The English poet, Keats, says that,

"A Thing of Beauty is a joy forever,"

and yet it is pathetically sad to think that beauty is usually of the most evanescent character. An expression of perfect harmonies, whether of form or color or sound, or thought, the harmony is so easily disturbed, that like the rainbow it glows softly for a moment and then fades away. This is also true of glory. Another poet speaks of,

"The glory that was Greece,
The grandeur that was Rome,"

but the Greece and Rome of which he writes are no more, and their glory and grandeur but the faded tapestries of worn-out tradition.

The Apostle Paul alludes to the transiency of glory in the "glory chapter" of the New Testament, the third chapter of the second Epistle to the Corinthians. Moses put a veil over his face that they might not look to "the end of that was being done away." It is no wonder that he then lingers over the "glory that abides"-the only glory that does so, thus in contrast with all others. So, later in the same chapter, he pictures a great shining pathway of glory, up which those gazing on the face of Christ are rapt forever and forever, through endless shining vistas.

Thank God, there is not only a glory that lasts but also a beauty that lasts, because it is the beauty of the ETERNAL, the beauty of Him that "remains" when all Creation crumbles and like a moth-eaten garment is folded up, the beauty of Jesus Christ, the same yesterday to-day and forever, in "whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning," This is the final beauty of which another poet has sung:

"If so it is, and in that Face for me,
The final beauty shines to birth,
And all things fair in heaven and earth
Are summed and centered in a mystery
Of loveliness, beyond compare,
How can my soul do less than worship Him
As Saviour and as God,
Dim though my vision be?"

This sanctuary we should approach, then, with reverent feet, with clarified understanding, with hearts "purged from an evil conscience, with bodies washed with pure water," with the whole being pervaded by the warmth of an adoring worship, humbly asking, as the Roman, Seneca, did, when contemplating the perfection of his ideally perfect man, "Is it permitted that we should draw nigh?"

There are a number of verses in the Scriptures that pair off most delightfully one with another, to present to us the beauties of our God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the corresponding imparted beauties that crown His own. There is in each pair a lesson for both heart and mind, a sort of kaleidoscopic mingling of ever-changing forms and colors, that all through gleam and glow with the light of a love beside which there is "no other." Herein are both love and loveliness that leave with us no other prayer than that of the poor demoniac of Gadara, "Lord, that I may be with Thee."

The first couplet comprises, however, a pair of "no beauties," the "no beauty" of the 53rd of Isaiah due to jaundiced vision, if we may so speak, and the "no beauty" of the 42nd of Job, of a man whose vision has been clarified by a sight of Jehovah "in the beauty of holiness."

"And when we shall see "Now my mine eye seeth Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him, a Man of sorrows, as one before whom one veils the face" (in reprehension).

Now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

The verse from Isaiah centres upon its "we," and the verse from Job centres about the "Thee" and "myself." As long as the "myself" of Job is "the admired of all observers," the "Him" of Isaiah has no beauty to be longed after. As soon as the "myself" of Job is "abhorred" ("shuddered away from," as the word "abhor" signifies), then the "Him" of Isaiah becomes the "chiefest among ten thousand and the altogether lovely." The whole chapter thus becomes suffused with a beauty found nowhere else. It is beautiful with the glow of an admirable word-picture, with its seer's vision of "good things to come," its moral loveliness of self-sacrifice, of the Lamb of God immolated on the central altar of the world's history, whom it discloses behind wreathing mists that slowly lift and float away, as the Sun of Righteousness "shines through" in the splendor of an eternal morning, a morning without clouds.

It was some such vision that our Scotch friend Yeddie saw at his first communion, and his stammering tongue was unloosed to speak of "YON LOVELY MAN."

But this is the theme of the second couplet of our meditation.

"Thou art fairer than the sons of men; grace is poured into thy lips."

"He shall give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning."

It is always well when we use Scripture to know from what we quote. Its context is of divine weaving. Thus the first quotation of the above couplet is from a "song of loves," the psalm of espousals for the King's Son and the King's daughter. The second member is from the 61st of Isaiah, and follows those memorable words applied by the Lord to Himself in the Synagogue of Nazareth, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor, He hath sent Me to bind up the broken-hearted." Grace was then fully poured into His lips, and all that were in the synagogue bore witness to the "gracious words that He spoke."

It is that gospel message of grace, based upon the truth of the 53rd of Isaiah, that makes the man of Job 42 utter the doxology of the psalm, "Thou art fairer than the sons of men." And it is when he utters these words that the words of Isaiah apply in all their wondrous grace to himself. See him there, sitting with dust and ashes upon his head, a man of sorrows for his own sins, acquainted with the grief in some small degree that, THAT OTHER ONE was to bear. See him now transfigured, his broken heart bound up, his festering sores healed, a garland of beauty upon his head, the oil of joy instead of mourning, the "garment of praise" instead of "heaviness." It would not be far wrong to imagine him singing:

"Majestic sweetness sits enthroned
Upon the Saviour's brow,
His head with radiant glories crowned,
His lips with grace o'erflow.
No mortal can with Him compare
Among the sons of men;
Fairer is He than all the fair
That fill the heavenly train."

Anyway, you and I can sing it; can we not?

The third couplet links arms with the second, in its consecutive pursuit of the theme. In the first member it psalms out the rapt longing of the ransomed soul to abide with the Lord. Its singer has a "single eye," a simple purpose, an undying longing. He is going to do one thing. Its second member shows us that same Lord lovingly engaged in a similar pursuit, however different in detail.

"One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to see the beauty of the Lord and inquire in His temple."

Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it; that I may dwell in that He might sanctify and cleanse it… that He might present it unto Himself a the beauty of the Lord and glorious Church having no spot or wrinkle."

David is the writer of the familiar words of the psalm -David the sinner and David the saint; David the warrior and David the seer; David the doer and David the dreamer. It is good to know that it was a man of that kind that uttered that longing, and that thus "on life's broad field of battle" some may, and indeed have, both fought the good fight of faith and, at the same time, dwelt in the house of the Lord, so that though a host encamp against them, as the Psalmist himself phrases it, the pleasant sanctuary of God loses none of its appeal even then. Here, the contemplative and the active, unite in single lives. It is sweet then, again I say it, to know it is David who desires this one thing for all the days of his life. Nevertheless if in some the contemplative life seem the only portion, it abides "that good part that shall not be taken from" them. Shift we then to the sanctuary at Bethany, to the feast where the Lord of Life is at table with His own, and as in reverie we view the blessed place with Christ within the doors, let us join in spirit with the dear anointer of His feet,

"Then one deep love doth supersede
All other while her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother's face
And rests upon the Life Indeed."

How beautifully the words, "Christ loved the Church and …." link themselves with the above. He gave Himself for it; He did. And He did not then turn from it. No; He sanctified and cleansed it. He wished to say, "Thou art all fair, My love, there is no spot in thee." He washed it with the washing of water by the Word. It is moreover to be all the days of His life with Him in the heavenly sanctuary. He'll present it to Himself a glorious Church, no spot upon it, no wrinkle, not a cloud above, not a spot within. "How precious are Thy thoughts unto me, Lord, how great is the sum of them!" Surely one might become hysteric with joy and not be ashamed.

"Mine eyes shall see the King in His beauty, in the wide-stretching land (land of far distances)."

"In the beauties of holiness from the womb of the (the morning, for thee the dew of thy youth."

In these two quotations the music of the Psalms is mingling with "Isaiah's wild measure," and we are looking far on to the "home land," "Immanuel's land," and the fair glories of an eternal morning. It is, of course, true that Israel is here in view, but, a fortiori, the verses apply to the heavenly bride and the heavenly Bridegroom.

In the first quotation, however, the imagery changes from that of Bridegroom to "King" over a "wide-stretching land." In the second quotation it is the "Priest and King," Melchizedek, "first by interpretation King of Righteousness and then King of Salem," the heavenly city, as applied in Hebrews. So the members of the couplet link together, the "land where" and the "city where." Down here we sing:

"I see Thee not, I hear Thee not,
But oft art Thou with me,
And earth hath ne'er so dear a spot
As where I am with Thee."

And that spot is oftentimes just a little upper-story room, in the back of a small building, lost in a crowd of other buildings, known scarcely by any in "the populous city" where few indeed "cast up their eyes to the Lord." Perhaps it is in London's central roar, or amid the clanging traffic of swift-hurrying New York, but the people in the little, back upper-story room far away in "the land they love," in "the country they are seeking," in,

"Jerusalem the golden,
With milk and honey blest,"

for they are going there. And while the land and the city are both lovely, and they like to think about them, 'they would be nothing without the King, whose beauty is all the glory of that land, whose glory irradiates the city.

"Wi' e'en and wi' hert

Runnin ower they shall see
The King in His beauty,
In their ain countree."
But oh, brethren, is it not wonderful, that in that land "in the beauties of holiness," as eternity rolls in its tide of eternal day, they shall be for Him "the dew of His youth?"

"Time, thou speedest on but slowly!
Hours, how tardy is your pace!
Ere with Him, the High and Holy,
I hold converse face to face."

"Onward then, not long I wander,
Ere my Saviour comes for me,
And with Him, abiding yonder,
All His glory I shall see.
Oh, the music and the singing
Of the host redeemed by love!
Oh, the hallelujahs ringing
Through the halls of light above!"

F. C. Grant