"You build on the foundations of Art a series of temples to your religious
convictions. You blaze Christianity on every canvas. I suppose that is
natural in a man of your opinions, but to me it is as painful as the
spectacle of advertisements of quack nostrums planted, as you shall see
them, beside railway lines--here in a golden field of buttercups, there
rising above young barley. Of course, I don't presume to assert that your
faith is a quack nostrum; only real Art and Religion won't run in double
harness for you or anybody. They did once, but the world has passed beyond
that point."
"Never," answered Tarrant. "We have proof of it. Souls have been saved by
pictures. That is as certain as that God made the earth and everything on
it."
"There again! Every word you speak only shows how difficult it is for us to
exchange ideas. Why is it so positively certain that God made the earth and
everything on it? To attribute man's origin direct to God is always, in my
mind, the supreme proposition of human conceit. Did it need a God to
manufacture you or me or Brady? I don't think so. Consider creation. I
suppose if an ant could gauge the ingenuity of a steam engine, he would
attribute it without hesitation to God, but it happens that the steam
engine is the work of a creature--a being standing somewhere between God
and the ant, but much nearer the latter than the former. You follow me?
Even Tarrant will admit, for it is an article of his creed, that there
exist many beings nearer to God than man.
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