Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 1.djvu/129

 The Place of Jud.ea in History. hi the Dead Sea, as well as towards Arabia, Petrsea, and the Egyptian ouacti. A barrier never broken save at rare intervals, by the indi- vidual efforts of a powerful prince ; but his influence once removed, the brazen wall that had parted for a while closed anew, sometimes after a brilliant victory which had seemed the harbinger of a better state of affairs. Natural frontiers they had none, if we except Lebanon and Jordan ; nor gateways to connect them with the thoroughfares of the outer world. There was nothing, in fact, in their geographical or social position to awaken a spirit of enter- prise, nothing to favour handicrafts by means of which raw materials are transformed, design is created, bringing in its wake all the appliances of cultured life. Viewed in this light, Judaea, even in its palmiest days, must have stood, as regards Phoenicia, much on the same level as Edom and Moab. But if Jerusalem and Samaria were nowhere as industrial centres, from a moral and religious standpoint they were highly superior to Tyre and Carthage. The Phoenicians were nothing if not traders ; with them religion never progressed beyond a selfish positivism, a kind of mutual accommodation or bargain between man and the deity, so that even under the influence of strong emotions, when the human mind is more easily impressed by spiritual agency, they quieted the vagueness of yearning, the longing of unsatisfied desire, by wallowing in immoral and revolt- ingly gruesome practices. The case was altogether different with the Jews. At a critical period of their life, under their last kings, religious sentiment, both intense and fervid, which was reflected in its highest and purest conceptions in their great prophets, took possession of their whole being. At the outset, it looks as if so sincere and passionate a feeling ought to have called forth what- ever there lurked in their natures of artistic tendencies, and that noble and exquisite forms — commensurate with the "majesty divine " of Jewish thought must have been the result. Matters, however, took a different course, Jehovah was a spirit, all powerful, living in solitary grandeur in the highest, outside the world he had made ; who, unlike the gods of other nations, did not lend himself to being painted or sculptured. The chasm interposing between the Creator and the created was boundless, insurmount- able. The prophets, moreover, in order to win their countrymen over to Jehovah, had proscribed all semblance to be attempted, whether in the organic or inorganic world ; while the second