colour, and all those things are characteristics of the Divine Workman, whose manifestation is always in beauty, while wisdom and power underlie it. You may see it in your own works of art. They are not creative but imitative, and that is the sign that art along that line has reached its ending and must find a new inspiration. Sometimes people say you cannot improve upon Nature; but you can show them what there is in Nature which the blinded eyes of ordinary people do not see. Take a flower: true, the flower is beautiful; a little nature-spirit made it, and caught as much of the divine thought of beauty as that small intelligence was able to conceive; do you tell me that when the artist comes the divine life is not far more largely evolved in him than in that little nature-spirit, that he cannot catch more of God’s thought in the flower than the nature-spirit was able to express? And that is what the great painter, poet, musician does; he hears and sees and tells the thoughts of God more fully than you and I can do with our dull ears and our limited vision and our clumsy tongues. It is there, but we cannot see it. The artist is the revealer of the divine beauty in form, and unless he can do that he is no true artist at all. The artist has yet to come to this civilisation—the man who can see through the forms of the present the divine idea which is striving to express itself in new ideals, new hopes, new powers. These are wanted for art, and these shall come in the days that are dawning; and a new art shall be found in the new heavens and the new earth. So, although I have taken you to-day along a dreary path—for I have been speaking of the passing, and not the coming—it is because I want you to realise in the signs of the world around you that you are in the midst of a closing age; not only that you may know it—that is little—but that out of the knowledge of the closing you may prepare for the race which is to be born. For unless you understand, you cannot guide your steps aright; unless you understand, the world will be a mere puzzle, and not an expression of the divine thought. The age that is closing has done its work, has trained the concrete mind, has trained the scientific thought, has developed power and strength and energy—all good gifts of God, to be used for nobler purposes than they are used for to-day. There is nothing to regret, nothing to be sorry for, nothing to wish otherwise in the world that is dying. It has done its work; but it is ours to come out of the dying world into a world that is new, and it is out of the dying into the coming world that I would fain try to lead your thoughts, and perhaps your lives as well. Lecture II The Deadlock in Social Conditions: Luxury and Want Face to Face