Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made every thing beautiful in his time: also he has set the world in their heart… The sentiment of the beautiful is universal. We lavish money, we expend strength, we incur dangers, we submit to inconveniences to gratify it. Now, what is the significance of this? What are the part and power of beauty in human life? Of course, the beautiful — like any other gift of life, like genius or wealth — may be used unspiritually, perverted so as even to minister to sensuousness and sin. In its art-forms no people ever worshipped the beautiful like the Greeks, and few peoples developed greater sensuousness. Every gift is a possibility of corresponding evil; no lights lead astray like lights from heaven. The real question is, whether in the right and purposed use of it, whether as interpreted and used by religious feeling, the beautiful has not a high and potent ministry in life; and whether, therefore, it is not a religious obligation so to use it, to nurture the sense of it, to seek gratifications for it, and to make it a minister of devout thought and feeling. The beautiful is much more than a mere gratification of the senses; although even this were not an unworthy ministry. One of the materialistic theories of our day is, that uses and fitnesses of things are not the result of creative design, but of natural selection, or of practical necessity. Nature produces the eye because man needs to see, and teeth because he needs to eat. But what is the causation of beauty? What principle of natural selection, what necessity of use, produces the plumage of the bird, the pencilling of the leaf? Is not beauty the absolute creation of God, and has it not a special religious ministry? Beauty, if I may reverently say so, is God's taste, God's art, God's manner of workmanship. Beauty is the necessary conception of the Creator's thought, the necessary product of His hand; variety in beauty is the necessary expression of His infinite mind. It is part of the perfection of God's works, part of the perfection of God Himself; like truth, like holiness, like beneficence, like graciousness. We infer, therefore, that beauty is part of our human perfection also; that unbeautiful things are defective things. Beauty is not intended to minister to a mere idle sentiment. It is a minister to our moral nature. It is part of our religious culture and responsibility; so far as we can control them, we are as responsible for ideas and things of beauty as for ideas and things of truth and purity. In corroboration of all this we might adduce the recognitions and inculcations of the beautiful which we find in Scripture. Even in the physical beauty of nature the writers of the Bible have a rejoicing appreciation which we find in no other ancient literature. It is not difference of race that accounts for it, it is difference of culture. It is the deeper, more pervading sense of God; it is the religious sentiment of the soul. Unlovely passions, morbid tempers, hard goodness, ascetic forms of religious life, are repugnant to the sentiment of the Bible. In everything it inculcates beauty and joy; so that beauty has a moral basis, moral elements enter into it. How, then, does it minister to goodness in practical life? May not we say that there is a natural congruity between beauty and moral goodness? All sin, all wrong, are unbeautiful, even to the instinctive sense. It is vain to ask why. God has so made us. And because we are so made, vice, wrong, moral pollution, can never be made beautiful, can never satisfy our feeling, produce in us complacency and rest. On the other hand, we are equally constrained to deem all good things beautiful. We may not do them; we may not like them; our evil passion may disparage them; but we are compelled to admire them. The truth of things is too strong for even evil passion. Moral feeling will admire what passion dislikes; the most vicious never call goodness hideous. In this way, then, through the constitution that God has given us, through the moral order that He has established, the beautiful is a minister to goodness; the wrong thing that we do does violence to our sense of the beautiful. And the nearer to perfection men get, the more they are affected by the beautiful. In nature, in art, in poetry, in music, in social surroundings, the man of largest culture has the keenest sense of the beautiful; the man whose sense of God is deepest, whose holiness is highest, whose spiritual sensibilities are keenest, has the greatest appreciation of both physical and moral beauty. Nothing excites so much admiration as noble character, and the virtues that constitute it. It follows that the highest attainment of beauty is possible only to the good. What influence character has upon personal beauty! Mere features do not constitute the beauty of a face. An unbeautiful soul will make the finest face repellent. Beautiful expression irradiates the plainest features, so that the sense of plainness shall be altogether lost. Some faces charm you like a picture, hold you spellbound like a talisman. It is the beautiful soul that irradiates them — the purity, the unselfishness, the nobleness, the love. The artistic sense is overpowered by the instinctive moral admiration. The ministries of beauty are manifold. It ministers to goodness. I could not, I think, so love God if His works were repellent by their ugliness, instead of attractive by their beauty. To how much in both mind and heart they appeal! I yearn for a greater knowledge, a closer communion with Him, who adorns with so much beauty even His lowliest works. The religiousness of the Bible is more to us because of its eloquence and imaginative beauty, its glorious Psalms, its exciting and pathetic histories, its sublime prophecies. How the New Jerusalem fascinates and wins us by its pictured glories! Beauty ministers to love. When I look upon the countenance of wife or child, of friend or even stranger, inspired and made beautiful by some noble sentiment of virtue, piety, personal affection, patriotism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice, how easy it is to excite level Thus beauty is one of the ministries — ordained by God — of religion, virtue, affection, amiability. Beauty, therefore, is to be cultured; as gentleness is, as tenderness is, as unselfishness is. It is a vital part of our being, and cannot be neglected without injury to the rest. Social life is to be filled with amenities; family life is to be made gentle and graceful by courteous manners, by warm sympathies, by varied culture of literature and art, by bright and gladdening pleasures, as well as by rudimentary virtues and pieties. Church life is to be made gracious and joyous, by refined modes of fellowship and service, by culture of worship, and by gentle, loving, helpful charities of feeling and speech. In all relations personal goodness is to be adorned by gracious feeling and by divining love, by "things that are lovely and of good report," by "the gentleness of Christ", by "the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit," by the crowning graces of the beatitudes. In every possible enumeration and array of the beatitudes of a holy life, "the greatest of these is charity." (H. Allen, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. |
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