It is only when we succeed in getting clear of that shallow materialism which clings to the letter, while it ignores the power behind it, that the full scope of pictorial art can dawn upon us. But when we once realise that the mood expressed in such pictures as the ‘Frosty Morning’ and ‘Windsor’ is an essential part--nay, is the very essence of the works themselves, we shall begin to understand how nearly related great art is to religion; how insensibly the one passes into the other. In such pictures as these--and I do not hesitate to rank them among the truest and highest that Christianity has yet produced--in pictures like these the ordinary scenes of rural life and labour are impressed with the quietness and beauty of the best part of the artist’s own nature, and fed with the lofty thoughts that only poets dare utter in words. Such pictures are indeed in the old monkish sense an act of worship. The mood they call up and sustain is a blessed mood in which the mystery and the weight of this unintelligible world are lightened. Such pictures as these are literally an imitation or reminiscence of the great moments of life, and possess life and food for future years.
I will conclude this chapter by answering some objections that I believe are likely to be made to the interpretation I have offered of this group of Turner’s works. These objections would be based on arguments drawn from the commonly received idea of Turner’s personal character. The mood expressed in this group of pictures is, it might be urged, the habitual mood or way of feeling of the perfectly good man; it is only in the perfectly good and religious life that we find this reconciliation of inner Freedom and external Necessity, and Turner, we have reason to suppose, was not a perfectly good and religious man. This objection I admit has force, but I think it is fully met by pointing to the distinction between a mood, a passing state of feeling, and a permanent habit of mind or settled character. It may not have been Turner’s happiness to mature this mood of reconciliation into the master light of his whole life, yet the mood itself is one that few, if any, human hearts are entirely unfamiliar with. It is a mood that sits about us all in our earlier days. The feelings of love and reverence may well be one of the primary facts of human nature.