The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-02-18
BEAUTIFUL FACES.
An Entertaining Monologue Delivered by Rev
John Baltzly to the Art School Pupils.

Rev. John Baltzly delivered an extremely in
teresting lecture although there were few to
hear it, at the Indianapolis Art School. yester-
day afternoon, the subject being Beautiful
Faces" Only few disconnected extracts of the
address can be given. Mr. Baltzly said things
are not as they ought to be, either officially or
asthetically. Caesar Borgia was the most beau
tiful man in the world. Nero was beautiful. So
was Napoleon, though he had bad profile, and
would never have his face painted in profile.
Yet, notwithstanding these contradictions, we
feel that if things were as they ought to be, the
physically beautiful person would be spiritually
beautiful We discover our faith by our dssat-
isfaction when the face bellies the soul. George
Eliot, in speaking'of Gwendolens growing horror
toward the villainous and yet handsome
Grand Court, says: '"There may be a resent
ment and disgust that will make beauty more
detestable than ugliness through exaspera-
ton at that outward virtue in which
hateful things can faunt themselves" We pro-
test against this but in doing so affirm our faith
in the truth. We properly think of our dead as
now beautiful The mother of Jesus must be
beautiful. Everybody would reg ret a Madonna
that was not beautiful We must think of Re-
becca as beautiful when she met the servant at
the wel--"and the damsel was very fair to look
upon"
We must believe that in o sinless state
the body would be plastic to the spirits
molding touches and become the perfect
reveaer of it, so that beautiful souls would have
beautiful bodies, beautiful faces. We think IL
must have been so in the case of Jesus. The
erroneous notion that for time prevailed in the
early church, the product of mechanical, if not
wholly farfetched, use of prophecy that the
Savior was without physical without
form and comeliness" dissipated by the
correct consciousness of every Christian art The
Children of Israel settled this question. They
hailed him with hozanuas. We all father the
wish that inner and outer beauty go together
We talk great deal about the debt we owe to
or ancestors In truth, we hold heavy score
against these same ancestors. We owe 1t to them
Tor they to us that we are not better look
ing. You often hear the remark touching some
good man or woman towards whom nature has
been chary "What pity he or she is so ugly. !"
1t is only because harmony and symmetry have
been destroyed in some way that we have come
to use such an expression as 1.-The fatal gift Of
beauty Ideally, physical beauty ought to
argue the co-exstence of soul beauty. Beauty
should be word whose letters might be trans
posed to spell noble. We think of angels as un
utterably beautiful, and we do not think of their
beauty as "a fatal gift"
We have such notions because the physical
form to a certain extent does body forth the
spiritual form. Character does work itself into
the face we fill the years with spiritual
activity. The soul works to fulfill both our
longing and the law of nature. Both law and
longing call for harmony. When we know there
is an inner beauty we cannot help protesting if
it is not revealed in physical We can under
stand why Paul so pathetically laments his mean
physical endowments. The fact that artists
have persisted in picturing Paul as sort of
Daniel Webster, with majestic mien. goes to
show that we intuitively protest against the
bodys belying the soul. Nature was ungenerous
with Socrates, the most beautiful of all the
Greeks. He prayed the gods that he might be-
come beautiful in the inner man. The face may
have spiritual beauty, over and above the natural
beauty, for the soul ever tends to bring its body
into harmony with itself. silently weaving
''the garment of life that the Deity wears" The
Greek faces are the faces of the morning world;
they have not in them the plowed memories
of its noon. But does the lack of wrinkles make
them more beautiful George Eliot says: Il
think all lines Of the human face have some
thing written either touching or grand unless
they seem to come from low passions" They
are grand they are beautiful and they are be-
cause in them we see revealed the buried life