Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/341

 A STRANGE BOOK 325 cathedral, Dr. Wilkinson not only admits in himself and in the domain of art, but extends the assertion of its necessity to all mankind and the whole world of human occupations, in a passage of the note now to be cited : — " In any walk of life, however humble or however high, there are two general requisites for a heavenly development. The first is an unremitting assiduity in all that naturally concerns the subject, the entire knowledge and manipulation and progress of the thing, as far as industry can attain them. This gives the human materials. The second is the heart's prayer to the Lord for His aid, and the mind's faith that that prayer is answered in the asking. The resulting actions of the man who l:)rings these materials, and receives by acknowledgment these spirituals, will form a part of the ever-progressive heaven of the special branch, which it is that man's privilege to be employed to portray." Being simply an elaboration of the legendary Cromwellian prescription, "Trust in God, and keep your powder dry." Coleridge said of Wordsworth's prose didactic on poetry, " What is true in it is not new, and what is new in it is not true ; " and I think the same may be fairly said of Dr. Wilkinson's theory of Divine inspiration, of the renunciation of self, the subjection of reason and will, the passive faith-full openness to influx; as he expounds it in the note, in the paragraph just cited, and in various others quoted in the last section, as that beginning : " Reason and will are not primary powers in this process, but secondary; not directive, but regulative; and imagination . . . however much it receives is as a disc on which the subject is projected, not as an active concipient organ. Another power flows in, and all the known faculties lend their aid to make