422 Life as a Fine Art. 



deepening with added years its best wine saved for the final 

 draught. 



Apart from this daily attitude toward the affairs of life 

 or, more correctly, as a part of it there is no better life-pre- 

 server than an inspiring philosophy, and the consolation of 

 a rational and satisfying religious faith. But it is necessary 

 for us to distinguish between that mode of thought which is 

 properly termed religious and that which is merely theo- 

 logical. The theological mind, resting in the scientific or 

 legal phase of intellectual activity, would define the Infinite 

 by verbal formulas, number and label its attributes like geo- 

 logical specimens, posit a clear-cut, final, and all-compre- 

 hensive creed, and make the temple of religion a sort of 

 theological museum of venerable antiquities. A higher 

 philosophy, however, perceives that we can not put God into 

 the crucible of our finite thought we can not weigh and 

 measure the Infinite with our little rules and scales. With 

 Spinoza, whom JSTovalis called " a God-intoxicated man," so 

 profound was his sense of the indwelling Unity, it says : 

 " To define God is to deny him." It stands in awe before 

 the mystery and wonder of the universe. Eecognizing all 

 Nature as a revelation of the One all truth, whether secular 

 or sacred, in science and philosophy as well as in Scripture 

 or in creed, as a symbol of his eternal verity, religion can 

 place no bounds in thought to his infinite perfection. As 

 interpreted by the art-impulse, religion becomes an attitude 

 of the soul toward life itself rather than formal observance 

 or dogmatic statement. It reverently recognizes behind the 

 veil of the known, underlying the fleeting phenomena of 

 life, a Power whose universal method is order, and whose 

 steadily progressive order in all the processes of evolution is 

 best symbolized in language as the index of intelligence ; 

 who, if not personal, must be super-personal rather than im- 

 personal, since the noblest thoughts, the finest feelings, the 

 tenderest loves which are the endowments of man's person- 

 ality, spring naturally from its abounding life and maintain 

 toward it a constant and vital relation of dependence. 



Unknowable in its essential being because of the finite 

 nature of our faculties, this Power, this Intelligence, this 

 Super-personality, is well known in all of its relations to us, 

 whether symbolized in the phenomena of mind or of exter- 

 nal Nature. _ To the high philosophy of the art-life and of 

 evolution, sin, suffering, and imperfection constitute the 

 necessary background of man's progressive nature, the dark 



