and have, in consequence, prohibited the cultivation of it among us, are
we sure that it is not one of those gracious gifts which God has
bestowed on the world, not to add to the sensual pleasures of man, but
to facilitate his improvement as a social and a moral being? The fine
arts are called the offspring and the emblems of peace. The Christian
religion itself is the doctrine of good will to man. Can those things
which only prosper in peace be contrary to the Christian religion? But,
it is said, that the fine arts soften and emasculate the mind. In what
way? is it by withdrawing those who study them from the robust exercises
which enable nations and people to make war with success? Is it by
lessening the disposition of mankind to destroy one another, and by
taming the audacity of their animal fierceness? Is it for such a reason
as this, that we who profess to live in unison and friendship, not only
among ourselves, but with all the world that we should object to the
cultivation of the fine arts, of those arts which disarm the natural
ferocity of man? We may as well be told that the doctrine of peace and
life ought to be proscribed in the world because it is pernicious to the
practice of war and slaughter, as that the arts which call on man to
exercise his intellectual powers more than his physical strength, can be
contrary to Christianity, and adverse to the benevolence of the Deity. I
speak not, however, of the fine arts as the means of amusement, nor the
study of them as pastime to fill up the vacant hours of business, though
even as such, the taste for them deserves to be regarded as a
manifestation of Divine favour, in as much as they dispose the heart to
kind and gentle inclinations. For, I think them ordained by God for some
great and holy purpose. Do we not know that the professors of the fine
arts are commonly men greatly distinguished by special gifts of a
creative and discerning spirit? If there be any thing in the usual
course of human affairs which exhibits the immediate interposition of
the Deity, it is in the progress of the fine arts, in which it would