If one considers beauty on a universal level, one finds that it is vitally important for many people in as much as their thoughts are raised from the concerns of this world to the aspiration of the soul through which we know God. In other words, music and also the other arts (the visual arts, prose and poetry) form an essential ingredient of a mature civilization. We start to be civilized when we live comfortably in community with others, but this is only the beginning of a process which ends in the divinization of all humanity. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition the word deification is used quite deliberately for this process, and indeed this should be the end of real religion. What is there about music that lifts us up to a knowledge of the Divine? It enters the soul and makes us aware not only of the Divine nature that lies at the heart of all creation, but even more particularly of our own soul, which is often spoken of as the heart. It is interesting in this respect that Jesus' first commandment was to love God with all our heart, and soul and mind and strength (Mark 12:30). In this case, the heart would represent the emotional nature of the human, but otherwise I would identify it with the soul. Certainly a warm-hearted individual fills my soul with joy, and I can for some time afterwards fulfil my proper role in the situation in which I find myself.

Musical composition, of course, started long before the time of the four great Viennese masters (Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert); one thinks particularly of Handel and J. S. Bach. Their style was quite different from those who followed them, but their work attained as great a perfection as any of the later masters. Every fugue of Bach is pure truth in artistic form as are also the great oratorios of Handel. The Romantic composers who followed them, especially Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, carried on the tradition initiated by Beethoven and Schubert and filled the entire world with soul-enhancing music that no one with sensitivity could ignore. It is interesting that when I was younger I had little time for the music of Mendelssohn and Liszt, but the maturing wisdom that is a product of the ageing process has made me more humble. Now I can appreciate Schumann's description of Mendelssohn as the Mozart of his time - no longer is he merely glib and superficial as I once considered him. During that period I dismissed the music of Liszt as being shallow and extremely exhibitionistic, but once again I have found a depth there which was previously hidden from my understanding. Greatness, in other words, stands the test of time and it is those who dismiss it prematurely who have ultimately to admit their error and begin to learn new ways. I am at last beginning to appreciate the music of such modern composers as John Tavener, Igor Stravinsky, Carl Nielsen and Witold Lutoslawski, while Samuel Barber's beautiful Adagio for Strings has long been one of my favourites. I have always regretted my inability to play an instrument well when music has been the source of my greatest inspiration, but listening has not been in vain because that inspiration has manifested itself through creative writing.

Pictorial art is immediately closer to us than music. One can so easily be completely deaf to the greatest music, as are some highly intellectual people whom I know, but no one can ignore art, whether in painting or as sculpture, because of the immediate impact it has through the eyes on the whole personality. Many people, however, can recognize only the surface structure, which can be shown much more accurately in a photograph. What indeed has a fine picture to offer that cannot be seen much more directly in a photograph? The answer lies in the details of the person or scene which has been depicted by the artist. The picture or sculpture has its own life which makes it a unique representation of the individual or scene at the present moment. Indeed, the painter or sculptor is as much present in the work as the person or object depicted. When one considers this in terms of art and music it is interesting to see how very unpleasant some extremely gifted artists and composers have been in real life. An obvious example is Richard Wagner, arguably the greatest of all operatic composers, whose virulent anti-Semitism formed an important link in uniting the German people to the racist theories of Nazism. Yet only a very bigoted listener could want to ignore Wagner's incomparable music.

In the realm of painting, Paul Gauguin was also unpleasant, being proud and ambitious. His behaviour towards Vincent Van Gogh, already mentally unbalanced, when they shared lodgings in Arles in southern France precipitated his suicide. Gauguin fled to Paris and two years later departed to Tahiti. In fact, the genius of an artist is not marred by their personal character; in other words, one does not need to be "good" in order to be a great writer, artist or composer. The ways of genius are indeed strange, and if we are wise we are bound to be grateful for their contribution to civilization, sympathizing with rather than decrying their personal weaknesses. They have done enough in their life, short as it often is, to have justified their existence, and we should be indebted rather than judgemental in assessing their contribution to those who follow them.

The history of art is particularly interesting. I am a great admirer of the Italians, starting with Giotto and continuing with Fra Angelico, Mantegna, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and the Venetian masters. Indeed, if one were to mention all the great Italian painters of the Renaissance, one could end up with a catalogue of names rather than a description of achievements, but their work was above all else an enormous tribute to the creative imagination of the human mind, when it concentrates on a particular theme which moves away from the usual desires of wealth, power and lust. I am, of course, not suggesting that any of these creative artists were saints and devoid of the usual human passions - indeed, they probably could not have done their work without the stimulus that these passions induced - but transcending the various worldly diversions to which we are all heir, they also worked in their superb creative magnificence. Neither music nor pictorial art can be of the slightest practical use to anybody except in inducing religious awe, national grandeur or political aspiration. When one thinks of art in this capacity it is only too easy to see how it may go amiss, inciting feelings of racial superiority or hatred as easily as lifting one up to something of the nature of God, which is always love. Indeed, art is the great means of communication of intangible truths, and those few people who have been richly endowed with this gift are bound to use it constructively for the benefit of others, for otherwise it can lead to incalculably severe destruction.

The art that particularly moves me is that of the Dutch seventeenth-century masters, especially Vermeer and Rembrandt. They have portrayed the human situation in a more perfectly intimate style than any other artists of whom I am aware. Their gift lies in working amongst the common people and portraying their everyday occupation in the same sort of way that one could imagine Jesus doing in the company of his disciples. It is, in my opinion, a far greater work to paint a very ordinary person, if not one who is frankly deformed, than a king in all his panoply. A painter who was able to portray royalty in a distinctly derisive vein was Francisco Goya, who worked at the end of the eighteenth century and whose portrait of the Spanish royal family played its own subversive part in fomenting the unrest of the French Revolution; art, as we see, transcends national barriers and belongs to all people. The English school of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries included the portraitist Gainsborough and the landscape painters Turner and Constable, while William Blake, the mystical writer and artist, brought his unique insights to public view.

Then we have to consider the French Impressionists at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, including such artists as Manet, Degas, Renoir and Monet who were in turn succeeded by Cezanne, Seurat, Van Gogh and Gauguin. There followed Cubism, Expressionism and a new appreciation of the art of "primitive people". The end is Modernism. The deeper message of Impressionism was the capacity to portray a vista with individuals, whether human, animal or plant, as mere aspects of a much larger scene of light and colour. Few people could possibly view this vast cavalcade of painting with unanimous agreement, for we all have our own especial favourites, but as one grows in experience, as part of the ageing process, so one can begin to appreciate aspects of art that were previously hidden from one's gaze. The same is true of sculpture, which has the great advantage of producing a three-dimensional likeness of the subject that is portrayed. I especially revere the works of great painters and sculptors, like Bernini and Rodin, myself sadly lacking even the elements of creativity on this level. It is therefore not impossible for someone completely lacking in an artistic gift still to honour its practitioners.

The third great art form is literature, both in prose and in poetry. I think of the beginning of St Luke's Gospel, addressed to Theophilus:

Many writers have undertaken to draw up an account of the events that had taken place among us, following the traditions handed down to us by the original eyewitnesses and servants of the gospel. So I in my turn, as one who has investigated the whole course of these events in detail, have decided to write an orderly narrative for you, your excellency, so as to give you authentic knowledge about the matters of which you have been informed. (Luke 1:1-4)

Indeed, in my opinion, the Bible stands far above any other single piece of literature, apart from its unique spiritual value. In many respects, the Old Testament is a better depiction of the human condition than the New Testament, largely because it is more down to earth and not afraid to recount disgraceful Israelite events as fully as those which are edifying.

The beauty of the Old Testament lies, as does Judaism for that matter, in its intense practicality and honesty. Sometimes it is horrifying in its brutality, but then so is so much of the history of humanity. When I come to the greatest of the writing prophets, Jeremiah, I can still hardly staunch the tears of ecstasy that come to my eyes. The whole of the subsequent Christian message, as well as humanity itself, is prophesied in the writings of the major prophets of the Old Testament. There is also the wonderful Wisdom Literature encapsulated particularly in the books of Job, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes that have a timeless quality of perfection about them, as well as being uncannily accurate in their assessment of the human condition: its inadequacy as well as its bravery under the most intolerable suffering. This is why I could never be anything other than a Christian with strongly Jewish roots.

The paradox of all this, of course, is the manner of Jesus' death after being rejected by his fellow Jewish contemporaries. But this again is the paradox of human nature. When something really beautiful appears it has in due course to be killed. Oscar Wilde has memorably expressed this in a passage from The Ballad of Reading Gaol:

Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
(Part 1, 7)

In respect of more secular prose I rank the novels of Dickens, Thackeray and Jane Austen particularly highly, to which I would add the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoievsky. All of these writers portray the human situation admirably. The writings of Victor Hugo have always been favourites of mine, and on the sociological level I would place the writing of Emile Zola on the highest rank.

Poetry is inherently more difficult to judge since our preferences are so individual. I personally rank the poetry of William Blake particularly highly because of its purity of vision and its inherent mysticism. One of his most beautiful poems is "The Lamb":

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing woolly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice;
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb? who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I'll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I'll tell thee;
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek and he is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
(Songs of Innocence)

What strikes one particularly is its absolute simplicity. It has no bravura or any striving for effect. Blake's mysticism is seen in a well-known quotation from Auguries of Innocence.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

When one reads this excerpt one is immediately struck by an observation of Julian of Norwich,

Also in this He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel-nut, in the palm of my hand; and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with eye of my understanding, and thought: What may this be? And it was answered generally thus: It is all that is made. I marvelled how it might last, for me thought it might suddenly have fallen to nought for little (littleness is what is meant). And I was answered in my understanding: It lasteth, and ever shall for that God loveth it. And so All-thing hath the Being by the love of God. In this Little Thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it, the second is that God loveth it, the third that God keepeth it.
(Revelations of Divine Love, 5)

Another beautiful example of mystical poetry is the seventeenth-century poet Henry Vaughan's The World of which I quote the first stanza:

I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great ring of endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled.
The doting Lover in his quaintest strain
Did there complain,
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his slights,
Wit's sour delights,
With gloves and knots, the silly snares of pleasure;
Yet his dear treasure
All scatter'd lay, while he his eyes did pour
Upon a flower.

My favourite quotation from William Wordsworth comes from his Ode "Intimations of Immortality", from Recollections of Early Childhood. Here is the fourth stanza:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
Beauty as an approach to God
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

This passage summarizes my view of eternity absolutely.

It is all too easy to forget the beauty that surrounds us day by day when we restrict ourselves only to the beauty that has arisen from the human mind. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount reminds us not to be anxious about clothes but to consider the lilies that grow in the fields; they do not work, they do not spin; yet he reminds us that even Solomon in all his splendour was not attired like one of them (Matthew 6:28-29).

As one moves from the bare vista of winter to the first glimmerings of spring, so the welcome flowers make their first appearance in the landscape. First there is the humble snowdrop, which is soon followed by crocuses, daffodils, narcissi and tulips; these are succeeded by the beautiful blossoms that glorify many of our trees and then follow the roses and the abundance of summer. This magnificent array of beauty is so taken for granted by most of us that we begin to appreciate its glory only when it starts to decline as the days shorten and summer is succeeded by autumn. Even then, the leaves, before their final death, show wonderful russet tints, but all is finally brought low by the first frosts of winter. Winter is always a depressing season, even if it is enlivened by various celebrations, including Christmas itself, and one looks in eager expectation for the panoply of spring. The succession of flowers is repeated year after year, but they never cease to re-awaken joy and gratitude in the eyes of all who have moved beyond self-centredness to participate in life on a more universal level.

Our animal brethren also have their particular beauty. We remember particularly William Blake's poem on the Tyger (from Songs of Experience). The point of that famous poem is that God is the creator of all things, ruthless and terrible as well as glorious and life affirming. This indeed is the mystery of life, that evil is a part of creation and will never be removed simply by human brilliance. The way forward, as I see it, is one of tenderness and care so that we may affirm that nothing that lives is foreign to us. At present we aim to assert this only with regard to our fellow human beings, but this is no longer adequate when we see that all that lives is part of an enormous ecosystem. It is indeed difficult to include frankly noxious organisms, plants and animals in this scheme, and here we have to admit our ignorance in the face of a mystery. When human beings take control, they are much more likely to destroy the beauties of nature for the benefit of modern technology; it could well be that the ugliest of all creatures is none other than humans themselves.

A passage from the seventeenth-century mystical writer Thomas Traherne embraces the mysticism of natural beauty,

You never enjoy the world aright, till you see how a sand exhibiteth the power and wisdom of God: and prize in everything the service which they do you, by manifesting his glory and goodness to your Soul, far more than the visible beauty on their surface, or the material services they can do your body.

You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.
(Centuries of Meditation 1, 27 and 29)