Article January 18, 1975 Issue

Where Is Beauty?

DORIS E. WHITFORD

The well-known saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" suggests that what is beautiful to one is not necessarily beautiful to another—that we have our own yardsticks for beauty. Regardless of this variation in our limited, human sense of beauty, spiritual beauty has one source in God, divine Mind. And, according to Christian Science, it's not "out there," external to consciousness, but within consciousness as the reflection of God.

Mind's universe abounds in imperishable beauty—not the fading, withering, wilting kind. God doesn't know temporary, partial, or tapering-off beauty, which belongs only to the false material sense of creation. The universe of Spirit teems with living, vital, spiritual ideas, residing in Mind; and nothing but the illusion of minds many—matter-based thinking—gives us a false sense of beauty as being formed by and dependent on matter.

Mrs. Eddy tells us, "All beauty and goodness are in and of Mind, emanating from God; but when we change the nature of beauty and goodness from Mind to matter, the beauty is marred, through a false conception, and, to the material senses, evil takes the place of good." ^{Rudimental Divine Science, p. 6;}