The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1886-03-15
SPIRITUAL BEAUTY.

The Sermon by Rev. j. l.. Corning at May
flower Congregational Church Yesterday.
At Mayfower Congregational Church, yester-
day morning, Rev. j. L. Corning D. D., of Terre
Haute, preached on the beauty of good life,
taking as his text the seventeenth verse of the
ninetieth Psalm-"Let the beauty of the Lord our
God be upon u.s. The sermon was An excellent
one. Hedwelt specially on the sensible manifesto
tons of the divine beauty in a human life. He
showed that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, gave
to the world an apocalypse of the beauty of God,
and in His sweet and beautiful life was "God
manifest in the iesh' That the beauty of God
is communicable to human souls is truth of
nature, conditional upon laws as infcxible as
| those which govern the material universe. HUI
man life every day furnishes examples of the
contagion of character The Doctor said that
he lately sat silent witness in convention of
consecrated Christian women gathered in the
interest of missionary enterprises designed to
belt the earth with a girdle of light such as
shines in the gospel of the Son of God,
and that it was no eyaggeration to say
that large fraction of the faces in
that memorable assembage were fit studies for
artist by reason of certain individuallties not
| recognized in any science of physiognomy known
to the schools. Some artists besides those
which credited to nature had carved and
lined those faces. One could see in many coun-
tenance beauty which no merely material
conformation could account for. [ called it the
comeliness OF grace, in distinction from the
comeliness of nature, certain illumination
which only the indwelling Christ could give the
philosophy Of as If some spirit out
of heaven, when an artist had fin
ished a portrait, should seize the brush
and paint an aureoa nimbus about the head
0aI ri md ot,fn IF
saintliness Then there came to a new
theory of beauty, the like of which l had never
encountered in any treatise of aesthetics,
whether in ancient OF modern literature. Then
! saw that grace could create beauty better than
the Greeks, and then flashed upon memory, like
a food of sunbeams in midnight sky, these
words Of prayerful psalmody which / have
chosen for the text of to-day Let the beauty
of the Lord our God be upon u.s. Yes, here is
he beauty of the Lord our God" / said,
'and give me this thousand times
before the visible models or the
invisible SOLICITATIONS of the greatest sculptors
or painters of the ages" Then / saw as
never before the beauty of the Lord God dwell
ing in the inward, makes itself visible IN the out
ward life. Then 1 saw how it is possible for
ones facial features to be in rebellion against
the decalogue of merely artistic legislation and
still to be clothed with the illumination of
beauty which criticism dare call in question.
Then / wondered that mortal men and women,
conscious of the tooth of decay gnawing away
the commonly recognized lines of facial comeli-
ness and prophesying the chaotic ruin
of death, did not give less heed to
the beauty which perisheth and have
more serious concern for Gods beauty, which
never perisheth. Thus round about the little
eedthought of my sermon gathered kindred
thoughts concerning the sensible manifestations
OF the beauty Of God. This one among others
the ministry of the divine beauty dwelling in a
human soul in all the domain Of department
lifting it as far above the ethics Of the drawing