292 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



and malformations that have appeared on the face of 

 nature, there is still so much of God's primary beauty 

 remaining in the world, that the mind has no difficulty 

 in rising through them all to the ideal of which they so 

 eloquently testify. Consequently, he who copies nature 

 literally is a mere photographer, painting the blemishes 

 with the excellences ; whereas he who endeavours from 

 the marred to picture forth the unmarred form, to trace 

 back the after-work which is an accommodation to the 

 circumstances to the first work which expresses perfectly 

 the idea of the Creator, is the true poet, the true artist. 

 This too, in its own higher sphere, is the province of 

 religion. Everywhere we see the effects of the curse 

 in the marring and blighting of a world which God had 

 pronounced to be very good. And the effects in the 

 wilderness of nature are only a reflex of the still more 

 disastrous effects in the wilderness of the human heart 

 and of human life. But though man has departed from 

 the law and the type of his being, and sought out many 

 inventions of his own, he has not succeeded in alto- 

 gether obliterating the original pattern of his life. The 

 most lost of men still retain, though darkened and de- 

 faced, some lingering traces of that glory in which they 

 were at first created. The soul still bears some linea- 

 ments of that Divine image with which it once was 

 stamped, and makes its own darkness visible with the 

 dying embers of its native fire. And it is because of 

 this continuance of the primitive type, notwithstanding 

 its degradation, that the salvation of man is possible. 

 Had this been lost then all had been lost. 



