A MARK OF DEGENERACY

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 3, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 38.

A MARK OF DEGENERACY.

It is a pity that modern artists have such a mania for copying the often immodest work of the old heathen painters and sculptors. The modern ideal of art is not something modern and original, but something ancient. It is deemed an excuse for presenting the lewdest of pictures if only it can be said that it is classic—that it is ancient Greek or Roman or Babylonian or Egyptian. It is deemed so artistic or so scholarly to reproduce in our day what the old heathen "masters" did, or to repeat what the old heathen "philosophers" said. It was mimicry of the heathen that gained popularity for the early Christian church, and secured the nominal adoption of the Christian religion by the heathen government of Rome. So to-day artists and scholars are gaining popularity by setting forth the art and learning of the ancient heathen. And this method is gaining popularity in the church as well as in the world. It is a sign of the times, and its effect can not be different from that of former times. A correspondent of the Herald of Gospel Liberty says:

"A New York official, Mr. Anthony Comstock, has seized, under authority of law, certain publications of an art school. He was actuated by the complaint of a parent whose pure children were being polluted by the foul pictures of nude men in the pamphlets seized. Instead of being commended he is subjected to satire and abuse by some idealists, artists, art dealers, and art students who see their craft to be in danger, as the shrine makers for Diana raised uproar against St. Paul at Ephesus."

After stating this fact, the correspondent adds some very wholesome comments, from which we cull the following:

"The finer the art, the more accurately does it reproduce nature and idealism. The highest form of art does not draw attention to itself, but to that which it reveals, as tho it said, 'Behold what I reveal.' This being an accepted principle, it follows that the nude, when under the touch of art, will powerfully reveal forbidden nakedness—nakedness that God covered. Gen. 3:21. And these impressions on the plastic minds of youth become fixed mental images for vileness of thought and subtleness of temptation. 'Wo unto the world because of occasion of stumbling; . . . wo to that man through whom the occasion cometh.'"

" 'To the pure all things are pure' is appealed to in defense of the nude. But a pure mind instinctively shrinks from the nude. To use this proverb in justification of the nude is as weak as to assert to the honest man that all things are honest."

. . . What would Christ have said of modern advertising by the worst specimens selected from museums that preserve the depths of shame of the Dark Ages? What would He say of the coming together of the pure and the impure of both sexes to look upon absolute nakedness—50,000 persons every three months in one art museum?

"Let defenders of the nude claim immunity from its effects, they can not prove their assertions by either reason,—the conscience of mankind, or history. The centuries never produced a moral community where the nude was popular. Greece and Italy tried it, and failed. France has been trying it, and her death-rate exceeds the birth-rate. And if American art resorts to the nude (which is the cheapest because most shocking way of advertising) to revive public interest in art and in art museums, will not the fate that has befallen Latin nations be our inevitable punishment? 'Whatsoever a man [or nation] soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.'"