Psalm 90:17 And let the beauty of the LORD our God be on us: and establish you the work of our hands on us; yes… Beauty is that indescribable something in an object of sight or thought which awakens in us a feeling of satisfaction and gratification by the presentment of a perfect symmetry and harmony, a true proportion and adjustment, a unity without confusion or discord of a multitude of parts in a complete and congruous whole. And thus far the feeling is one and the same in the region of sense and in the region of mind. The beautiful in nature, the beautiful in art, the beautiful in literature, the beautiful in a person, the beautiful in a character, might be spoken of without impropriety in the same terms and ascribed substantially to the same characteristics, however distinct and diverse its action in these several provinces. The effect, the influence of beauty is, of course, utterly different in a thing and in a person — in a scene or a landscape on the one hand, in a countenance or a character on the other; and yet the same nominal account might be given of both, and the admiration awakened by both might be described in the very same phrase. Even so is it in that beauty which the text speaks of. Like that love of God which the Bible tells of, and which we must conceive of, however inadequately, as of the same nature and texture, so to say, only differing in its intensity and its purity, as the love which glorifies and sanctifies this human life of ours, so also is the beauty of God and the admiration of it by men and angels not to be idealized away in the fear of too much humanizing it; rather shall we dare to say of it, that it is the same quality and the same emotion in nature and science with the human, only infinitely lifted above it by its application to that one object in which there is no touch of defect in the beauty, and no possibility of excess in the admiration. It is still the symmetry and the harmony, the unity in manifoldness, the combination of parts in one consistent and congruous whole, which is the beauty, and which awakens the admiration of God Himself. But now, lest we should lose the thought in words, or fail to grasp the thing signified, just because it is so far above out of our sight, let us mention two or three particulars, the absence of any one of which in the revelation of what God is would be fatal to the beauty, and therefore fatal to the admiration, of God. 1. And we shall all, I think, be willing to place first, and not last, the Divine holiness as an attribute essential to the perfect Being. When a man really feels what sin is, feels what is the hatefulness, the meanness, the shamefulness, what is the wretchedness of sin, or of having sinned; that he even wishes to have it judged, and punished, and slain in himself; that it were no boon, but a sore penalty to be left with, and in, his sin, punishment being excused him; — I am sure that that man would miss in God, if it were not there, the attribute of severity; he would feel that the proportion, that the balance, that the combination was imperfect, if the Lord God were not, whatever else He be, strictly, severely just, of purer eyes than to look with toleration upon iniquity whatever the consequence to the creature that has clone amiss, and let in the tempter. 2. But if holiness is the first ingredient of the Divine beauty, certainly you will all say that sympathy is the second. To have revealed to me only a just God, only a God who rewards or recompenses according to our deservings, or only a God who makes His sun to rise indifferently on the evil and the good, and has made no provision at all for the mighty transition from the one class to the other by an all-availlng sacrifice and by a sanctifying Spirit — this would be to break the unity, to destroy the harmony, of Divine beauty, for it would leave me such as I am, out of the light and the warmth, out of the very reach and scope of the saving regard. I want the sympathy, which can supplement, which can condescend to touch the leper, and avail to say to the dead man, "I say unto thee, Arise." 3. And we must not end without a third element, and what is that but the Divine help? Oh, when the battle has gone against me, when the good resolution has been again broken, when the severe lesson of consequence has been learned yet once more in vain, where should we be and what, if we might not still look up and lift up the eyes to One who is willing, often as it is, to help our infirmities, who will not upbraid us with sin or ingratitude will we but seek Him again with all our hearts, crying out for strength perfect in weakness, nay, enabling us to hazard the audacious yet most true paradox, "When I am weak," just then, and then only, "I am strong"? Oh, "let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us," stirring us first to admiration, then to adoration, and then to communion. Let us remember how each one of the constituent parts of the Divine beauty is associated in Scripture with the name of Love. In one single letter St. Paul uses the three phrases, "Love of God," "Love of Christ, "Love of the Spirit." In one single verse St. Paul brings together in prayer the Trinity of the Divine Unity when he says, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship (or communion) of the Holy Ghost be with you all." Grace, love, communion. What lack we yet? Only that we stir up the gift; only that with such blessings as ours we starve not for lack of using; only that we east ourselves more humbly upon the goodness and forbearance, and longsuffering which has suffered us all those years, and still waits to bless. (Dean Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it. |
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