and understanding are a direct gift of the Holy Spirit.  This truth was acknowledged in earliest times, and skilled experts in art or handicraft were reckoned to be under the inspiration of God.  Among the heathen this belief lingered long.  The ancient poets invoked the aid of their deities when entering on some great composition, and the devout earnestness of some recorded prayers is remarkable.  There should be a line of demarcation drawn in this connection between a man of talent and a man of genius.  Talent may be a matter of cultivation and perseverance.  A man of ordinary intelligence may, by determined resolution, push his way to power in many directions, and the one talent may become ten talents.  But genius is not mere cleverness, however well directed and carefully developed.  Genius is creative and inventive; it has insight, it has imagination, it “bodies forth the forms of things unknown,” and “gives to airy nothings a local habitation and a name.”  Isaiah speaks of the inspiration of the inventor of the agricultural instrument:  “His God doth instruct him aright, and doth teach him . . .  This also cometh from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom” (Isa. xxviii. 26-29).

When man required in the old time direct teaching of great religious truths and realities, God inspired prophets and seers, but the world required also to be educated, regulated, civilised.  Therefore poets, painters, litterateurs, artists, and artificers were called for, by deep needs of humanity.  God answered the need by giving the marvellous gift in various forms and degrees to men who had understanding of their times, and who by special insight were able to give impulses to progress in every direction.  This truth is powerfully stated by a German metaphysician:—­“Nothing calls us more powerfully to adore the living God than the appearance and embodiment of genius upon the earth.  Whatever in the ordinary course of things we may choose to attribute to the mechanical process of cause and effect, the highest manifestations of intellect can be called forth only by the express will of the original Mind, independent of second causes.  Genius descends upon us from the clouds precisely where we least look for it.  Events may be calculated, predicted—­spirits never; no earthly oracle announces the appearance of genius:  the unfathomable will of the Creator suddenly calls to it—­Be!"[1]

The Apostle Paul says concerning the Christ, “IN HIM were all things created” (Col. i. 16).  Everything in the universe became objective, because they were first subjective in Christ, the second Person in the adorable Trinity.  All things were made from forms and types which were in Himself before they were impressed on Creation.  The infinite glories of sky, and air, and sea, the beauties of the tree, the flower, the bird, and all forms of life, the fleeting and recurring grandeurs that paint the