THE DIVINE IDEA OF BEAUTY

THE DIVINE IDEA OF BEAUTY

Every real beauty is of divine order. Every thing in creation was made by the Son to meet and please the mind of the Father as known to Him. You cannot understand beauty but as you understand the order and relation in which things were placed in their origin. “God saw every thing ... and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1: 31). It is the harmony in the order which is beauty; there might be order, as there is in a regiment or a mill, and yet no beauty. It is the appropriateness of each thing to its fellow on every side which constitutes beauty. The harmony in the order of colours in creation is the beauty of colour. Beauty is not in a thing which is right and suited on one side, while the other side is neglected and uncared for. A man has properly four sides; the first to God, the second, to himself; the third, to his relative duties; and the fourth to man.

Now there is not beauty unless there be harmony in the order in which each is attended to and observed. It is not beautiful for a man to be reading his Bible when he ought to answer the bell rung by his master; it is not beautiful for a man to take such care of himself that he will not put himself out of the way to go to a meeting, or to be in good time; it is not beautiful to be very attentive to the wants of the poor, but to neglect home duties. Beauty consists of doing everything at the right time, and in the right measure, so that I do not overlook one side, or one claim, while attending to another. This was the beauty of the Lord; no one was neglected, and every side was fully attended to.

The sun is beautiful; it sheds its light on every side; it is not partial in itself, for it is the position of the ^[p. 222] earth which determines the measure imparted to each part; it is in itself beautiful. A tree grows round, and if it be benignly acted on, will present itself the same on every side. The blessed Lord could accept His place on the holy mount from God, and He could come down from it and provide means in His poverty to pay the tribute money, as if one were as natural to Him as the other. This was beautiful; but man saw no beauty in Him. You must have an eye for the beautiful or you will never discover it. Here it is where we all fail, we have not the divine idea as to what is beautiful. One saint is devoted, but neglects his family; another is the slave of his family, but too indifferent about other sides. Every one has his own standard of beauty; every eye forms a beauty, and this is in keeping with what each most admires though he may have none of it himself. Light-haired people generally like dark-haired, and vice versa; the talkative, the silent; the sanguine, the cautious; it is admiring in another instead of sedulously cultivating in oneself, so that there should be no deficiency on any side.

We all as saints are set in separate and distinct spheres and we are fit, if grace rules us, to fill our appointed sphere, like a star in the sky. One may be a forest tree and appointed to grow in the forest; another, a shrub appointed to grow in the garden. Each is beautiful when each fills the appointed duty; either trying to be the other would not be in any way beautiful. Doing what I am appointed to do evenly, happily, and continuously is beautiful. What makes any of us deficient in practice is not so much want of power to do a thing, as having little sense of what is divinely beautiful. We are like children who prefer some glittering pebble to the most beautiful portrait, and we betray a vitiated taste, in the eagerness with which some trifle is sought after and commended. Whatever a person commends and admires, that is what is beautiful to him, and generally he tries to be what he admires.

^[p. 223] The more the Lord is my study, the more shall I in every way give evidence of the fact, by cultivating in myself His beauty, which was perfect in the eye of God, but unseen and unknown to man; and as I am like Him, so will it be evident that I admire Him.