Editorial October 27, 1906 Issue

THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE TRUE

John B. Willis

There is no poetry in that which is not true.—Macdonald.

Christian Science teaches that the reign of Truth in the individual and in all the universe is also the reign of beauty, for "beauty, as well as truth, is eternal;" that the divine ideas are ever presented in "spiritual and immortal forms of beauty," and that we shall be both beautiful and grand "when governed by immortal Mind" (Science and Health, pp. 247, 503, 246). The destructive antagonism to art of the early Christians, the unlovely character and conduct which has characterized much of professed Christianity in all the centuries, and the relative weakness of the hold of modern religious thought upon beauty as a manifestation of Spirit,—all these things indicate that the prayer of the psalmist, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us," has not yet found its fulfilment. Nevertheless it is quite impossible to think of the perfection of God and his ideas apart from that ideality which is "the beauty of holiness [wholeness];" and if we are to be perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect, then this ideality is to be expressed in and through us.

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