The artist who recognizes talent as an expression of divine Principle, rather than as a personal possession, has gone a long way in overcoming restraints and limitations in demonstrating his God-derived capability and individuality in his field of art. Concerning the recognition of man's nature, our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 264), "When we learn the way in Christian Science and recognize man's spiritual being, we shall behold and understand God's creation,—all the glories of earth and heaven and man."
Striving for and steadily attaining a clearer realization of the infinitude of Spirit and the immediacy of self-existent Principle, God, one finds that arduous programs of study progressively lessen, and that expression in every form becomes more spontaneous. He who relies on Soul, God, for his inspiration is no stereotyped artist. With the Psalmist he can say (Ps. 19:1), "The heavens' declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Abiding in the understanding of divine Love, one discovers that the motivating purpose of his whole existence is to glorify God in all he thinks, says, and does.
Those engaged in the fine arts are sometimes spoken of as moody, temperamental, extremely sensitive, and living in a dreamworld of their own. Often one hears an artist exclaim, "I cannot get an idea for my work until I am in the mood for it." The moods of the so called mortal are but imaginations of an imaginary mind. The real man, the image and likeness of God, has but one Mind, the divine Mind—omnipresent and omniscient. Man, the idea of God, is not a mixture of conflicting elements. He reflects only the characteristics of the divine likeness, is harmoniously related now and forever to every other idea of God, and blesses his brother man.
