Hebrews 13:16 But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. How can this be otherwise, when everything else that is beautiful is only a symbol of a deed? What are beautiful words but more or less imperfect signs for recording and perpetuating the actions which inspired them? No poem, no work of art, is beautiful unless it expresses some phase of action. The calmest landscape represents the play of light and shade, and perpetuates some instantaneous phase of motion; the marble statue represents the body in some form of actions; music is always the soul in motion; the deed gets expressed by symbols; but it is the deed which possesses the intrinsic beauty, and not the symbol. Therefore we should not think that we are incapable of apprehending and rendering the beautiful in life because we cannot write poems, or paint pictures, or carve statues. So long as we are capable of doing good and beautiful deeds, are we capable of rising to that intrinsic beauty of life which the mere art-form does nothing more than express. What if a woman cannot paint a Raphael's Madonna, when she can be herself a Madonna, a holy mother? What though a man cannot write a grand and beautiful poem, so be it he lives a grand and beautiful life? This was the spirit that was in Christ. He was the greatest of all artists because He lived the greatest and most beautiful of lives. What He did was even more beautiful than what He said. And in the essential beauty of the deed we are all capable of being like Him. Parallel Verses KJV: But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.WEB: But don't forget to be doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. |
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