OCR Text |
Show TW 3- (Mieue ... Art Critic, At Ninety. Finds Graduating From Christian Dogma Intensified Faith Bcrnhard Bcrenson, one of the world's leading scholars and critics of the fine arts, who now lives near Florence, Italy, reveals his personal creed. This is one of a series of statements by thinking, think-ing, useful people in all walks of life. "This I Believe," appears in this paper every Thursday and is presented by Edward R. Mur-row Mur-row over KSUB Monday through Friday. By Bernhard Berenson Critic of Fine Arts Although I am now In old age and perhaps at its last moments, I accept life as it is, for worse or for better accept It, love it, rejoice re-joice in it. I feel no anticipated regret, let alone present rebellion at leaving it. Is it because I feel deep down that I am not destined des-tined to leave it, that nothing of men will remain that has not already al-ready been joyously offered to everybody and everything that survives me? Subjectively one never dies. It is only objectively that we expect ex-pect to depart this life. Believers In immortality are therefore justified In practice. They will never know that they have died, for during the very last flickers of consciousness they were alive. We have got no further, we can get no further with the brain we have, than the Saxan thane summoned to discuss in the king's hall, whether they should become Christians. The hall was brilliantly lit and a bird flew in one window and out of another. The thane said, "Like this bird out of the dark, back in the dark we flutter for a moment in the light," and advised accepting Christianity. Life Worth Living My faith consists in the certainty cer-tainty that life is worth living, life on its own terms. I know it is limited, a tiny speck as even is i u- r.uui in un- iniilllie. mil there is the infinitely little, and reality pervades it as complete-lv, complete-lv, and it is a reality I can live by. What is that but faith? Confidence Con-fidence in life as worthwhile, confidence in humanity despite all its devilish propensities, zet for suitable exercise of functions, enjoyment of the individual human hu-man being as a work of art. I regard myself as a Christianity Christian-ity graduate in the sense in which I am a college graduate. Wo Americans return to our alma al-ma mater on class days and pretend pre-tend that we are boys again, not yet graduated but about to do so. We do not think of returning to undergraduate life despite all its sweet alluring memories. I feel toward the Church as I do toward the University, the same gratitude, grati-tude, the same affection, the same admiration. But the Church, even as an institution, Is meas-urely meas-urely more wonderful than any university, more than all universities univer-sities put together. Taken as an historlty entity, man-made though I hold It to be indeed because be-cause man-made and subject to the frailties, greeds, and lusts of the Individuals who, through the ages have composed it, there is no other creation of mankind to compare with It. It. It is humanity's humani-ty's grandest, completest, and most beautiful achievement. But my having graduated from Retain Beliefs Christian creeds and dogmas does not mean that I retain no beliefs to guide and comfort me. I am still the religious person I always have been. I should be glad of heart to join in any worship, wor-ship, to partake of any sacrament whether Christian, Jewish or Moslem. Budhist, Taoist, or Shin-toist, Shin-toist, if I did not fear that thereby there-by I was supposed to accept literally lit-erally everything each religion accepted. By graduating from myths no matter how sublime, and dogmas architectural no matter haw marvelously as marvelously as the most majestically majes-tically and subtly thought-out of Gothic cathedrals I seem to myself to have concentrated and intensified mv f.iith F.iith in what? Faith in It, and faith in Humanity. So after a fashion I have attained at-tained Goethe's promise that what one ardently desires when young, one will realize in old-age. old-age. I am not far from my nirvana. nir-vana. I am in sight of it. And it is a feeling of oneness with the landscape, with the house, and all that therein Is, with the folk that pass, with the people one frequents, with one's occupation whether mental or manual, a oneness so complete that it knows nothing outside itself. In other words, It is a mystic union. |