rlies them and the
splendour that breaks from them. It is possible to treat fine thoughts
in a heavy way so as to deprive them of all their rarity and
inspiration. The Gospel contains some of the most beautiful thoughts
in the world, beautiful because they are common thoughts which every
one recognises to be true, yet set in a certain light, just as the
sunset with its level, golden, remote glow has the power of
transfiguring a familiar scene with a glory of mystery and desire. But
one has but to turn over a volume of dull sermons, or the pages of a
dreary commentary, to find the thoughts of the Gospel transformed into
something that seems commonplace and uninspiring. The beauty of
ordinary things depends upon the angle at which you see them and the
light which falls upon them; and the work of the great artist and the
great writer is to show things at the right angle, and to shut off the
confusing muddled cross-lights which conceal the quality of the thing
seen.

The recognition of the principle of beauty lies in the assurance that
many things have beauty, if rightly viewed, and in the determination
to see things in the true light. Thus the soul that desires to see
beauty must begin by believing it to be there, must expect to see it,
must watch for it, must not be discouraged by those who do not see it,
and least of all give heed to those who would forbid one to discern it
except in definite and approved forms. The worst of aesthetic prophets
is that, like the Scribes, they make a fence about the law, and try to
convert the search for principle into the accumulation of detailed
tenets.

Let us then never attempt to limit beauty to definite artistic lines;
that is the mistake of the superstitious formalist who limits divine
influences to certain sanctuaries and fixed ceremonials. The use of
the sanctuary and the ceremonial is only to concentrate at one fiery
point the wide current of impulsive ardour. The true lover of beauty
will await it everywhere, will see it in the town, with its rising
roofs and its bleached and blackened steeples, in the seaport with its
quaint crowded shipping, in the clustered hamlet with its
orchard-closes and high-roofed barns, in the remote country with its
wide fields and its converging lines, in the beating of the sea on
shingle-bank and promontory; and then if he sees it there, he will see
it concentrated and emphasised in pictures of these things, the
beauty of which lies so often in t