II. ARCHITECTURE 79

seriously want, Gothic will do for you; but it must be an earnest want. It is its pride to accommodate itself to your needs; and the one general law under which it acts is simply this,-find out what will make you comfortable, build that in the strongest and boldest way, and then set your fancy free in the decoration of it. Don’t do anything to imitate this cathedral or that, however beautiful. Do what is convenient; and if the form be a new one, so much the better; then set your mason’s wits to work, to find out some new way of treating it. Only be steadily determined that, even if you cannot get the best Gothic, at least you will have no Greek; and in a few years’ time-in less time than you could learn a new science or a new language thoroughly-the whole art of your native country will be reanimated.

56. And, now, lastly. When this shall be accomplished, do not think it will make little difference to you, and that you will be little the happier, or little the better for it. You have at present no conception, and can have none, how much you would enjoy a truly beautiful architecture; but I can give you a proof of it which none of you will be able to deny. You will all assuredly admit this principle,-that whatever temporal things are spoken of in the Bible as emblems of the highest spiritual blessings, must be good things in themselves. You would allow that bread, for instance, would not have been used as an emblem of the word of life, unless it had been good, and necessary for man; nor water used as the emblem of sanctification, unless it also had been good and necessary for man. You will allow that oil, and honey, and balm are good, when David says, “Let the righteous reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil;” or, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste; yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth;” or, when Jeremiah cries out in his weeping, “Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no physician there?” You would admit at once that the man who said there was no taste in the literal honey, and no healing in the literal balm, must be

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