There was a flower called Faith: Man plucked it, and kept it in a vase of water. This was long ago, mark you. And the flower is now faint, For the water with time and dust is foul. Come let us pour out the old water, And put in new, That the flower of faith be red again. Ten Lilies and ten Virgins, And, mild marvel to mine eyes, Five of the Virgins were foolish, But _all_ of the lilies were wise. Look out, Death, I am coming. Art thou not glad? What talks we'll have, what memories Of old battles. Come, bring the bowl, Death; I am thirsty. _Cut the Cord, Doctor!_ quoth the baby, man, in the nineteenth century. _I am ready to draw my own breath._ Whether one is an optimist or an orthodox religionist or what not, it would seem that faith must centre upon Christ. The Church is too hot, and Nothing is too cold. I find my proper Temperature in Art. Art offers to me a method of adoring the sweet master Jesus Christ, the beautiful souled One, without the straitness of a Creed which confines my genuflexions, a Church which confines my limbs, and without the vacuity of the doubt which numbs them. An unspeakable gain has come to me in simply turning a certain phrase the other way: the beauty of holiness becomes a new and wonderful saying to me when I figure it to myself in reverse as the holiness of beauty. This is like opening a window of dark stained glass, and letting in a flood of white light. I thus keep upon the walls of my soul a church-wall rubric which has been somewhat clouded by the expiring breaths of creeds dying their natural death. For in art there is no doubt. My heart beat all last night without my supervision: for I was asleep; my heart did not doubt a throb; I left it beating when I slept, I found it beating when I woke; it is thus with art: it beats in my sleep. A holy tune was in my soul when I fell asleep: it was going when I awoke. This melody is always moving along in the background of my spirit. If I wish to compose, I abstract my attention from the thoughts which occupy the front of the stage, the _dramatis personæ_ of the moment, and fix myself upon the deeper scene in the rear. It is now time that one should arise in the world and cry out that Art is made for man and not man for art: that government is made for man and not man for government: that religion is made for man and not man for religion: that trade is made for man and not man for trade. This is essentially the utterance of Christ in declaring that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Like the forest whose edges near man's dwellings are embroidered with birds, while its inner recesses are the unbroken solid color of solitude.