
more than Chrysostom, and thought the Greek Parthenon, in its horizontal
lines and sensuous beauty, a grander and more perfect structure, alike in
plan and execution, than Notre Dame or Strasbourg Cathedral, with its
uplifting points and spiritual sublimity. He was a Christianized Greek,
who had exchanged the philosopher's robe for the archbishop's surplice.
Viewing him now on the whole, considering at once his gifts and graces of
mind, and heart, and will; his offerings upon the altar of learning,
humanity and religion, we sum up our judgment in a single saying. He
worshipped God in the _beauty_ of holiness. His whole being, with all its
graces and powers so harmoniously combined, was an offering to God that
men cannot but admire and the Most High will not despise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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