do the spirits of the air, called into existence by the pulsing vibrations of melody and harmony, converse with him. They are the familiars that he can send forth speeding to all hearts with messages too subtle for words,- sometimes sparkling with irresistable mirth, at others wild with terror and despair, or filled with sweet whispers of imperishable consolation. All this and far more than any words can utter, was to be done, and has been done, for man, by music.

HRH

Oneness with God is the sole truth of humanity. Life parted from its causative life would be no life; it would at best be but a barrack of corruption, an outpost of annihilation. In proportion as the union is incomplete, the derived life is imperfect. And no man can be one with neighbour, child, dearest, except as he is one with his origin; and he fails of his perfection so long as there is one being in the universe he could not love.

…Of all men he is bound to hold his face like a flint in witness of this truth who owes everything that makes for eternal good, to the belief that at the heart of things and causing them to be, at the centre of monad, of world, of protoplastic mass, of loving dog, and of man most cruel, is an absolute, perfect love; and that in the man Christ Jesus this love is with us men to take us home. To nothing else do I for one owe any grasp upon life. In this I see the setting right of all things. To the man who believes in the Son of God, poetry returns in a mighty wave; history unrolls itself in harmony; science shows crowned with its own aureole of holiness…

…There is no enlivener of the imagination, no enabler of the judgment, no strengthener of the intellect, to compare with the belief in a live Ideal, at the heart of all personality, as of every law….

Read the whole thing – A SKETCH OF INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT

GM

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world.

1.
I pant for the music which is divine,
My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;
Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine,
Loosen the notes in a silver shower;
Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain,
I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.

2.
Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound,
More, oh more,—I am thirsting yet;
It loosens the serpent which care has bound
Upon my heart to stifle it;
The dissolving strain, through every vein,
Passes into my heart and brain.

3.
As the scent of a violet withered up,
Which grew by the brink of a silver lake,
When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup,
And mist there was none its thirst to slake—
And the violet lay dead while the odour flew
On the wings of the wind o’er the waters blue—

4.
As one who drinks from a charmed cup
Of foaming, and sparkling, and murmuring wine,
Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up,
Invites to love with her kiss divine…

Merry Christmas!

This image is linked to Luke 2:16.

click to enlarge

Albrecht Durer Melencolia 1514

This print, along with St Jerome In His Study, and Knight Death And The Devil is considered one of the 3 Meisterstiche, or Master Works of Albrecht Durer. This particular image was originally engraved on copper. It really does show an unsurpassed excellence in Durers artistic power. There are a lot of interpretations around what Durer “meant”. I will only say you and I can do well to look at his work as a whole, and the Master Works in particular, and draw what conclusions we can. The one obvious clue we have is the word meloncolia or meloncholy which has its roots in a gloomy, pensive demeanor often associated with creativity. Who knows? Maybe Durer expressed a kind of frustration with the gloom of an artistic block – and then in expressing it made one of his greatest engravings.

One of the finest early engravers was an anonymous artist known as the Housebook Master because scholars have linked his work with drawings in the same style in a manuscript called the Hausbuch. Here is an excerpt from an online encyclopedia;

Master of the Housebook (Meister des Hausbuchs), fl. 1475–1500, German graphic artist. The master is named for a series of vigorous and sophisticated drawings of everyday life found in the Hausbuch at Castle Wolfegg. Many of his engravings are in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. His work is thought to have influenced Bosch, Bruegel, and Dürer.

Personally I love what little of his work I have seen…especially the informality, and I have included 3 pieces of his work here for your enjoyment; Death and Youth, A Dog Scratching Itself and The Holy Family. You can click each image to enlarge it.

The place for the comforter is not that of one who preaches, but of the comrade who says nothing, but prays to God about the matter. The biggest thing you can do for those who are suffering is not to talk platitudes, not to ask questions, but to get into contact with God, and the “greater works” will be done by prayer (see John 14:12-13). Job’s friends never once prayed for him; all they did was to try and make coin for the enrichment of their own creed out of his sufferings. We are not intended to understand Life. Life makes us what we are, but Life belongs to God. If I can understand a thing and can define it, I am its master. I cannot understand or define Life; I cannot understand or define God; consequently I am master of neither. Logic and reason are always on the hunt for definition, and anything that cannot be defined is apt to be defied, Rationalism usually defies God and defies life; it will not have anything that cannot be defined on a rational basis, forgetting that the things that make up elemental human life cannot be defined. There are teachers to-day who play the fool on these elemental lines; they declare that they can give guidance, but they only succeed in doing a fathomless amount of harm. A man is a criminal for knowing some things, he has no right to know them. The primal curse of God was on Adam when he ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was intended to know good and evil, but not by eating of the fruit of the tree; God wanted him to know good and evil in the way Jesus Christ knew it, viz., by simple obedience to His Father. None of us by nature knows good and evil in this way, and when we are born from above we have to take care that we deal with reverence with the elemental things underlying life.

Chambers, O c. 1931

And soft along the veins of will doth flow,
Seeking God’s arteries from which it came.
Or does the etherial, creative flame
Turn back upon itself, and latent grow?–
It matters not what figure or what name,
If thou art in me, and I am not to blame.

GM

Strange creatures, half tamed only yet, are pent—
Dragons, lop-winged birds, and large-eyed snakes!
Hark! through the storm the saddest howling breaks!
Or are they loose, roaming about the bent,
The darkness dire deepening with moan and scream?—
My Morning, rise, and all shall be a dream.

GM