The beauty of God...

Front matter

Class IBT^I C) Book, ■ H 7 Gopyiight^J?

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

AS REVEALED IN HIS WORKS, HIS WRIT- TEN WORD, AND THE LIVING WORD THROUGH THE MINISTRY OF LIFE AND LIGHT AND LOVE

Contents

PAGE

I. Beauty 23

II. "Life Eternal" 39

Prologue

Thine, O Jehovah, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and, the majesty.

— 1 Chronicles 19:11.

The infinite perfections of God so harmonize as to constitute in His Person and Character an unending state of infinitely perfect Beauty.

The Word reveals the Divine Essence. His incarnation makes that Life, that Love, that Light which are eternally resident in God obvious to souls that steadily contemplate Himself. These terms, Life, Love, Light, — so abstract, so simple, so suggestive — meet in God; but they meet also in Jesus Christ. They do not only make Him a centre of philosophy; they belong to the mystic language of faith more truly than to the abstract terminology of speculative thought. They draw hearts to Jesus; they invest Him with a higher than any intellectual beauty.

— H. P. Liddon.

PROLOGUE

The trend of scholarship in our day is looking toward the unseen world, out of which comes the world of the senses. The transformation of the invisible into the visible is so ethereal that the learned in all countries and in all ages have been divided in their views concerning the real and substantial; some holding that the immaterial alone is real, and others that only the material is substantial. The weight of authority oscillates between these extreme views. After swinging more than a generation toward the things that are seen, the pendulum of scientific thought is now moving toward those that are not seen.

"What, after a little patient thinking," says J. Bryerly, "becomes clear up to the point of certainty, is that everywhere the seen is the offspring of the unseen, that the visible is, so to say, a secretion or deposit of the invisible, that matter is the handmaid and plaything of thought ; that in a word the one primordial and universal reality is spirit. What after all is the whole material universe but a mass of petrified thoughts!

"The mere fact that we can give any rational account of the world argues, when we think the matter out, a Reason immanent in it which answers to our own. Every piece of its matter, related as it is to time and space, to cause and effect, to similarity and dissimilarity, to genera and species, to statics and dynamics, to chemical, biological, and infinite other affinities, is by these very facts seen to be penetrated through and through with logic, with reason, with will, in a word, with spirit. It is not poetry, nor sentiment, nor the religious instinct only which declares the material world to be the vesture of an Eternal Mind. The dry necessities of logic leave no other conclusion open.

"Science and philosophy, in their latest forms, are asking whether cosmic force, in the final analysis, is not as clear an expression of will as is spiritual love. A coherent view of the universe demands conscious Spirit as much behind gravitation as behind affection. Natural laws are beginning to be realized as God's habits in that sphere. Their performance means the permanence of His character."

The things that are made and the laws that control them, when correctly interpreted, reveal one sovereign Power, one unerring Mind, one directing Will, in One Supreme Being of inexhaustible resources and infinite wisdom. "It is mors and more clearly seen," says President Gilman, "that the interpretation of the laws by which the universe is governed, extending from the invisible rays of the celestial world to the most minute manifestations of organic life, reveals one plan, one purpose, one supreme sovereignty — far transcending the highest conceptions to which the human mind can attain respecting this Sovereign and Infinite Power."

Through scientific investigation Nature has oeen subjected to the most rigid and delicate tests that time and skill have invented. In the final analysis of inorganic matter "The Chemist," President Remsen says, "comes face to face with facts which lead to the belief that the smallest particles yet discovered are immense as compared with those of which he has good reason to believe the various kinds of matter to be made up."

In the ultimate analysis of organized matter the Biologist comes face to face with facts even more astounding than those which the Chemist finds. Professor Wilson, of Columbia University, in his work, "The Cell and Heredity," affirms that the more the cell is studied the farther removed it appears from the inorganic world. The cell is composed of matter and energy plus a something that cannot be tested by the methods applicable to matter and energy. This intangible something — this life-property, or organizing power, without which the cell would be nothing but dead matter, cannot be regarded as a product of the matter composing the cell, inasmuch as the matter of the cells or germs is identical for organisms which are vastly different in their final structure. For example, the germ cells of a polyp and of a fish are substantially alike and may grow side by side in the some drop of water, the one becoming a simple polyp and the other attaining the complex form of a fish. From this it is evident that neither the mere substance of the cells nor anything in the environment can account for the life-property or organizing power which is manifested by their difference in development.

Of this organizing power of the germ Professor Brooks, of the Johns Hopkins University, says : "While we know nothing of its origin there seem to be insuperable objections to the view that the organizing power is either matter or energy. If it is physical energy, or wave motion, or perigenesis of plastidules, it is hard to understand why it has not all been dissipated long ago, or how it can be mutiplied."

Thus the master Chemist and two master Biologists concur with the master Physicist, Lord Kelvin, when he says that "we have before us an unknown object in science."

Besides this "unknown object" there are other facts that the light of science fails to illuminate. Frederick Harrison asserts that science can never explain man as a loving, social, moral and religious being. "This side of man's nature," he says, "the greatest side of his nature, the largest, most dominant and most sublime fact in all nature, can only be explained by social science, solid philosophy, true religion. The central and vivifying life-blood of this social science, of this philosophy, of this religion for completing the development of humanity, is not evolution, but faith, hope and love."

Returning to the "unknown object before us in science," we see that in "consideration of both the inorganic and organic worlds we are left to the logical conclusion that visible things are manifestations of things that are invisible, of realities that manifest themselves, of powers in control."

"It is surely clear to all," says Dr. J. S. Christison, "that, owing to the imperfect state of science, it is in no position to dogmatize respecting the scheme of Nature, or even upon Nature's possibilities. Furthermore," he says, "it appears as a revelation of its own that in respect to the solution of any fundamental scheme of Nature science is utterly helpless and hopeless, inasmuch as the greatest of all her discoveries is the fact that science is doomed to labor forever, in the clouds of a universal paradox wherein the farther she proceeds the more remote seems the end." Edmund Burke saw this fact clearly and stated it plainly in simple language. "The great chain of causes," he says, "which links one to another, even to the throne of God Himself, can never be unraveled by any industry of ours. When we go but one step beyond the immediate sensible qualities of things, we go out of our depth." One of the latest exponents of the evolutionary philosophy gives the following as the latest word of science: "All is quivering with energy

Matter is indestructible, motion is continuous, and beneath both these fundamental truths lies the fundamental truth that force is persistent. All the myriad phenomena of the universe are manifestations of a single animating principle, that is both infinite and eternal."

Evidently science "by searching has not found God." Through the aid of philosophy she has reached the conclusion that there is everywhere an infinite and eternal energy out of which all things forever proceed and on which all things forever depend. She cannot, however, determine whether this infinite energy is merely a blind force, or an intelligent and conscious Person. Here the Written Revelation of God comes to the aid of science and philosophy, and illuminates their final conclusion.

When we search through the visible world we find evidences of stupendous power, we see everywhere exquisite harmony and adaptation, and we discover inexhaustible resources. The researches of science in this vast realm of phenomena have brought to light three ultimate facts, to wit, unity of form, unity of substantial composition, and unity of power. These facts indicate the sway of one Sceptre over the seen and the unseen.

In the midst of this magnificent manifestation of power, and order, and beauty, at the head of the living world, stands man, endowed with personality, intellectuality, reason, and will; gifted with imagination, memory, and language; and dowered with faith, hope and love. These endowments could only have been developed in man by One Supreme Intelligence who possesses them in infinite perfection, and whose Sceptre controls and directs the laws, and forces, and materials of the universe. Has this Master Artist finished His works and left no word, spoken or written, concerning their origin and the character of their Architect and Builder? Has no articulate voice but that of man ever been heard on this planet? Has earth's silence never been broken by a Divine voice? Has He who imparted the power of speech not spoken? Has no Written Word from Him come down to us through the cycles of time?

Finding ourselves living and working on the earth amid the splendid works of the Divine Artist, with innate desires to know the ought, the whence, and the whither, it is reasonable to believe, in view of the facts before us, that we would have the answers in articulate language to the questions that arise in our minds, concerning the origin and design of the universe, and of the sense of duty in our hearts.

We have in our possession a collection of ancient books and letters, composed by many authors, of various positions in life, from the king on the throne to the herdsman in the field and the fisherman in his boat. Their writing extended through a period of sixteen centuries. The writers portray an infinite and eternal Person, possessing infinite and eternal energy, dwelling in the High and Holy Court of the universe, the foundations of whose Throne are righteousness and judgment. This Divine Person is the Creator through whose will and ever-acting Power Nature exists. According to these Books He reveals Himself to men and angels in three great methods: (1) in His Works, (2) in articulate language, and (3) by Self-limitation in the Life and Cross of Jesus the Christ. These three are so blended that they constitute one great and glorious system of Divine Revelation. To these might be added a fourth method, found in the life of the human family. "History," said Kossuth, "is the Revelation of Providence." God also gives His Good Spirit to the children of men to instruct them and to enlighten their hearts, so that every one who wills to be guided by the promptings of this inner Monitor may appropriate the saying of Socrates: "I am moved by a certain Divine and Spiritual influence."

With the first method alone science is concerned and beyond it the vision of the scientist cannot reach. In fact our correct ideas of the unseen and of the character of the Builder and Maker of all things have come to us, not from scientific researches, but from the Bible which contains "the thoughts of God in the language of men." These ideas are often used in the name of science, but to every one who thus uses them the words of Dryden forcibly appeal:

"Revealed religion first informed thy sight, And reason saw not till faith sprung to light."

Faith, only faith is the evidence of things not seen. "Once know God otherwise than by discovery, once believe His Being upon the same foundation as you believe the existence of the world without your own personality, and the truth of self-evident propositions, all of which are incapable alike of proof and refutation; once apprehend Him as the Incomprehensible One in whom we live and move and have our being, and then the world and all the worlds become the sublimest commentary and illustration of His transcending attributes, being, in truth, His uttered word still vibrating under the concave of immensity."

Now if we turn to the Written Word of God we may find something said therein of the unknown quantity that confronts us in science. Paul in his second epistle to the Corinthians says, "the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal." In the Book of Hebrews we are told that "the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear." These words accord with the results of the most skillful scientific tests on atoms and germs, in which unseeable and unknowable particles and forces are at work back of all that the microscope can reveal. Upon this transmutation of the invisible into the visible light is reflected from the first words of the first chapter of Genesis. From careful study of these words we learn that in Eternity, not out of nothing but of Himself, God generated the immaterial substance out of which the universe was made. That substance was "without form and void," was unwrought and invisible, and therefore did not possess the properties of matter. "These primordial elements alone were created in the strict sense of the term, and Nature was developed out of these according to a fixed order of natural operation, under the supreme guidance of the

Divine administration," and thus Nature became endowed with a kind of selfhood of her own. The Spirit of God incubating, brooding over (fovens et vivicans) these invisible "waters," or unbounded fluids, generated the world. While this vivifying and developing work was progressing, God said "Let there be light and there was light" — light flashing out through the evolving universe, and in alliance with life giving form and tone to the newly generated worlds and all that is in them.

"Love is of God" and moved Him to create. Life and Light, like Love, are also of God and are eternally resident in Him. They, therefore, are no part of creation. They are unbegotten and eternal. In Life is power, under proper conditions, to produce infinite varieties of living beings. In the element Light, involving heat, electricity, and magnetism, is power to move, ani warm, and illuminate the universe. In Love Is power to draw us to God, and to our fellowmen, and to beget kindness and gentleness in our hearts toward the mute creatures below us.

In the study of the universe the final conclusion of science is, as we have seen, that all things have proceeded from an infinite and eternal energy. This unknowable energy is the unknown object that confronts us in science. Now let us, passing over all preceding and preparatory revelations recorded in the Sacred Scriptures, see what is the final word in regard to the character of God the Creator, by whom and "because of whose will all things were, and were created." For this purpose we turn to the writings of their last author and in them we find written: "God is life ; God is light ; God is love." Here the pen of inspiration drops from the hand of the Beloved disciple to be taken up no more, for the climax of the Written Revelation has been reached. The "infinite and eternal energy" of science thus comes out in the Bible as "the Living God," "the Everlasting Father," having life in Himsel+', dwelling in eternal light, and working in infinite love. Life, Light, and Love, as is here clearly seen, stand apart from and above every thing created. They are elements in the Being of God the Creator, and reveal, through the things that are made, His character and glory; thus filling the world with joy, beauty and loveliness.

Living in the light of these truths we look into the face of James D. Dana, the master geologist, and repeat with him his own sublime words: "Believing that Nature exists through the Will and ever-acting power of the Divine Being; that all its great truths, its beauties, its harmonies are manifestations of His wisdom and power; that the whole universe is not only dependent on, but actually is, the Will of One Supreme Intelligence, Nature with man as its culminant species is no longer a mystery." The Beauty of the power, the wisdom, and the goodness of God breaks in everywhere.

He hath made everything beautiful in its time. — Ecclesiastes 3:11.

How great is His beauty!

— Zechariah 9:17.

Beauty is multitude in unity.

— Old Roman Idea.

Thou art, O God, the life and light Of all this wondrous world we see;

Its glow by day, its smiles by night, Are but reflections caught from Thee.

Where'er we turn Thy glories shine,

And all things fair and bright are Thine.

— Moore.

How beautiful are all things when

we learn to prize them Not for their sake but His Who grants

them or denies them.

Heat cannot be separated from fire, nor beauty from the Eternal God.

— Dante.

On a certain occasion where old age, mature life, and youth were represented the question, "Which season of life is most happy?" was freely discussed by the guests. The subject was finally referred to the host, upon whom rested the burden of four-score years. He inquired whether they had observed the grove in front of the mansion, and said : "When spring returns and in the warm air the buds are unfolding and the trees are covered with blossoms, I think, How beautiful is Spring! When Summer comes and covers the trees with foliage and singing birds hop from twig to twig, I think, How beautiful is Summer! When Autumn bends their branches with the weight of golden fruit and their leaves become tinted by the early frosts, I think, How beautiful is Autumn! And finally when Winter reigns and there is neither blossom, nor foliage, nor fruit, I look up through the bare branches as I never could until now, and I see the stars shining through them."

Each season has its own peculiar display of the beautiful and thus all through the year beauty reigns. "God has made every thing beautiful in its time."

The outer world in which we live and work is worthy, through its beauty alone, to be occupied — worthy to be studied, even by angels — worthy though marred through the disturbing touch of sin. "Its paths so full of melody, and fragrance, and beauty, are fitted to lead to heaven, and the starry vault which overhangs them is a suitable portico to God's eternal Temple. Praised be God for the world of matter and all its accompaniments — for the air which not only fans the lungs and purifies the stream of life, but at our bidding wafts our most secret thoughts and feelings to our beloved fellow-minds ; for the waters which not only fertilize and refresh the earth, but bind its continents and islands into one brotherhood; for the light whose vibrations enable us to touch the most distant planet, and whose rich beams overspread both earth and sky with charms."

Lovely as is the outer world, its beauty does not compare with the exceeding beauty of the inner — the world of thought and emotion. "The beauty of material things is one; that of the mind is threefold — the beauty of the present, of the past, and of the future. The heavens and the earth are drawn within our imagination in those forms in which the soul has most delight. The past too is there according to the affinities of our minds. The future also is within. Hope — the busy artist of the mind — runs forward and paints the approaching scene in light. The beauties of nature are fixed; not so the beauties of the mind — they are changeable at will. The beauties of nature are attended with deformities. The mind can present us with thornless roses and unmingled fragrance. Milton's Eden blooms with beauties that can be combined only in the soul/'

Not all within, however, is beautiful. "There are marks even in the soul, of dislocation and disorder; there are chasms and storms and deserts, often more awful than those of the external world ; yet over the whole a grandeur like to that of archangel ruined, reigns."

In the outer world, more or less marred by sin, perfect beauty is rarely seen, and in the world of human thought and emotion, where sin has wrought so much havoc, complete beauty is probably never found. On the other hand complete ugliness is as rare, possibly, as perfect beauty. "Absolute ugliness," says Ruskin, "is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it — more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with whatever has the nature of virtue and life." "Nothing," affirms Balzac, "is irredeemably ugly but sin."

Of Keats' well known line, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," Ruskin says that "what joy remains for us and our children — in the fields, the home, and the churches, we must win by otherwise reading the fallacious line. A beautiful thing may exist but for a moment as a reality : — it exists for ever as a testimony. To the law and to the witness of it the nations must evermore appeal; and in very deed and very truth, a thing of beauty is a law for ever.

"That is the true meaning of classic art and of classic literature : — not the license of pleasure, but the law of goodness ; and if of the two words, beauty and goodness, one can be left unspoken, it is the first, not the last. It is written that the Creator of all things beheld them — not in that they were beautiful, but in that they were good.

"This law of beauty may, for aught we know, be fulfilling itself more fully as the years roll on; but at least it is one from which no jot shall pass. The beauty of Greece depended on the laws of Lycurgus ; the beauty of Rome, on those of Numa; our own on the laws of Christ. On all the beautiful features of men and women, throughout the ages, are written the solemnities and majesty of the law they knew, with the charity and the meekness of their obedience; on all unbeautiful features are written either ignorance of the law, or the malice and insolence of the disobedience."

Michael Angelo, when asked if the delicate finishing touches he was giving a fine piece of statuary were not trifles, replied, "Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle." Developing the thought of this epigram, we find that whatever, in its time and order, is perfect, in which all its parts and qualities, though they te trifles, are harmonious and complete, is beautiful. Beauty is thus seen to be a state or condition; in fact a form of harmony, and so Keats is speaking the language of science as well as of poetry, when he sings :

"O what a wild and harmonized tune My spirit struck from all the beautiful."

Beauty awakens in the soul of the beholder, through the senses, or through perception, a feeling of delight and admiration. This feeling is natural, for all beauty, so to speak, is an effluence from the beautiful in God, the Creator, in whose image and likeness man was fashioned. Some one has said that flowers, with which God has belted the earth, are expressions of the idea of the beautiful as it exists in the Divine Mind. Wilberforce says, "Lovely flowers are smiles of God's goodness." Linnaeus, after watching the opening of a beautiful flower, exclaimed, "I saw God as He passed by in His glory and I bowed my head in worship." "See," said Hafid, "yon bush aflame with roses like the burning bush on Horeb, the Mount of God. Listen, and thou shalt hear, if thy soul be not deaf, how from out it, soft and clear, speaks the Lord Almighty." "The Omnipotent," says Richter, "has sown His name on the heavens in glittering stars, but on the earth He planteth His name by tender flowers;" and Jacobi says, "As a countenance is made beautiful by the soul's shining through it, so the world is beautiful by the shining through it of God."

"A flower," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, "is an Amen flung from the mute lips of nature." In this poetic utterance is infolded a great truth. The mute life of nature, ever responsive to the Creator's word that is still vibrating through the universe in every atom and cell, is unceasingly throwing off Amens in her silent praise of Him who is of all things the Maker and the Beautifier.

When God manifests the beautiful in material forms and colors we behold physical beauty ; when He reveals it through the activities of the mind we discern intellectual beauty ; and when He causes it to shine out through the excellences of the spirit we are favored with a perception of spiritual beauty.

The lines of physical beauty are everywhere seen over earth, and sea, and sky. The stars move in lines of beauty; the mountains and the hills and the valleys are moulded in curves of beauty ; while the "multitudinous seas" are covered with waves of beauty.

Emerson, in his keen and minute observation of phenomena, declares:

"Nature cannot be surprised in undress, Beauty breaks in everywhere."

Tennyson affirms that "Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful," and Longfellow says, "Nature is a revelation of God," while Bancroft asserts that "Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite," and Milton calls it "God's handwriting."

In whatever direction our eyes are turned beauty greets us. If we look upward into the deep blue sky the glowing sun shines upon us by day, and in the stillness of the night "the innumerable stars singing in order, like a living hymn written in light,"

"Hang bright above us, silent, As if they watched the sleeping earth."

If we look over the revolving earth we find it girdled with

"Flowers so blue and pink and golden, Stars that in earth's firmament do shine,"

while in the limitless air the birds "in plumage delicate and beautiful" wing their pathless course, and the lovely forms of clouds,

"Bathed in the tenderest purple of distance, Tinted and shadowed by pencils of light, Loom up sublimely, aloft and afar.",

"Beauty," writes Channing, "is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds to the numberless flowers of Spring; it waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass; it haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun all overflow with beauty."

"Nature," says Whittier, "eschews regular lines; she does not shape her lines by a common model. Not one of Eve's numerous progeny in all repects resembles her who first culled the flowers of Eden. To the infinite variety and picturesque inequality of nature we owe the great charm of her uncloying beauty."

"Though nature is constantly beautiful," says Ruskin, "she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly; for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. It is neeessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. Her finest touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty are most evanescent."

Three Divine attendants, figuratively speaking, in the High and Holy Court of the Universe, to wit, Life, and Light, and Love form the trio of Divine Artists that beautify the heavens and the earth. Life evolves the most complex and most lovely specimens of beauty; Light reveals and paints in varied hues the forms of the beautiful ; and Love deftly retouches those forms with her softening highlights.

Nature is loved by what is best in us, and is so loved probably because there is something of the best of nature in man, and something of the best of man in nature. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

"The rounded world is fair to see, Nine times folded in mystery; Though baffled seer cannot impart The secret of its laboring heart Throb thine with nature's throbbing breast, And all is clear from east to west. Spirit that lurks each form within, Beckons to spirit of its kin."

"Beauty has so many charms," says Sterne, "one knows not how to speak against it; and when it happens that a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul, when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, and the justness of the proportions raises our thoughts up to the heart and wisdom of the great Creator, something may be allowed it, and something to the embellishments which set it off; yet when the whole apology is read, it will be found at last that beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it is the plainest.''