He
is an egotist but a valuable one, acutely aware of the depths and
immensities of his own spirit and of its significant relations to
this seething world without. Thus it is both himself and a new vision
of life, in terms of himself, that he desires to project for his
community.
The form of that vision will vary according to the nature of the
tools, the selection of material, the particular sort of native
endowment which are given to him. Some such men reveal their
understanding of the soul and the world in the detached serenity,
the too well-defined harmonies of a Parthenon; others in the dim
and intricate richness, the confused and tortured aspiration of the
long-limbed saints and grotesque devils of a Gothic cathedral. Others
incarnate it in gleaming bronze; or spread it in subtle play of light
and shade and tones of color on a canvas; or write it in great plays
which open the dark chambers of the soul and make the heart stand
still; or sing it in sweet and terrible verse, full-throated utterance
of man's pride and hope and passion. Some act it before the altar or
beneath the proscenium arch; some speak it, now in Cassandra-tones,
now comfortably like shepherds of frail sheep. These folk are the
brothers-in-blood, the fellow craftsmen of the preacher. By a silly
convention, he is almost forbidden to consult with them, and to betake
himself to the learned, the respectable and the dull.
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