Editorial August 11, 1934 Issue

Beauty

Violet Ker Seymer

The beauty of spiritual individuality is imperishable, neither produced nor menaced by time and matter. In it there is redemption, for one and all, from whatever is unbeautiful, unhealthful. Nothing material is beautiful, for Spirit is the one source of beauty, and it is each one's right to manifest now and forever the beauty of holiness and health. The resolve to realize spiritual perfection lends inspiration, courage, and dominion to daily life: it involves one hundredfold reliance on God and assures us of one hundred per cent support in every right aim and undertaking. The ability to express beauty entails acquaintance with the rules pertaining to Christian Science, so designated throughout Mrs. Eddy's writings, together with obedience to these rules.

Our Leader writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 196, 197), "The beauty of holiness comes with the departure of sin." This coming involves the disappearing of mere personality—mortal mind personified. The appearing of true individuality comes through spiritual vision and consequent resistance to false thinking. The meek surrender of fear and envy, doubt and speculation, personal self-depreciation and self-assertiveness, heralds the appearing in consciousness of godliness. "For the Lord ... will beautify the meek with salvation."

In true consciousness is true beauty, and it would be futile to seek it in any other way than by spiritual reflection. Through the meek subsiding of the personal sense of self, discords—including the discord of disease—disappear, and "the beauty of holiness" is felt in the heart. Of this beauty of spiritual individuality there is no beginning or ending, for both in cause and in effect beauty is as eternal as God and as intact. It is a compound which includes spiritual understanding, health, inspiration, serenity, poise, joy. Beauty, then, is not sought for self-glorification, but for the glorification of God, the sole cause, safely enfolding every effect.

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