“And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias.  And when he had opened the book he found the place where it was written:—­

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

“And he closed the book, and he gave it again to the minister, and sat down.  And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him.  And he began to say unto them:  ’This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.’

“And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.  And they said:  ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’”

I am moved to think Christ fulfilled that prophecy because he had read it from childhood.  It is my entirely personal speculation, not brought forth dogmatically, that Scripture is not so much inspired as it is curiously and miraculously inspiring.

If the New Isaiahs of this time will write their forecastings in photoplay hieroglyphics, the children in times to come, having seen those films from infancy, or their later paraphrases in more perfect form, can rise and say, “This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears.”  But without prophecy there is no fulfilment, without Isaiah there is no Christ.

America is often shallow in her dreams because she has no past in the European and Asiatic sense.  Our soil has no Roman coin or buried altar or Buddhist tope.  For this reason multitudes of American artists have moved to Europe, and only the most universal of wars has driven them home.  Year after year Europe drained us of our beauty-lovers, our highest painters and sculptors and the like.  They have come pouring home, confused expatriates, trying to adjust themselves.  It is time for the American craftsman and artist to grasp the fact that we must be men enough to construct a to-morrow that grows rich in forecastings in the same way that the past of Europe grows rich in sweet or terrible legends as men go back into it.

* * * * *

Scenario writers, producers, photoplay actors, endowers of exquisite films, sects using special motion pictures for a predetermined end, all you who are taking the work as a sacred trust, I bid you God-speed.  Let us resolve that whatever America’s to-morrow may be, she shall have a day that is beautiful and not crass, spiritual, not material.  Let us resolve that she shall dream dreams deeper than the sea and higher than the clouds of heaven, that she shall come forth crowned and transfigured with her statesmen and wizards and saints and sages about her, with magic behind her and miracle before her.

Pray that you be delivered from the temptation to cynicism and the timidities of orthodoxy.  Pray that the workers in this your glorious new art be delivered from the mere lust of the flesh and pride of life.  Let your spirits outflame your burning bodies.