The Highest Type of Beauty
Psalm xxiv. 6 v.
“This is the generation of them that seek Him, that seek thy face, O Jacob.”
The Psalmist says it was a time of religious revival. Men were seeking God. They were seeking Him in a particular way. They were in search of the illumination that lit up the face of Jacob when he saw God’s face. Where was that? It was at Peniel. It was Jacob’s third vision of God. He had seen Him at Bethel in His dreadfulness; he had seen Him at Mahanaim in His providence; but at Peniel he saw Him in His communion. He beheld Him face to face, and his own face caught the glow. It was the nearest sight of God that mortal man had ever won. It was nearer even than the view of Adam in the garden. That was in the cool of the day; this was in the burden and the heat. That was before the battle; this was after the fight. That was the gaze of innocence; this was the look of conquering virtue. It is m 2 something to see God when the heart is young, when life wears the aspect of the garden flower. But to get the vision when the heart is old, to see the divine face after the human struggle, to hear the voice of the Lord, not in the garden, but in the city of earthly care — that is worth a generation’s search; that is the communion of Jacob.
My Father, there is a type of beauty which I would like to possess — the face that has seen Thy face. It is independent of feature. It is Jacob after the struggle, and bearing the traces of the struggle; it can shine amid the halting and the lameness of the outward man. It is Thy fairest gift of beauty to a human form and to a human soul, for it is the loveliness of love. I can only reach it by gazing on Thee; one touch of self-remembrance would make the picture void. And, should I reach it, it will attract to Thee rather than to me. Men will not call it fair; they will term it good. It will be recognised as belonging to Thy world, not to mine. Even so, Father; I desire it should speak for Thee. I would take it for Thy cause; I would hold it for Thy glory. I would prize it, not for its power to glitter, but for its power to gladden. I would keep it as a magnet to draw the world to Thee. I would like it to be seen best in the times of my struggle and my weakness, for then it would be seen not to belong to me. I would like it to be viewed as something which was above me, and which, therefore, any man might have. I would like it to tell the toiling that Thou canst meet them in their toil. I would like the victims of human struggle to know that Thou hast a beauty for the faded flower, a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, and that there is no light so lovely as the light at evening-time. Therefore it is that I seek the face of Jacob.