seasons and the years, are all but revelations of the boundless resources and the ineffable beauties and qualities of the mind of Christ, our Master and Teacher.  Our craving of genius, and its never-dying ambition, is to come ever nearer to the perfection of the Infinite Artist and Architect.  The inspiration which filled the soul of Bezalel or Hiram may not be so elevated or elevating as that which enabled Isaiah to soar to the throne of the Eternal in speechless rapture, or which enabled Michael Angelo to represent in form and colour his vast conceptions of the beautiful and sublime; but it was as real, and in some aspects as serviceable in suggestion and realisation, as these.  “God fulfils Himself in many ways.”  As the Divine Spirit plays on the minds of special men, one is turned to music, another to painting, another to sculpture, another to architecture, another to mechanics, and another to a smith’s imaginings; but it is still the same Spirit that worketh in all and through all, and each may be perfected instruments by which He accomplishes His wise and gracious purposes in the uplift of men.

What a living force among men is the true poet, the man who can take words and weave them into forms of perfect rhythm, rhyme, and measure, and then fill them with thoughts so suggestive and burning, as that they become for ever a force in the hearts of men, thrilling the souls of men and women with lofty ideals, prompting them to noble deeds, nerving them to patience in suffering and courage in battle.  What may not the artist accomplish by throwing on the canvas landscapes or seascapes, like Turner, Scripture scenes, like Raphael, or heroic deeds, like Millais?  Do these things not speak to the heart through the eye effectually?  And what refining influences may not be silently absorbed into the nature by the artificer, who works in metals, or in pottery, in glass, or in wood, producing shapes of graceful contour, and decoration of delicate beauty, so that the articles of the household or the warehouse may be an education to the mind, and become to it patterns of things in the heavens.  The command to Moses on the Mount was, concerning all the furniture of the Tabernacle, which Bezalel and Aholiab had to construct was, “See that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount” (Heb. viii. 5).  The beautiful things were in the mind of God first, and then had to be produced by the inspiration of the artist, in the house of prayer by the wisdom and deftness imparted by the Spirit.

It is possible, we sorrow to think, to misuse the Divine gift of artistic inspiration.  The poet may devote his genius to animalism, like Byron, or to teach immoral license, like Swinburne; the painter may crowd his canvas with degrading ideas and vulgar representations, and the artificer may be ingenious in the production of forms of ugliness and degrading grotesqueness.  Such desecration of great endowments is alike displeasing to God and ruinous to the man.  Of such it may be said:  “He feedeth on ashes:  a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isa. xliv. 20).