the expression of any particular religion; for to do so is to confuse the religious spirit with the channels in which it has been made to flow.  It is to confuse the wine with the bottle.  Art may have much to do with that universal emotion that has found a corrupt and stuttering expression in a thousand different creeds:  it has nothing to do with historical facts or metaphysical fancies.  To be sure, many descriptive paintings are manifestos and expositions of religious dogmas:  a very proper use for descriptive painting too.  Certainly the blot on many good pictures is the descriptive element introduced for the sake of edification and instruction.  But in so far as a picture is a work of art, it has no more to do with dogmas or doctrines, facts or theories, than with the interests and emotions of daily life.

II

ART AND HISTORY

And yet there is a connection between art and religion, even in the common and limited sense of that word.  There is an historical XXXXXXXXXX:  XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX between the history of art and the history of religion.  Religions are vital and sincere only so long as they are animated by that which animates all great art—­spiritual ferment.  It is a mistake, by the way, to suppose that dogmatic religion cannot be vital and sincere.  Religious emotions tend always to anchor themselves to earth by a chain of dogma.  That tendency is the enemy within the gate of every movement.  Dogmatic religion can be vital and sincere, and what is more, theology and ritual have before now been the trumpet and drum of spiritual revolutions.  But dogmatic or intellectually free, religious ages, ages of spiritual turmoil, ages in which men set the spirit above the flesh and the emotions above the intellect, are the ages in which is felt the emotional significance of the universe.  Then it is men live on the frontiers of reality and listen eagerly to travellers’ tales.  Thus it comes about that the great ages of religion are commonly the great ages of art.  As the sense of reality grows dim, as men become more handy at manipulating labels and symbols, more mechanical, more disciplined, more specialised, less capable of feeling things directly, the power of escaping to the world of ecstasy decays, and art and religion begin to sink.  When the majority lack, not only the emotion out of which art and religion are made, but even the sensibility to respond to what the few can still offer, art and religion founder.  After that, nothing is left of art and religion but their names; illusion and prettiness are called art, politics and sentimentality religion.