s became more and more rare, until the great fact of inspiration
was thrown back wholly into the past, as though God or man had altered,
man no longer divine in his nature, God no longer willing to speak words
in the ears of men. But inspiration is a fact in all its stages; and it
goes far farther than some of you may think. The inspiration of the
prophets, spiritually mighty and convincing, is needed, and they come to
the world to give a new impulse to spiritual truth. But there is a
general inspiration that any one may share who strives to show out the
divine life from which no son of man is excluded, for every son of man
is son of God. Have you ever been drawn away for a moment into higher,
more peaceful realms, when you have come across something of beauty, of
art, of the wonders of science, of the grandeur of philosophy? Have you
for a time lost sight of the pettinesses of earth, of trivial troubles,
of small worries and annoyances, and felt yourself lifted into a calmer
region, into a light that is not the light of common earth? Have you
ever stood before some wondrous picture wherein the palette of the
painter has been taxed to light the canvas with all the hues of
beauteous colour that art can give to human sight? Or have you seen in
some wondrous sculpture, the gracious living curves that the chisel has
freed from the roughness of the marble? Or have you listened while the
diviner spell of music has lifted you, step by step, till you seem to
hear the Gandharvas singing and almost the divine flute is being played
and echoing in the lower world? Or have you stood on the mountain peak
with the snows around you, and felt the grandeur of the unmoving nature
that shows out God as well as the human spirit? Ah, if you have known
any of these peaceful spots in life's desert, then you know how
all-pervading is inspiration; how wondrous the beauty and the power of
God shown forth in man and in the world; then you know, if you never
knew it before, the truth of that great proclamation of Shri
Krishna the Beloved: "Whatever is royal, good, beautiful, and
mighty, understand thou that to go forth from My Splendour";[3] all is
the reflection of that tejas[4] which is His and His alone. For as there
is nought in the universe without His love and life, so there is no
beauty that is not His beauty, that is not a ray of the illimitable
splendour, one little beam from the unfailing source of life.

[Footnote 3: _Bhagavad-Gita_, x. 4