But while, comparatively speaking, few men set out to preach and teach some special gospel for the purpose of urging it upon their brethren, every man offers in his own person evidence of character which may become an educational factor in the lives of his fellow-men. We know and esteem a man by his works, which[32] are the expression of his convictions and the fruit of his being. Without the evidence of virtue in the lives of those who profess to possess it, we are not justified in believing in its reality. The artistic power of producing and recognising evidential testimony of supposed truths is part of the divine birthright of all men. The supreme Artist of Life, God, through whose works of art men may perceive the Spirit of Life, through whose creative energy the gospel of Infinite Truth is continuously made manifest, has given to man his body as a temple of truth, whereby the light of the spirit may shine out in evidence of its being. Made in the likeness of God, the handiwork of the Divine Artist, he manifests the glory of his Creator in his own human works of art—his creative powers witnessing to the essential divinity of his being. His senses give him evidence of his physical environment, and his reason, as the summary of sense, rightly seeks for verification of all that is announced to[33] him as fact. But his senses cannot give him adequate evidence of his psychical environment, because its mere apprehension entails a transcending of the spirit over the medium of the flesh, thereby carrying vision beyond the point where verification of what is seen is possible, and where, attempting its expression, the vision becomes a shrunken incoherent thing, utterly inadequate as a likeness of what it is supposed to represent. The poet, the seer, the musician, the sculptor know something of this inability to reach in their work expression worthy of its conception. And if this is so with the artist, how much more so with the genius, who is compelled by a force he does not wholly understand, and yet is possessed of some executive power of demonstration!