ve. It all seemed so easy, so inevitable, so utterly without
display, so simple and great. It gave one a sense of mingled fire and
quietude, which is the end of art,--one may almost say the end of life;
it was no leaping and fitful flame, but a calm and steady glow; not a
consuming fire, but like the strength of a mighty furnace; and then the
peace of it! The great man did not stand before us as a performer; he
seemed utterly indifferent to praise or applause, and he had rather a
grave, pontifical air, as of a priest, divinely called to minister,
celebrating a divine mystery, calling down the strength of heaven to
earth. Neither was there the least sense of one conferring a favour;
he rather appeared to recognise that we were there in the same spirit
as himself, the worshippers in some high solemnity, and his own skill
not a thing to be shown or gloried in, but a mere ministering of a
sacred gift. He seemed, indeed, to be like one who distributed a
sacramental meat to an intent throng; not a giver of pleasure, but a
channel of secret grace.

From such art as this one comes away not only with a thrill of mortal
rapture, but with a real and deep faith in art, having bowed the head
before a shrine, and having tasted the food of the spirit. When, at
the end of a sweet and profound movement, the player raised his great
head and looked round tenderly and gently on the crowd, one felt as
though, like Moses, he had struck the rock, and the streams had gushed
out, _ut bibat populus_. And there fell an even deeper awe, which
seemed to say, "God was in this place ... and I knew it not." The
world of movement, of talk, of work, of conflicting interests, into
which one must return, seemed all a fantastic noise, a shadowy
striving; the only real thing seemed the presence-chamber from which we
had gone out, the chamber in which music had uttered its voice at the
bidding of some sacred spell, the voice of an infinite Spirit, the
Spirit that had brooded upon the deep, evoking order out of chaos and
light out of darkness; with no eager and dusty manoeuvrings, no clink
and clatter of human toil, but gliding resistlessly and largely upon
the world, as the sun by silent degrees detaches himself from the dark
rim of the world, and climbs in stately progress into the unclouded
heaven.

XXXV

The Faith of Christ

I read a terrible letter in the newspaper this morning, a letter from a
clergyman of high position, finding fault