Editorial July 14, 1928 Issue

Beauty is Eternal

Duncan Sinclair

"Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary." Thus writes the Psalmist, associating the spiritual graces with God Himself. And rightly so; for surely there can be but one source of those qualities which point to perfection—God. How the sons of men have striven after the beautiful, striven to perceive it and to embody it in their lives and in their works! Poetry, painting, sculpture—all art—are successful, as such, as they reveal the beautiful, that with which their authors have endowed them, probably after long and arduous study.

Men, generally, have a feeling after beauty. And why? Because, like truth and love, beauty has its origin in God, the perfect and eternal Mind. On page 247 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as mortal belief." Here Mrs. Eddy not only states a great truth, but she also indirectly points to another. While she voices the fact that beauty is eternal, that is, the beauty which is of God, she at the same time makes it clear that the material sense of beauty is transient, thus indicating that it can only be symbolical of spiritual beauty, which is eternal. And this is borne out by the fact that as the artist embodies his spiritual concept of beauty in his work of art of whatever kind, so the one who would see the beauty in that work of art can do so only by bringing to his contemplation of it a measure of the same concept of beauty as had the artist.

Beginners in the study of Christian Science, when they learn that Spirit is real and matter unreal, are sometimes apt to think that Christian Science would have them spurn the beautiful, not only in art but in what is generally referred to as nature. But the reverse is the case. Christian Science encourages its students to cherish goodness and truth and beauty above all else. It enlightens them on the great verities of spiritual being, thereby quickening their appreciation of all that is true and beautiful and good; and, thus enlightened, they are able to look upon the world's masterpieces of art and on the "sensuous universe," with its landscapes and its seascapes, and to see symbolized in them a vast treasury of beauty. Mrs. Eddy writes thus of the attitude which the Christian Scientist should assume toward the beauties of nature, on page 87 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: 'I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied.' "

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