WOMAN IN ART
that stile, with its three steps up and its three steps down! There was need of the helping hand. The elderly gentleman tenderly helped the little old lady up those three steps and down on the other side amid forget-me-nots and clover. Her fringed shawl caught on a thorn, his eager fingers quickly disentangled it, and with a lover's look under the brim of her prim gray bonnet he questioned, "All right now, mother?" They had walked life's path together for well nigh sixty years, and babes once cradled in her arms were leading their stalwart sons and daughters to the house of prayer and praise.
It truly is beautiful!—and that beauty is all spirit, from nature and the human heart.
A minister in his prayer one Spring morning thanked God for the blessing of beauty and uplift that comes to us in sunshine, in the fresh budding and bloom of Spring; for the beauty written in books, painted in pictures, and carved from marble. That thought prompted the theme given here, the Gospel of Beauty.
What is a blessing? A gift with the good will and love of the giver. It promotes happiness and well-being. We know that beauty answers to that description, but how many of us ever thought to thank God for beauty? We are a working people in this world, and those who appreciate what life means are earnest workers, and the thing that appeals to a busy man or woman is the thing that is of use, that is worthwhile.
The Giver of our blessings never gives with meager hand, holding back a part till we deserve the whole, but with a largess boundless as the love that comes with the gift. He gives all gifts, and only love requires. So we have a great assortment to choose from, beauty of nature and beauty from the handiwork of man; the appealing beauty of helplessness and the compelling beauty of strength; the pulsing physical beauty, and the fadeless beauty of spirit, also the combined beauty of power and restraint producing grandeur.
Man-made beauty has man's thought in it. Nature's beauty has God's thought in it. We have already learned to recognize an artist by his work. Two or three canvases from one man's easel will acquaint you with his character, his thought and technique, choice of color scheme and subjects. Let your mind recall canvases by Corot, Inness and Waugh.
When mediaeval man was tempted by brush and color, it was sorrow and suffering that gave his pencil power. His thought was of the dead. The
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