ligion of our own day I believe the fact to be that the past centuries of familiarity with the Christian Gospel are bearing fruit in a quickened sense of the mysteries of life and of the world. The demand made of religion is higher than ever, it is urged with a more intense insistence, because Christianity has taught us what we have a right to ask.

Art, in so far as it is religious, shows us just how much of its religion the national consciousness has really made its own. Mr. Watts seems to have made it the purpose of his religious art to express what I have above described, the demand which the English mind makes of the Gospel which claims our allegiance and belief.

Nothing is more impressive, more inspiring in Mr. Watts's pictures than his sense of the vastness of the Divine element in life, its penetrative presence, the mighty grip with which it holds the world. There is indeed one picture, "The All Pervading," which represents this very abstract idea-a brooding mother-power with great encircling wings, more than the "Erdgeist" of Goethe that wove the living garment of the godhead, more than the mother of the gods, the everpresent eternity that holds creation in its hands. But death, and judgment, and sin, and hope, and faith, and love are all touched in the same spirit. The abysses of life seem to be laid bare, and depth beyond depth disclosed. No terror is veiled. The call to courage is andisguised, to bear the burden of the mystery and face the powers of hell.

There is a sense of a mysterious life in nature, in the pictures of mythological subjects, Scandinavian or Hellenic, in which Mr. Watts takes us back to the times when there were gods on the earth. In "Uldra, the Spirit of the Rainbow," and in the more or less than human "Foster-daughter of the Nixies," there is a type discerned, a rare aspect of certain personalities, which suggests the wayward impulse of a spirit that "bloweth where it listeth," a dim and unaccountable inspiration, revealing an undeveloped and diviner life in human things. "The Childhood of Jupiter" is the vision of an ampler life of earth, such as might fit the nursery of the ruler of the world. Here, and still more in "Olympus on Ida," divine presences are at home in human shape.

No contrast can well be greater than that which is presented by Greek art in its vivid apprehension of the divine presence in human life, and its pathetic feeling of the vanishing of the life of those we love in death. The dead are pictured as they were, with ever so faint and delicate a suggestion of fading life, seen through the mist of dreams, in ghostly reminiscence of some act of service from the living, some moment of personal communion with the dead. In most there is no protest, no beating against death's door. No fighting against fate breaks the peace of the vision of regret. In one "stele "

at Athens only, in the straining gaze and outstretched arm, there is a suggestion of something more, not defiance, or complaint, or prayer to the powers of life and death, only an urgent longing to retain that which in death eludes the grasp of love. Mr. Watts begins at the point where the Greeks left off. His "Orpheus and Eurydice" is a picture of death, of the moment when those we love are passing away from the caressing touch into the great abyss. It is a scene of spiritual struggle, not a meditative vision of regret. There is more than the Greek sense of the elusive fading of life. But there is no acquiescence in the great decree. The picture is like a piteous cry.

The human acceptance of the decree of death, when Mr. Watts does picture it, is much more than acquiescence, as death is to him much more than pain and fate. In "The Court of Death," death is the manifestation of the power that rules the world. And before death thus acknowledged and enthroned submission becomes obedience to the decree of that which we feel to be the source of life, obedience to a right, before which all created power is bowed. Bat with this bowed obedience, other emotions and other thoughts of death are already intertwined, such as are separately presented elsewhere. Death as "The Messenger," the messenger of release to those who are worn by the toil and pain of life, combines with a protest against toil and pain untended but by the healing hand of death, a sense of the presence of the Divine in death, as the promise of deliverance and comfort. And "Death crowning Innocence" carries us back once more to the encircling wings of the "All-Pervading" power of the universe, as wings of protection, guarding from sin and shame through the deliverance of early death, as death bestows, where alone it is able to bestow it, the crown of the undesecrated life. Lastly, in "Love and Death," the picture in which Mr. Watts makes perhaps his most direct appeal to popular feeling, we return to the passionate protest against the separation from those we love, against an end to the communion between the lover and the loved. The vehemence of our rebellion is there, the grace and tenderness of the love that rebels, and the vanity of its weak struggle against the resistless march of the power that knows no pause. But more than this: our rebellion feels itself to be weak, like the petulance of a tearful child, against the force of one clothed not only with power, and with something more than right, with the majesty and mystery of love, felt even in the hour when we can neither discern its purpose nor foresee through death the way to life.

But death calls man to look within, rather than to look beyond, and to find in life another and diviner presence than the power of life and death, before which in death we bow. The legend on "Time and Oblivion" is "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom

in the grave, whither thou goest." "What I spent I had, what I saved I lost, what I gave I have," are the words written across the background of "Sic Transit." There is something in life which defies oblivion, and, in spite of death, achieves an immortality. Death is a judge that condemns the waste of life, the loss in life of some crown of reward that may be deserved and won. Haunted by this judgment, the judgment not only of death, but of the perpetual death of Time, man walks upon his way. Nowhere is it more eloquently expressed than in the bowed head of the young man, with the fulness of the strength of a man, in “He had great Possessions." So "Fata Morgana" pictures the loss of opportunity, which strong men chase through life, seeking satisfaction in life itself, and seeking it in vain. And while in "Mischief" the vanity of merely sensuous love gives pathos to the picture of its deadly delusion, its selfishness is touched with almost cynically playful humour in "When Poverty comes in at the Door." But the volume of condemnation swells as we face the grosser facts of the world. And "The Minotaur" and "Mammon " preach what preachers often preach in vain that selfishness and sensuality grow into a cruelty and brutality of passion, whose repulsive and revolting hideousness wait for the condemnation of no judgment to come.

It is for pictures of judgment that Mr. Watts most often resorts to the imagery of the Bible. The grim figure of Jonah, inspired by the frenzy of the prophecy of doom, is an instance of the vivid apprehension of this element in the religion of the Old Testament-the revelation of judgment, the despairing yet triumphant indignation against wrong. Hence the attraction to Mr. Watts of the story of the Flood-an overwhelming judgment, from which the life which is God's gift shall yet emerge. Hence the impressive picture of the wide waste of waters in "The Dove that Returned," and the relentless horror of the wreckage of wealth and pomp at the foot of the torn trunk of the olive-tree of peace, on which the dove that returned not found her rest as the harbinger of hope. Hence the delight in the image of the horse in the Revelations-image of the governed fury which makes the riders irresistible in might, who are the instruments of the triumphant judgment of God. Nor are we ever allowed to feel this judgment to be merely a judgment from without, the verdict of a power that smites us down, a power to which we must submit. The fury of indignation against wrong flashes from the steadfast eyes of "The Dweller in the Innermost "; the God of Judgment is enthroned in the heart of man, a calm, majestic presence, the silent witness of the sin which for her has no disguise, waiting to peal forth in trumpet tones the unalterable judgment of the truth. In the great picture of "Time, Death, and Judgment," which now hangs in St. Paul's Cathedral, all the elements of religion of which we have

been speaking seem to be gathered up. The march of Time, the pity of Death, are dominated by the devouring fire of Judgment, which here becomes the overmastering revelation of the world, Judgment with unerring scales, and with avenging sword-almighty, swift, unfailing-ranging over all, ruler of the scenes of death and time. It is with a feeling of relief that we turn from the overwhelming presentment of the revelation of Judgment. But it is the seer of judgment who may find God's love where he has already found His law, in nature—that is, in the living world of experience in which we live. If by natural religion be meant the beliefs about God and about eternal things which are the outcome and the inseparable outcome of the world we know, natural religion has in these later days taken on a Christian character. Theism, if by theism we mean that to believe in the world as we know it is to be carried on to the belief in a Supreme Creative Power, with which we can hold communion, has become now of necessity Christian Theism, the belief in a Supreme Creative Power with which the communion that we hold must be the communion of love.

Among the pictures which reflect the light of this deeper revelation, "Hope" stands first. It is the light of dawn, the gleam, the tinge of light which, after the night of pain or sorrow, first makes us revive and draw a quicker breath. The note of hope is faint and low, as though of some fragmentary strain of music half heard, half fancied, as the wind of time sweeps by over the world. But hope is intent to listen. Her strength is from within. It is her triumph to catch and to prolong the dying breath of the music of life, the music which, because through hope it is not dead, can never die.

In "Love and Life" Love appears not as in the childish passionate protest against Death, but in the kindly strength of manhood guiding the steps that, without the strength of love, would not dare to persevere over the rocky ways towards the crown of things.

And so man is presented to us, inspired with the new hope; in "Sir Galahad," absorbed in the vision of achieved communion with the God of love, for which he has sought and has not sought in vain ; in "Aspiration," eager and earnest to live the vision out; in "The Happy Warrior," crowned in death, winning the reward of the self-sacrifice which is its own reward.

But, above all, in "She shall be called Woman," we are taken back to the eternal springs of hope, in the original endowment of the creative word of love. The perception of power is the dominant note of Mr. Watts's art, and his own amazing strength is the special gift and glory of the artist himself. And nowhere is this note of power so conspicuous as in this vision-an intuition solid and convincing with all the force of fact-of the glory of created life rising up in the triumphant power of praise to the love that has created it. On either

side hang woman's temptation and her repentance. We have not lost sight of sin; the subtle allurement is there, the yielding grace, encompassed by the consciousness of the hidden presence of the hideous power that is coiling itself round the God-given life, encompassed, too, by the brooding atmosphere of condemnation, a condemnation tender and sad but deep beyond all words, not less deep or sad though tender with the very promise of pardon when in repentance sin is self-condemned. But the story of sin, told with unfaltering truth in the pictures on either hand, is dominated by the presentment of the majestic power of the creative word of love, the power that cannot fail, the word that will not return unto Him void, but will accomplish that which he wills and prosper in the thing whereto He sent it.

And what of love itself, towards which we are on our way throughout? In "Charity " Mr. Watts has given us, with all his own strength, the Madonna of our day, the strong workaday, motherly love which is a daily revelation of God. In the "Spirit of Christianity" he has given a rebuke to those who preach Christ, certainly not unneeded, that they preach Christ" of contention " to the loss of the children of His love. But there are pictures that carry us beyond these.

In one," Peace and Goodwill," the name alone tells us how, beside the figure of a worn and sad humanity, there is a vision yet to be discerned, a presence of divine goodwill, a promise of eternal peace.

Another, the picture of Faith, is familiar to us, sitting with uplifted head and listening ear, with a half-doubtful light of hope and tenderness awakened in her eyes. Are we to see her yet with Hope and Love on either side, Hope, no longer faint and weak, but Hope that having hoped has grown strong in the alliance with the strength of love, revealed in the experience of a Gospel acted out in life.

This year has seen already the completion of a third picture, destined, we hope, to face "Time, Death, and Judgment" on the walls of St. Paul's, where, in the vision of a faith that has dared to face the full and terrible tale of human suffering and sin, and of a hope that has gone down into the valley of the shadow of death, time and death are seen prostrate beneath the feet, not of Judgment, but of Judgment now transformed to Love, rising like a second Eve with its face to the Creative Light, with lips already breaking into song, the song of the Eternal Day.

WILFRID RICHMOND.