BEAUTY

MARY BARNES

Beauty is spiritual radiance, the loveliness of Mind reflected by man and the universe. It is forever expressed in the multitudinous ideas comprising spiritual creation. It is therefore as ever present, enduring, and unfading as are these ideas themselves. It is not affected by time or dependent on matter for its manifestation. Always outside finite form, it is discernible only through spiritual sense.

Beauty is never dormant. Since it is a quality of God, it is an expression or derivative of divine Life; hence it is forever active, vital —not intangible or transcendental. It is the very essence of true substance, or that which eternally is. It is only the divinely beautiful which endures; all else fades and is lost. Since it is of God, beauty is eternal, deathless. It characterizes the whole of God's handiwork.

Realizing that there could be no beauty without Love, our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, points out in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 247), "It is Love which paints the petal with myriad hues, glances in the warm sunbeam, arches the cloud with the bow of beauty, blazons the night with starry gems, and covers earth with loveliness." On the next page she states: "Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon its object." Love then never sees or knows man as less than lovely. Its halo forever remains upon man.

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