Beauty and Truth

MADGE M. ELDER

Many are willing to worship beauty who have no desire for truth. Beauty for beauty's sake has too often been the aim of many of the worl'd great artists and poets, and too often has their work been acclaimed by an unseeing multitude, yet beauty and truth are one; only the true is beautiful, just as all that is really beautiful is true. That which seems to be beautiful but has no truth behind it, is but an outward deceptive appearance, and can be accepted only by those who have a false estimate of the nature of beauty. To understand that truth is beauty puts beauty on a sure foundation, for it is then seen to be indestructible, eternal. An understanding of the "beauty of holiness" enables us to recognize the spurious forms that have no real value, substance, or permanency; and it bids us desire a divine model after which we can shape our work, for we have learned that whatever we would do that is to be beautiful, to help and to bless mankind, and to endure, must be true.

No matter how beautifully an artist paints, how wonderfully he blends his colors and mingles light and shade, or how skilfully he limns his forms, if his work does not express a true ideal, it is null and void. It has not in it the power to accomplish anything for the elevation of mankind. The poet may bring to his command the most exquisite language, the most melodious rhythm, but if it is only to embellish an idea that is not sound at its core, however finished and beautiful men admit the work to be, it leaves them no higher or better for it. The test of all beauty, and of all we think or say or do, should be this question: "Does it heal?" If it does not help to lift some load of sin, of fear, of sorrow or disease, it is devoid of beauty, truth, and spiritual power, and has proved itself nothing but an empty form.

We have only to think of some of the great masterpieces of literature, and ask ourselves if they have done anything to heal us, and then to think of the simple words of Jesus that healed, and are still healing, thousands, to understand what true beauty means. There is no beauty in any literature of the world like the beauty of the truth which Jesus expressed, and at his words we know that men were freed from life-long sin, were raised from beds of pain, and were glad to forsake all and follow Christ. Jesus has been styled a master poet; even those who do not recognize his Messiahship have been forced to admire the beauty of his language, the perfection and power of parable and argument employed. Jesus himself said, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away," for he knew that the word he spoke was the word of God, and that "word is truth."

Many of us are perhaps too apt to think of the outward appearance rather than the inward worth, to strive for effects, to play with words; but none of these artifices ever reformed a sinner or healed a sick man. To the Christian Scientist the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" are daily companions, and because they are so, and he devotes so much time to the study of these two books, the Christian Scientist is often accused of a want of appreciation of the vast storehouse of noble literature which the world contains; but nothing could be farther from the fact. Christian Science deepens one's appreciation of all that is best in literature and art, as it decreases the taste for that of a lower standard; and the Christian Scientist recognizes that as Truth has been in some measure reflected by all the truly great philosophers, artists, and poets throughout the ages, he is always grateful for the lessons they teach him. But it is pure and uncontaminated truth which every one needs, the truth which Jesus declared would make us free,—and the Bible and the Christian Science text-book have been proved by the test of healing to contain this truth. We have strayed so far from the simple teaching of Jesus that we need to be educated back to primitive and true Christianity, and this is the work that Science and Health is doing, interpreting and demonstrating to men the beauty and truth of the Bible.

The most beautiful sentence in all literature is this: "God is love." Nothing that any poet ever wrote is half so beautiful as that. Men have not yet comprehended or fathomed it. To realize its infinite meaning would heal us of every ill, and reveal the ever-presence of the kingdom of heaven.

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