The Ministry of Beauty


He hath made everything beautiful in its time.--Eccles. 3: 11.

Why has God made everything beautiful in its season? Why has He written beauty upon the whole face of creation? Because beauty ministers to human life.

Jesus said, “Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that issues out of the mouth of God”--and one of the greatest of God’s words is beauty.

Man is more than a physical organism, he is a spiritual being, and beauty is a tonic to the spirit. It is bread to the soul. It soothes and quiets the mind, and helps one to think more clearly.

Luther always placed a flower on his desk before he began to write. His stormy nature needed the soothing influence of beauty’s touch.

We all need it--the touch of the beautiful.

If we would spend a little time every day in the realm of the beautiful, it would make much easier the hard, prosaic parts of life.

Besides ministering to spiritual life, beauty ministers to practical life.

If you have read Victor Hugo’s classic, Les Miserables, you will recall how the bishop's housekeeper reproached him for planting flowers where he might have planted vegetables. To which he replied, “The beautiful is also the useful.”

Beauty and utility go hand in hand.

Not only does beauty have esthetic value, it has economic value.

People who live and work in the atmosphere of beauty are toned up to a higher key of joy and good will and energy and enthusiasm.

“Give us bread, but give us roses, too,” was the plea of a group of girls working in a factory.

We can't live on roses, but without them life and human society would soon grow to be like stale bread.

Beauty contributes to morale, and is conducive to contentment.

Give the workers in our stores and factories roses as well as bread, and there will be less unrest among them, more contentment, and a better morale.

Let us live by every word of God, including His word which is beauty.