It is a lesson in itself, a
lesson in faith, in devotion, as well as in art and in the history of
man's mind, to show in succession, or even side by side, though the
shock is painful, works of art in which the Christian mysteries are
rendered in an age of faith or in one of unbelief. They can see in the
great works of Catholic art how faith exults in setting them forth, with
undoubting assurance, with a theological grasp of their bearings and
conclusions, with plenitude of conviction and devotion that has no
afterthoughts; and in contrasting with these the strained efforts to
represent the same subjects without the illumination of theology they
will learn to measure the distance downwards in art from faith to
unbelief.
The conclusions may carry them further, to judge from the most modern
paintings of the tone of mind of their own time, of its impatience and
restlessness and want of hope. Let them compare the patient finish, the
complete thought given to every detail in the works of the greatest
painters, the accumulated light and depth, the abounding life, with the
hasty, jagged, contemporary manner of painting, straining into harshness
from want of patience, tense and angular from want of real vitality,
exhausted from the absence of inward repose.
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