When man required in the old time direct teaching of great religious truths and realities, God inspired prophets and seers, but the world required also to be educated, regulated, civilised. Therefore poets, painters, _litterateurs_, artists, and artificers were called for, by deep needs of humanity. God answered the need by giving the marvellous gift in various forms and degrees to men who had understanding of their times, and who by special insight were able to give impulses to progress in every direction. This truth is powerfully stated by a German metaphysician:--"Nothing calls us more powerfully to adore the living God than the appearance and embodiment of genius upon the earth. Whatever in the ordinary course of things we may choose to attribute to the mechanical process of cause and effect, the highest manifestations of intellect can be called forth only by the express will of the original Mind, independent of second causes. Genius descends upon us from the clouds precisely where we least look for it. Events may be calculated, predicted--spirits never; no earthly oracle announces the appearance of genius: the unfathomable will of the Creator suddenly calls to it--Be!"[1] The Apostle Paul says concerning the Christ, "_IN HIM were all things created_" (Col. i. 16). Everything in the universe became objective, because they were first subjective in Christ, the second Person in the adorable Trinity. All things were made from forms and types which were in Himself before they were impressed on Creation. The infinite glories of sky, and air, and sea, the beauties of the tree, the flower, the bird, and all forms of life, the fleeting and recurring grandeurs that paint the seasons and the years, are all but revelations of the boundless resources and the ineffable beauties and qualities of the mind of Christ, our Master and Teacher. Our craving of genius, and its never-dying ambition, is to come ever nearer to the perfection of the Infinite Artist and Architect. The inspiration which filled the soul of Bezalel or Hiram may not be so elevated or elevating as that which enabled Isaiah to soar to the throne of the Eternal in speechless rapture, or which enabled Michael Angelo to represent in form and colour his vast conceptions of the beautiful and sublime; but it was as real, and in some aspects as serviceable in suggestion and realisation, as these. "God fulfils Himself in many ways." As the Divine Spirit plays on the minds of special men, one is turned to music, another to painting, another to sculpture, another to architecture, another to mechanics, and another to a smith's imaginings; but it is still the same Spirit that worketh in all and through all, and each may be perfected instruments by which He accomplishes His wise and gracious purposes in the uplift of men.