Illustrations from Art for Pulpit and Platform

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI THE LAST THINGS LIFE Time's Flight.--Our common view of time is of it passing with slow and measured tread, but the truer conception is to think of it as a flight. Crane in a picture entitled The Chariots of the Fleeting Hours, represents the hours being drawn by four wild horses, and driven by remorseless youths, who incessantly urge their horses on, lashing them to a greater speed. Meanwhile sinks the sun, and the night hurries to meet the rushing chariots. To those in earnest, this is the view to take. I must work while it is to-day, for the night cometh. Only by this sense of urgency can we do anything worth doing in the short span of our earthly life. Life's Brevity.--One of the strange characteristics of Egyptian religion was its concentration upon death. Life to the Egyptian people was a prolonged looking forward to it, and preparation for it. Their art, their architecture were alike dedicated to it. That brief life is here our portion was never so profoundly realised as by the inhabitants of the land of the Nile. E. Long in his highly-finished picture, An Egyptian Feast, deals with another aspect of this same truth. The picture represents a gorgeous banqueting-hall, profusely decorated, and around the tables are gathered all the great ones of Egypt. Suddenly in the midst of its revelries slaves enter and bear round in front of the guests, and amid awed silence--a coffin with a semblance of a dead body in it. The silence is only broken by the echo of the slaves' mournful chant: Gaze here, and drink, and be merry, for when you die, such will you be. Nothing could be conceived more likely to chill the spirits of the gayest or to imprint upon the mind of the men and women present--for women were admitted in Egypt to such banq...