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The Gospel of Beauty

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Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 21, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 28.

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The Gospel of Beauty

By R.

God gives us here a mere taste of beauty to create in us an appetite for the coming feast. He gives a portion of beauty to educate us to appreciate the glories of the coming kingdom of the eternal years.
And most of all He gives us beauty as we toil at our posts of duty to remind us of His constant love and thought for us; let us not be so bound down with the sense of duty that we lose in us the sense of beauty.
The earth is cursed with sin—we doubt it not. In dust and grime, in sweat and blood, in pain and sorrow, in sickness and death, in darkness and gloom, in cold and storm, in calamity and crime, in ruin and degradation, we read the unchanging mandate,—“Cursed is the earth for thy sake.”
Cursed!—a hard word that; but even so, it is for our sakes; not to dishearten and degrade, but to educate for righteousness and to discourage sin. Everything in the world comes as a part of our education under God. Even the thorns and the thistles—the difficulties and the trials of life—were appointed for our good. They bear a part of the great plan of God in uplifting us from the ruin and degradation that sin has wrought.
There are thorns upon the roses, but it does not hinder the roses from being the most beautiful flowers in all the world. In spite of thorns they bud and blossom and throw their fragrance to the air. Is it to teach us that the sweetest things of life bloom out of the midst of trials and difficulties? Is it to teach us that the rarest, sweetest characters are the products and triumphs of the life of toil and trials?
It would seem so.
It is hard for a man to listen to the spring song of the birds and not have sent into his heart a message as to what love is. So long as a man still loves the flowers and the birds, the beauties of sky and field, or the smiling face of a little child, there is something of good still in his heart; God is still speaking, tho ever so faintly, the messages of His love.
And yet, with all of these beauty-tokens of the love of God, men in every age have misinterpreted the motives of God, have misrepresented His character, teaching that He is a tyrant, a harsh judge, a severe taskmaster, an unforgiving creditor.
They have done this notwithstanding the messages of God in nature as shown in the beauties and glories on every hand and in the care and providence which rest over every creature in the world.
And so to mirror more clearly the full beauties of God, He sent His Son into the world to live after God’s ideal, a man among men.
And if we miss the message in the clouds and in the rain, in the springing grass and the radiant flowers, in the care-free song of the birds and the soft sighing of the summer breeze, we need not mistake the message that He has brought us from the far-away land—the message of the nearnessand goodness of God, of His tender love for the children of men.
It is well for us to read God’s love in the bursting forth of vegetation, in the vocal notes of the birds, and the sweet perfume of the delicately tinted flowers; but these are but the whispers of that full, round harmony that swells into one mighty chorus in the Christ-life, declaring that God is love.
Let us look at the beauty of the earth and sky, and read there the message that God has imprinted in the harmonies of form and color; but, above all, let us not fail to look to Him who is the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley, the chiefest among ten thousand.
Earth reflects a beauty, but that beauty is but the shadowing forth of the matchless beauties that reside in Christ. We may name His excellencies by the types of nature, but the half has not even then been told.
He is called the rose of Sharon, because the beauty of the rose is but the manifestation of His love and creative power. Every good thing in nature is named as a type and symbol of the character and life of Christ.
And is this at all strange?
All of the things of nature have come out of the great love and power of God. What sin has not degraded, therefore, is still a manifestation to us of God’s character.
The beauty of the wayside weeds does not originate in themselves. The matchless splendor of the skies did not come to be of itself. The throbbings of love in the breast of a bird and the thankful warblings of its joyous heart did not spring spontaneously out of its little life.
No, not so.
Our Father in heaven is the fountain of life, of love, and of wisdom. It is He who kindles in the breast of man and bird some pulsations of the ceaseless throbbings of eternal love.
But the beauty, the glory, of God is not merely an outward shining. It is called the beauty of holiness. It is the beauty that is had alone in character. And the glory that He manifests is but the visible outflow of that character, which first of all and most important of all, is “all glorious within.”
It is this beauty that we should love. It is this beauty that we should manifest. It is this beauty that we should seek to put upon and within mankind.
If so, all other beauty will be but the teaching of the love and goodness, yea, the character of God. R.