BEAUTIFUL, INFLUENCE OF THE
Every one is influenced to a greater or less degree by that which he sees about him, and those with whom he comes in contact.
A beautiful statue once stood in the
market-place of an Italian city. It was the
statue of a Greek slave-girl. It represented
the slave as tidy and well drest. A ragged,
uncombed little street child, coming across
the statue in her play, stopt and gazed at
it in admiration. She was captivated by it.
She gazed long and lovingly. Moved by a
sudden impulse, she went home and washed
her face and combed her hair. Another day
she stopt again before the statue and admired
it, and she got a new idea. Next day
her tattered clothes were washed and mended.
Each time she looked at the statue she found
something in its beauties until she was a
transformed child.
This law of transformation through
appreciation has its highest illustration
in the changed life and character of
men who have lived in communion with
God.
(195)
BEAUTIFUL LIFE, SECRET OF
In the legend of the "Great Stone Face"
Hawthorne tells us how a great soul was
formed by constantly looking at an ideal
head formed by rocks on the side of a mountain.
Ernest had been told by his mother
that some day or other (so the people in the
valley believed) a man would grow up from
among them who would be the greatest man
of his time, and that his face would resemble
the face outlined on the rocks of the
mountain. So Ernest waited, and finally a
man who had become very rich came back
to the valley and built a palace, and people
thought for a time that the legend had been
fulfilled in Mr. Grabgold, but the man was
hard and selfish. Another came who was
famous as a statesman, but ambition had
killed his spiritual life. A poet came, whose
verses had been an inspiration to Ernest, who
often preached to the people of the valley,
but the poet was a sensualist. He admitted to
Ernest that he had not lived the beautiful life
that he had depicted in his poetry, that he
had even doubted at times whether the beautiful
things he had taught to men were true.
So at last, when Ernest had been almost in
despair about the great man who should
come to the valley, he went out one evening
to preach to the people, and as the rays of
the setting sun lighted up his face, and also
the Great Stone Face of the mountain, the
people shouted, "The legend has been fulfilled;
the faces are alike." It was true. The
boy of the valley, by keeping his eyes on the
noble face on the mountain, had accomplished
more than they all. It is the secret of the
development of the soul. A man must keep
his eyes on the face of Jesus Christ to-day,
because there is none else so noble.—C. F. J.
Wrigley.
(196)
BEAUTIFUL, UTILITY OF THE
In one of the earlier chapters of his "Les
Miserables," Victor Hugo tells how a good
bishop answered his housekeeper once. She
expostulated with his lordship for giving a
full quarter of his garden to flowers, saying
that it would be better and wiser to grow
lettuce there than bouquets. "Ah, Madame
Magloire," replied the bishop, "the beautiful
is as useful as it is beautiful."
The ministry of beauty is one of the
overflowings of the divine mind and
heart, and serves God's purpose in
common with the utilities of His
works.
(197)
BEAUTY
The sense of the beautiful extends to the animal creation.
Land-birds show fondness for decoration.
A robin in Pennsylvania made the whole
nest of flowers and white stems of everlasting,
and it may now be seen in the Philadelphia
Academy of Science. Other birds have
been known to build entirely of flowers.
Miss Hayward, an invalid who studied birds
from her window, saw one pair build a nest
of the blossoms of the sycamore and sprays
of forget-me-not, and another—an English
sparrow—cover its nest with white sweet
alyssum.—Olive Thorne Miller, "The Bird
Our Brother."
(198)
Beauty and Utility—See Work and Art.
BEAUTY, DECEIVED BY
Bates found on the Amazon a brilliant
spider that spread itself out as a flower, and
the insects lighting upon it, seeking sweetness,
found horror, torment, death. Such transformations
are common in human life; things
of poison and blood are everywhere displaying
themselves in forms of innocence, in
dyes of beauty. The perfection of mimicry
