My attention was caught this week by two contrasting stories from the world of art. The first was Tate Gallery's Turner Prize, awarded to a potter whose work was described in the press as specialising in pornographic and paedophile imagery with titles like "We've found the body of your child" - worthy company for such previous winners as the unmade bed, the elephant dung and, of course, the pickled sheep.

What I wonder will future ages make of these works? Will they see them as we today see the impressionists, scandalous in their time but now a paradigm of beauty? Or will they perhaps see them as symbols of an age puzzled as to the role and significance of art?

Which brings me to the second story, the publication this week of a book called "Rembrandt's Jews." It tells of how the great seventeenth century Dutch painter was fascinated by the Jews he met in Amsterdam, most of them refugees from religious persecution in Spain. There is something wondrous in the way those portraits bring out the beauty of those whom others so often despised.

One of the great mystics of the twentieth century, Rabbi Abraham Kook, was stranded in London during the first world war, and he found inspiration by going, as often as he could, to the National Gallery, to look at its Rembrandts, and he said about them something very striking.

The Bible says that on the first day G-d created light. But He didn't make the sun and moon until the fourth day. What then was the light of day one? The sages said it was a special radiance that G-d kept for the righteous in ages to come. G-d took some of that light, said Rabbi Kook, and gave it to Rembrandt.

I think I understand what he meant. There is something religious about great art. The late Iris Murdoch used to speak about its power to do what she called "unselfing," to release us from the prison of our cares and look for a moment with awe and gratitude and, yes, humility, at the sheer miracle of that which is there, frozen in a moment of eternity.

Which is I think the difference between art then and now. Art which aims to shock, shocks only once, while art which aims at beauty never fades. Art as sensation eventually deadens our sensations, while art as wonder wakens them. Which is why I'll leave the Turner to higher minds, and be grateful simply for Rembrandt and his undiminished gift to re-enchant our disenchanted world.

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