Page:The Parson's Handbook - 2nd ed.djvu/20

4 effects. One who has spent much of his life among those who earn their living by writing and drawing may be allowed to assert that the alienation of these, perhaps the most influential classes in modern society, is one of the most startling facts that are before us. What it has already led to in France is obvious to every enquirer. How far it has already gone in England the tone of our newspapers shows. I have pointed out elsewhere that, did the Guild of St. Luke consist of that other profession of which the Saint is patron, there would not be a dozen men present at the annual service in St. Paul’s, instead of the immense crowd of medical men who now assemble there. It is not now science but art that is out of touch with religion. The doctors would not be there if the clergy had for the last fifty years steadily supported quackery, and refused to recognise the great advances made in medical science. This is exactly what has happened in the case of art. The clergy have worked on purely commercial lines; they are mostly even now content with decoration that is the ridicule of competent artists, or is ignored by them as not being even amusing; and the Church has almost entirely failed to call to her service the great artists and craftsmen of which the last generation produced so large a number. Her place as patroness of art has been taken by the merchants of Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool.

I acknowledge that the failure to retain these classes of brain-workers has been also due to other causes which are outside the province of this book-to our sermons, for instance. Yet it must be remembered that our Church is still the most learned Church in Christendom; and also that a want of grip of modern thought is as much shown in art as in anything else. In the case of music, which is in a more fortunate position than the other arts, it is recognised that those churches where the music is