The Kingdom of God is Within You; What is Art?

This two-part volume opens with a religious treatise arguing that genuine Christianity rests on inner moral conviction and the refusal to meet evil with violence, asserting that ritual and institutional forms are secondary to an ethic of love and nonresistance that can transform individuals and public life. It traces obstacles to adopting that ethic and contends that growing Christian public opinion will eventually render systems of force obsolete. The companion essay analyzes art, rejecting art-for-art’s-sake and works that stir base passions, and defines true art as the clear, sincere transmission of noble feeling capable of infecting and uniting people; it diagnoses causes of aesthetic decline and urges accessible, ethically rooted creative expression.