his own time and choose his own subject and treat it in his own way.

Then the business side of his work will be negotiated for him by the big dealer, the man who also is an artist in his own way and knows the difference between the productions of spontaneous feeling and mere mechanical dexterity, and who finds his own profit in helping the artist to maintain that freedom from anxiety and the sense of compulsion without which such high-class works as the big dealer's business depends on cannot be produced.

Now this is a parable. God is the big dealer, and his best work through man is done for love and not by compulsion; and the more we realise this, the better work we shall do. Am I irreverent in comparing God to some great picture-dealer of world-wide reputation and saying that he too gains his profits in the transaction? I think not; for Christ himself tells us of the master who looked to receive a profit out of his servants' work, and I have only clothed the old parable in modern garb and coloured it with a familiar colouring.

And we may carry the simile yet further. The great dealer knows how to place the masterpieces in which he deals, he is in touch with connoisseurs with whom the artist cannot come in contact; and if the artist had to attend to all this, what would become of his creative vision?