as the scroll of human life unfolds before us, and the thronging figures meet our eyes! Here and there, it is true, there gleams forth from the throng some pure soul, some saintly life, clad in some degree with that beauty of holiness which is, of all things we can know, divine. But is this all that is possible, all that can be achieved? Can it be all, if God above be indeed at once the Holy and the ever Blessed One? Would not blessedness fail, if this were all? Who that realises the artist's poignant pang and shame, but must answer, 'Yes.'

But to our Christian thinker this is not all? What lies for him at the very centre of his Christian faith, the support of all else? Is it not the Word made Flesh?' Is it not this mystery of godliness: 'God made manifest in the Flesh?' Is not Christ the 'Image of the invisible God': the 'Express Image of His substance': the 'Effulgence of His glory?'

What is all this from our present point of view, but the perfecting of the divine self-expression; the perfect blessedness of the Sovereign Poet of the Universe? And so this brief outline of the aesthetic life, of the genesis of art,

its method of procedure, its characteristic pains and pleasures, has brought us, ere we were well aware of it, into the immediate presence of the mystery of the Incarnation. If this unforced, natural, and I think inevitable following out of one clear line of reflective thought, in this one specialised region of its active exercise, has conducted us to the central verity of our Christian faith, surely we may cease to plead apologetically for some limited and special grace, whereby to confer some Christian sanction to the world of Art. We find it already consecrated. If every true thought, so every beautiful thing is found its very nature, to be in

already, and from

obedience to Christ.

And our Christian inquirer may now find a new interest and a new joy in putting side by side two words that lie far apart in the pages of Holy Scripture. God looked down upon the fair world that He had made, and behold, it was very good.' Again He looked down from heaven and beheld the perfect image of the invisible God, and said, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'

Surely then, if the essential life of Art be

found in expression, in visible, palpable, audible form, and its end be delight—again may the lips of reverent faith pronounce over this new region of human interest and achievement the consecrating word: once more is dropped the crowning key-stone into this fair arch, which takes its own rightful place in the spiritual building which is temple and palace both to the soul that has learnt at last something of the glory and the beauty of the life for which

it was created.

Yet is there one other loftier and wider span, which crowns, as with a perfect dome, the whole structure of a perfectly developed life. It is the Ethical, the Moral, where Truth and Beauty meet in something higher than themselvessomething that has endowed them both with that strange Imperative that claims the will. This, from its very nature, reaches a loftier height and covers a wider range. For Conduct is a wider, loftier thing than either science, or philosophy, or art, since it covers the whole area of the voluntary life, and touches every item of responsible living. So high is it, that we discovered in Duty a strange absoluteness that is to

be found nowhere else in the life of man. This it was that invested it with a unique and august quality which separates it from all other claims and attractions that can be measured or weighed. It was this that compelled us, when we had set up our three thrones, at first co-ordinate, as of three sister-powers,-the True, the Beautiful, the Right-regnant each in her own sphere as if with equal sovereignty, each with her own throng of devotees and worshippers-compelled us to acknowledge, when we looked more closely, that the authority of two of them was an authority secondary and derived. Sovereign over all was that which made its appeal not simply to the intellect or the feeling, though with aspects towards both of these, but issued its command to that within us which is the one true exponent of the central personal life. Hence it was that while science and philosophy and art lie far removed from the mass of mankind, Duty is omnipresent in high and low, the instructed and the ignorant, the cultured and the boor.

Here we obtained at least a glimpse of the great and comforting truth that this highest

thing of all was denied to none. The inequalities of privilege and opportunity, everywhere else discernible, were, in this most characteristically human attribute of our humanity, abolished. So that here too, the highest is the nearest; the most glorious is the most accessible. What Christian thinker can fail to be moved to marvel and adore, when he observes the almost exclusive stress laid in the teaching of his faith upon that which is open to all: Duty, interpreted as the doing of the will of God'The world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever' or when he remembers that the calm, strong word which ushers in the advent of the Son of Man, the Prince of Life, into the world -Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God -is not denied to the lowliest disciple: the thread of gold running through all that endless succession of duties which make up his life of obscurity and toil? He too, as each day dawns, is called to take upon his lips that same great utterance of the One Life which possessed a perfect autonomy: and to say, yea, even I 'come to do Thy will, O God.'