Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/98

76 Holy Writ. Walls, blank walls, are always in the nature of prison walls. They separate us from other people. But the Russian, by painting the walls blue and crowding them with the saints, imparts to them a character of infinity. He gives to the worship a background of eternity. He paints in the spiritual landscape of the church.

A great interpretive Russian writer thus writes of the fresco and wall-painting:—

In the West, where the Gothic arose, wall-painting naturally disappeared. There was no place for it on the arrowy columns and in the spaces between the windows. But in orthodoxy a continuous blank wall begged to be covered with painting. An ikon, a little picture in a square frame, was hung here and there, but still did not cover or give voice to the senseless walls at which the eyes of the worshippers gazed. In orthodoxy the wall must not be dumb, it must speak. But the wall cannot speak by texts—for which there are books. The people in the church ought to see themselves surrounded by holy scenes, pictures—of immense content and of immense dimensions. Such are frescoes. Only in orthodoxy are they possible, and indeed without them orthodoxy is dumb, powerless, not expressed. Thirst for such pictures among the Russian orthodox is great.

Frescoes make the walls live. The soul poured forth on the walls calls to prayer, and says as much to the worshippers as does the reading and the singing in church, not less. . . . The worshippers feel around them the great background of historical Christianity. They not only hear but see—Christian history, they not only hear but see—the story of salvation, they not