Art and Religion - Page 2

formal religion is only a cut 'cross lots--an attempt to bring about the emotions and the sensations that come to a man by the practice of love, virtue, excellence and truth. When you do a splendid piece of work and express your best, there comes to you, as reward, an exaltation of soul, a sublimity of feeling that puts you for the time being in touch with the Infinite. A formal religion brings this feeling without your doing anything useful, therefore it is unnatural.

Formalized religion is the strongest where sin, slavery, tyranny and ignorance abound. Where men are free, enlightened and at work, they find all the gratification in their work that their souls demand--they cease to hunt outside themselves for something to give them rest. They are at peace with themselves, at peace with man and with God.

But any man chained to a hopeless task, whose daily work does not express himself, who is dogged by a boss, whenever he gets a moment of respite turns to drink or religion.

Men with an eye on Saturday night, who plot to supplant some one else, who can locate an employer any hour of the day, who use their wit to evade labor, who think only of their summer vacation when they will no longer be compelled to work, are apt to be sticklers for Sabbath-keeping and church-going.

Gentlemen in business who give eleven for a dozen, and count thirty-four inches a yard, who are quick to foreclose a mortgage, and who say "business is business," generally are vestrymen, deacons and church trustees. Look about you! Predaceous real estate dealers who set nets for all the unwary, lawyers who lie in wait for their prey, merchant princes who grind their clerks under the wheel, and oil magnates whose history was never written, nor could be written, often make peace with God, and find a gratification for their sense of sublimity by building churches, founding colleges, giving libraries, and holding firmly to a formalized religion. Look about you!

To recapitulate: if your life-work is doubtful, questionable or distasteful, you will hold the balance true by going outside your vocation for the gratification that is your due, but which your daily work denies, and you find it in religion, I do not say this is always so, but it is very often. Great sinners are apt to be very religious; and conversely, the best men who have ever lived have been at war with established religions. And further, the best men are never found in churches.

Men deeply immersed in their work, whose lives are consecrated to doing things, who are simple, honest and sincere, desire no formal religion, need no priest nor pastor, and seek no gratification outside their daily lives. All they ask is to be let alone--they wish only the privilege to work.

When Samuel Johnson, on his death bed, made Joshua Reynolds promise he would do no more work on Sunday, he of course had no conception of the truth that Reynolds reached