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THE FACE OF AN ANGEL

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 6, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 14.

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THE FACE OF AN ANGEL.

THERE are many different types of beauty. There is the beauty of youth, which all enjoy for a season; there is the beauty of form and color, which is the most attractive form of beauty; there is the beauty of intellect, which sharpens and refines the most rugged features and redeems them from the charge of plainness; and lastly, there is the highest beauty of all, the beauty of holiness, which comes from close and frequent intercourse with God, and is the reflection of his glory. This is the beauty spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles, when it is said that all that sat in the council looking steadfastly at Stephen, a man full of faith and of power and of the Holy Ghost, “saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.”
The beauty of youth is fleeting. Beautiful features are rare, and the most brilliant complexions fade. The beauty of intellect is rarer still; but the beauty of holiness is within the reach of all; all may acquire that if they choose, and this is a beauty that never fades, but daily increases, though the outer man may wither and decay.
We see it sometimes illuminating the faces of the poorest and the oldest, even of the deformed and afflicted, as well as of the young, whose natural beauty it heightens and adorns; and whenever we see it, we may be sure that he or she who possesses it is in the habit of holding intercourse with God—a child of prayer, for it is prayer and meditation on holy things which make the face, as it were, “the face of an angel.”—Selected.