Page:Religion of a Sceptic (IA religionofscepti00powy).djvu/28

the ritual of the Burying of the Dead, the great Feasts of Christmas, of Easter, of Pentecost, so as to summon up "remembrance of things past"; so as to mingle some Nepenthe for the evil present; so as to cast some healing premonition over what is yet to be.

When an event like the Virgin Birth, when an event like the Resurrection has thus become a part of the body and pressure of the years, it becomes something very different from a metaphysical theory or an ethical appeal. It does nothing to explain the mystery of life. It does nothing to build up our moral character. And yet, in a certain sense, it does more for us than any philosophy, then any heroic urge. It acts upon us like some subtle work of art. It reconciles us to the confusion of our days and to the labour of our days by enabling us to see these things in a certain spacious perspective.

To ask oneself anxious questions about the exact meaning of the Incarnation or the precise significance of the Resurrection is like teasing oneself with the textual difficulties of some great poem whose style and whose imagery have become part of the very language we use.

Art always has this, that it satisfies a craving in us that is beyond the sphere of rational explanation. And these dogmas of the church, these festivals of the church, are Humanity's