only, but to the best.

For such preaching as this there is, deep down in the heart of man, a
great hunger and thirst. Sordid and materialistic as is the life of
the age, engrossed as the multitudes appear to be in the pursuit of
mammon, of vain glory and of pleasure, there still lingers in the human
breast a suspicion that men were fashioned for something higher than
the things that, so often, first engross and then exhaust their powers.
The millionaire is not satisfied with his millions and, of late, has
told us so. The man of pleasure is not satisfied with his pleasures,
and, when he unburdens his secret mind, confesses his disappointment
and disgust. Corn, wine and oil, houses, lands and station are all the
objects of loathing as well as of pursuit, to those who, having won
them, have found out their real quality. It is a primal instinct of
the race that "the life is more than meat and the body than raiment."

To the student of our times there is nothing more pathetic than to
observe the struggles of those upon whom materialism casts its spell to
escape from their bondage. To aid them in this endeavour they call the
painter, the sculptor, the dramatist, the man of letters, the player
skilled in the language of music, and to one and all they say,
"Idealise! Idealise!" Periods of realism in art never last long,
though, in a sense, realism is easier to the artist than idealism. The
explanation is that it is not realism that is really in demand. The
artist must give us not man as he is, but as he _ought_ to be; not life
as we know it, but life as we _would_ know it and live it, too; not the
human face scarred and seamed by vices inherited from a thousand
tainted years, but fresh, and sweet, and beautiful as it came from the
hands of God, new washed in the dews of His infinite affection. Even
nature must be idealised, and the painter struggles to produce the
perfect landscape, the sculptor to represent the perfect form. The
artist who mixes no imagination with his colours never holds for long
the public honour. The heart of man asks for the ideal; the actual is
not enough.

And to the preacher, also, these unsatisfied spirits bring the same
request. If it is not upon their lips, you may read it in the deep
longing of their unquiet eyes. The age is not a happy age, and its
lack of happiness does not arise, alone, from its sicknesses, its
bereavements, its shattered hopes, the cruelties of "offence's gilded