Early Christian art thus sprang out of that which was pre-existing, selecting and adapting what was consistent with its spirit, and rigorously rejecting whatever savoured of idolatry or of the sensual character of ancient heathen life. It stripped off, to use the figure of Dr. Lübke, what was unsuitable to the new ideas, and retained the 209 healthy germ from which the tree of Christian art was to unfold in grand magnificence. As Christianity was the very antithesis of paganism in spirit, so its art was singularly free from pagan error. There are no wanton dances of nude figures like those upon the walls of Pompeii, but chaste pictures with figures clothed from head to foot; or, where historical accuracy required the representation of the undraped form, as in pictures of our first parents in the garden of Eden, or of the story of Jonah, they are instinct with modesty and innocence. Pagan art, a genius with drooping wing and torch reversed, stood at the door of death, but cast no light upon the world beyond. Christian art, inspired with lofty faith, pierced through the veil of sense, beyond the shadows of time, and beheld the pure spirit soaring above the grave, like essence rising from an alembic in which all the grosser qualities of matter are left behind. Hence only images of hope and tender joy were employed. There is no symptom of the despair of paganism; scarce even of natural sorrow. Independent statues were in the first ages rarely if ever used.[334] There seemed to be greater danger of falling into idolatry in the imitation of these, in which form were most of the representations of the heathen deities, than in the employment of painting; and it was against the making of graven images that the prohibition of Scripture was especially directed.[335] Their fabrication, therefore, was especially avoided. Indeed, sculpture never became truly Christian, and even in the hands of an Angelo or a Thorwaldsen failed to produce triumphs of skill like those of Phidias or Praxiteles. Christian 210 graphic art, however, in its noblest development far surpassed even the grandest achievements of which we have any account of the schools of Apelles and Zeuxis. Christianity is the embodiment of the gentler graces; paganism, in its purest form, that of the sterner virtues. The former finds its best expression in painting, the latter in sculpture.