No one ever made a coloured picture of the “wild west wind”; but there are plenty of coloured pictures in which there is no mistaking its presence.  We all believe in wireless telegraphy (now that it is an accomplished fact) which is, in itself, untranslatable into colour or line; but its mechanism can be photographed, and its results in the world of men and ships are in all the illustrated papers.  Music, which is pure sound, is to some the surest path to the Reality behind this outward show things; yet to some at least of such music is indeed form and colour, even though the colours be beyond the rainbow.  For in truth, everything worth believing in, all those things, those ideas, which renew the springs of our life, have form and they have colour.  Even to the colour-blind one word differeth from another in glory.

This is no idle fancy, no mere subject for academic debate:  it is the most practical subject in the world.  For even as the body is fed not by food alone but by the living air, so is the spirit nourished not alone by right action but by inspiring ideas.  Ideas are pictures; and the best ideas are coloured pictures.

Hence the great value of words.  It is idle to speak of “words, idle words,” as though they were the transient froth on the permanent ocean of thought.  They are the vehicle, the body of thought.  If the thought be shallow or silly, the words will indeed be “idle.”  But if the idea be inspiring the words will be the channel of that inspiration.

The greater part of this power in words is lost to us to-day.  Everything tempts us to hurry over words.  We talk too quickly to be able to pay that respect to words which they deserve; and we read the newspaper, the magazine, the novel, the play, the poem, with the same disastrous haste.  We devour the words but lose their essence.  Hence there is a grave danger that through this neglect we shut out one of the main streams by which our life must be fed if it is not to shrink into mere fretful existence.

There is a curious idea in some minds that fine language consists of long words difficult to understand.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Most of the great words—­the words of power, as the old Kabalists called them—­are short words, words in common use.  And how common is the sound of them in the mouth of the preacher!  Not long ago I heard an intelligent and cultured man reading one of the many beautiful passages from the English Bible:—­

    “Ye dragons, and all deeps;
     Fire and hail, snow and vapour;
     Stormy wind fulfilling his word;
     Mountains and all hills;
     Fruitful trees and all cedars, ...”