ture
fulfilled in your ears.'

"And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which
proceeded out of his mouth. And they said: 'Is not this Joseph's son?'"

I am moved to think Christ fulfilled that prophecy because he had read it
from childhood. It is my entirely personal speculation, not brought forth
dogmatically, that Scripture is not so much inspired as it is curiously
and miraculously inspiring.

If the New Isaiahs of this time will write their forecastings in
photoplay hieroglyphics, the children in times to come, having seen those
films from infancy, or their later paraphrases in more perfect form, can
rise and say, "This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." But
without prophecy there is no fulfilment, without Isaiah there is no
Christ.

America is often shallow in her dreams because she has no past in the
European and Asiatic sense. Our soil has no Roman coin or buried altar or
Buddhist tope. For this reason multitudes of American artists have moved
to Europe, and only the most universal of wars has driven them home. Year
after year Europe drained us of our beauty-lovers, our highest painters
and sculptors and the like. They have come pouring home, confused
expatriates, trying to adjust themselves. It is time for the American
craftsman and artist to grasp the fact that we must be men enough to
construct a to-morrow that grows rich in forecastings in the same way
that the past of Europe grows rich in sweet or terrible legends as men go
back into it.

* * * * *

Scenario writers, producers, photoplay actors, endowers of exquisite
films, sects using special motion pictures for a predetermined end, all
you who are taking the work as a sacred trust, I bid you God-speed. Let
us resolve that whatever America's to-morrow may be, she shall have a day
that is beautiful and not crass, spiritual, not material. Let us resolve
that she shall dream dreams deeper than the sea and higher than the
clouds of heaven, that she shall come forth crowned and transfigured with
her statesmen and wizards and saints and sages about her, with magic
behind her and miracle before her.

Pray that you be delivered from the temptation to cynicism and the
timidities of orthodoxy. Pray that the workers in this your glorious new
art be delivered from the mere lust of the flesh and pride of life. Let
your spirits outflame your burning bodies.

Consider what it will do to your souls,