It is clear that the muses of the new age had to haunt Calvary instead of Helicon, slaking their thirst at no Castalian spring, but at the fount of tears outpoured by all creation for a stricken God.

What Hellas had achieved supplied no norm or method for the arts in this new service.
From what has hitherto been advanced, we may assert with confidence that, if the arts were to play an important part in Christian culture, an art was imperatively demanded that should be at home in the sphere of intense feeling, that should treat the body as the interpreter and symbol of the soul, and should not shrink from pain and passion.

How far the fine arts were at all qualified to express the essential thoughts of Christianity--a doubt suggested in the foregoing paragraphs--and how far, through their proved inadequacy to perform this task completely, they weakened the hold of mediaeval faiths upon the modern mind, are questions to be raised hereafter.

For the present it is enough to affirm that, least of all the arts, could sculpture, with its essential repose and its dependence on corporeal conditions, solve the problem.

Sculpture had suited the requirements of Greek thought.