p. 12 | Things That Are Lovely by Emily Huntington Miller

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 15, 1902

Things That Are Lovely

By Emily Huntington Miller

SOME earnest young Christians make a mistake in putting too light a value upon those graces of manner and little courtesies of speech and conduct that might commend their excellent qualities to others, and give them the vantage ground of personal influence. If a merchant has diamonds to sell, he does not shut them up in a drawer, nor display them in a rough box. He does not say: “Nothing can add to the value of a diamond, and I will not condescend to any tricks to catch admiration or draw customers. If a man really wishes to buy, he will come to me.”

What he does is to put his jewels upon beds of satin, in cases of velvet, using every art to display their beauty. He knows very well that people who have never thought seriously of buying may be attracted by the beauty that catches the eye and arrests the attention.

Your Christian principles ought to be rendered so attractive by your personality that those who know you will associate goodness with graciousness.

Neatness and taste in dress, careful avoidance of all rude and disagreeable habits, conformity to the customs of good society,—these are by no means trifles to be ignored by those who claim to belong to the highest court of honor. You do not properly represent your Sovereign unless you are not only a patriot, but a gentleman.

The great majority of those with whom we come in contact must judge us by externals; and if we covet that most precious power of influence, we must see to it that we do not so repel them by the prickly outside that they will never care to go deeper. We are, indeed, to think upon the things that are true and pure, but not less upon those that are lovely and of good report.—Emily Huntington Miller.