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Part 3.

ARCHITECTURE.

EVERY man has at some time of his life personal interest in Architecture. He has influence on the design of some public building; ere has to buy, or build, or alter his own house. It signifies less whether the knowledge of other arts be general or not; men may live without buying pictures or statues. They must do mischief, and waste their money if they do not know how to turn it to account.

Part 3.

ARCHITECTURE

ART.

ARCHITECTURE (considered as a fine art) is the art which so disposes and adorns the edifices raised by man for whatsoever uses, that the sight of them contribute to his mental health, power, and pleasure.

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 purposes of common business or pleasure.

Military; including all private and public architecture of defence.

Domestic; including every rank and kind of dwelling-place. Those peculiar aspects which belong to the first of the arts, I have endeavored to trace; and since, if truly stated, they must necessarily be, not only safeguards against error, but sources of every measure of success, I do not think I claim too much for them in calling them the Lamps of Architec ture.

The seven Lamps of Architecture—

1. The Lamp of Sacrifice.

2. The Lamp of Truth.

3. The Lamp of Power.
4. The Lamp of Beauty.
5. The Lamp of Life.
6. The Lamp of Memory.
7. The Lamp of Obedience.

I. The Lamp or Spirit of Sacrifice prompts us to the offering of precious things, merely because they are precious, not because they are useful or necessary. Was it necessary to the completeness, as a type, of the Levitical sacrifice, or to its utility as an explanation of divine purposes, that it should cost anything to the person in whose behalf it was offered ? Costliness was generally a condition of the acceptableness of the sacrifice. "Neither will I offer unto the Lord my God of that which did cost me nothing." That costliness, 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.

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? What! golden lamp and cherub necessary for those who had seen the fires of heaven falling like 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 eternal that as the covenant that He made with man was accompanied with some external sign of its continuance, an l of His remembrance of it, so the acceptance of that covenant might be marked and signified by use, in some external sign of their

one;

love and obedience, and surrender of themselves and theirs to His will; and that their gratitude 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 labors; of wealth of wood, and weight of stone; of the strength of iron, and of the light of gold.

It has been said—it ought always to be said, for it is truethat a better and more honorable offering is made to our Master in ministry to the poor, in extending the knowledge of His name, in the practice of the virtues by which that name is hallowed, than in material presents to His temple. Assuredly it is so; woe to all who think that any other kind or manner of offering may in any wise take the place of these! Do the people need place to pray, and calls to hear His word? Then it is no time for smoothing pillars or carving pulpits; let us have enough first of walls and roofs. Do the people need teaching from house to house, and bread from day to day? Then they are deacons and ministers we want, not architects. I insist on this, I plead for this; but let us examine ourselves, and see if this be indeed the reason for our backwardness in the lesser work. The question is not between God's house and His poor: it is not between God's house and His gospel. It is between God's house and ours. Have we no tesselated colors on our floors? no frescoed fancies on our roofs ? no niched statuary in our corridors? no gilded furniture in our chambers? no costly stones in our cabinets? Has even the tithe of these been offered? They are, or they ought to be, the signs that enough has been devoted to the great purposes of human stewardship, and that there remains to us what we can spend in luxury; but there is

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