Art and religion are united in fact, so history teaches; art and religion are akin, so the study of their attributes reveals. What then is the only and full explanation of that fact and of that harmony? Philosophers hold that the only and the full explanation of the harmony subsisting between the mind and reality, which is called truth, is found in the fact that both mind and reality are reproductions in creation of God’s truthful knowledge of Himself. Ethicists hold that the only and full explanation of the harmony subsisting between the will and law, which is called moral good, is found in the fact that both will and law are reproductions in the finite of God’s love of Himself. So philosophers must hold that the full and only explanation of the harmony subsisting between the soul and art, which is called the expression of the beautiful, is found in the fact that like the innate tendency to truth and good, the tendency to beauty is a reproduction of God’s contemplation of Himself. Creation, as has often been declared, is a manifestation of the art of God, a mimetic presentation in finite matter and spirit of the infinite ideal. All advance in truth and virtue is an approach to divine truth and goodness, and all true progress in art is an approach to divine beauty. “Filled with enthusiasm,” says De Wulf in _L’Œuvre d’Art et la Beauté_, “before the greatness of the artist’s power, Dante Alighieri compares it to that of Omnipotence: “‘Your art like the grand-child of God’ (_Inferno_, XI, 103). “Art is the grand-child of God because it is the offspring of man’s creative power as man himself has come from the hands of God.” VII ART AND THE DIVINE 3. ART IN ITS RELATION TO VIRTUE The fact that religion and art are connected is abundantly established by history. The naturalness of that connection is made clear by the many traits art and religion possess in common. As philosophers have argued to the existence of God from the fact that the universal belief in His existence can be accounted for satisfactorily on no other supposition; as philosophers also argue to the immortality of the soul from man’s universal and inevitable tendency to unending existence, so in like manner, it may be argued that since always and everywhere the art impulse is connected in its origin and growth with religion, that impulse too, like belief in God and desire of immortality and conscience for law and tendency to truth, is a projection of the divine upon humanity, not the anthropomorphism of God but the theomorphism of man. The structure of our eye, made to respond to light, justifies us in concluding there is light. The nature of the soul, which can respond to infinite beauty, justifies us in concluding there is infinite beauty. He who said, “Let there be light,” said also, “Let us make man after our own image and likeness.”