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endeavouring to qualify yourselves to appreciate, the work of the
highest faculty of the human mind,--its imagination,--when it is toiling
in the presence of things that cannot be dealt with by any other power.

42. These are both vital conditions of your healthy progress. On the one
hand, observe that you do not wilfully use the realistic power of art
to convince yourselves of historical or theological statements which you
cannot otherwise prove; and which you wish to prove:--on the other hand,
that you do not check your imagination and conscience while seizing the
truths of which they alone are cognizant, because you value too highly
the scientific interest which attaches to the investigation of second
causes.

For instance, it may be quite possible to show the conditions in water
and electricity which necessarily produce the craggy outline, the
apparently self-contained silvery light, and the sulphurous blue shadow
of a thunder-cloud, and which separate these from the depth of the
golden peace in the dawn of a summer morning. Similarly, it may be
possible to show the necessities of structure which groove the fangs and
depress the brow of the asp, and which distinguish the character of its
head from that of the face of a young girl. But it is the function of
the rightly-trained imagination to recognise, in these, and such other
relative aspects, the unity of teaching which impresses, alike on our
senses and our conscience, the eternal difference between good and evil:
and the rule, over the clouds of heaven and over the creatures in the
earth, of the same Spirit which teaches to our own hearts the bitterness
of death, and strength of love.

43. Now, therefore, approaching our subject in this balanced temper,
which will neither resolve to see only what it would desire, nor expect
to see only what it can explain, we shall find our enquiry into the
relation of Art to Religion is distinctly threefold: first, we have to
ask how far art may have been literally directed by spiritual powers;
secondly, how far, if not inspired, it may have been exalted by them;
lastly, how far, in any of its agencies, it has advanced the cause of
the creeds it has been used to recommend.

44. First: What ground have we for thinking that art has ever been
inspired as a message or revelation? What internal evidence is there in
the work of great artists of their having been under the authoritative
guidance of supernatural powers?

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