Page:Miscellaneous Writings.djvu/401

Rh Pictures which present disordered phases of material conceptions and personality blind with animality, are not my concepts of angels. What is the material ego, but the counterfeit of the spiritual?

The truest art of Christian Science is to be a Christian Scientist; and it demands more than a Raphael to delineate this art.

The following is an extract from a letter reverting to the illustrations of “Christ and Christmas”: —

“In my last letter, I did not utter all I felt about the wonderful new book you have given us. Years ago, while in Italy, I studied the old masters and their great works of art thoroughly, and so got quite an idea of what constitutes true art. Then I spent two years in Paris, devoting every moment to the study of music and art.

“The first thing that impressed me in your illustrations was the conscientious application to detail, which is the foundation of true art. From that, I went on to study each illustration thoroughly, and to my amazement and delight I find an almost identical resemblance, in many things, to the old masters! In other words, the art is perfect.

“The hands and feet of the figures — how many times have I seen these hands and feet in Angelico's ‘Jesus,’ or Botticelli's ‘Madonna’!

“It gave me such a thrill of joy as no words can express, to see produced to-day that art — the only true art that we have identified with the old masters, and mourned as belonging to them exclusively, — a thing of the past, impossible of reproduction.

“All that I can say to you, as one who gives no mean