sacrifice that which makes life valuable. Were he to become a liar and
express something different from what he feels, truth would no longer be
in him. What would it profit him to gain the whole world and lose his
own soul? He knows that there is that within him which is more important
than physical existence--that to which physical existence is but a
means. That he may feel and express it, it is good that he should be
alive. But unless he may feel and express the best, he were better dead.

Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from
circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there
is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of
mind. And if we are licensed to lay aside the science of aesthetics and,
going behind our emotion and its object, consider what is in the mind of
the artist, we may say, loosely enough, that art is a manifestation of
the religious sense. If it be an expression of emotion--as I am
persuaded that it is--it is an expression of that emotion which is the
vital force in every religion, or, at any rate, it expresses an emotion
felt for that which is the essence of all. We may say that both art and
religion are manifestations of man's religious sense, if by "man's
religious sense" we mean his sense of ultimate reality. What we may not
say is, that art is the expression of any particular religion; for to do
so is to confuse the religious spirit with the channels in which it has
been made to flow. It is to confuse the wine with the bottle. Art may
have much to do with that universal emotion that has found a corrupt and
stuttering expression in a thousand different creeds: it has nothing to
do with historical facts or metaphysical fancies. To be sure, many
descriptive paintings are manifestos and expositions of religious
dogmas: a very proper use for descriptive painting too. Certainly the
blot on many good pictures is the descriptive element introduced for
the sake of edification and instruction. But in so far as a picture is a