WOMAN IN ART
when her soul is uplifted, and her heart overflowing. And he, the teacher of spirituality, of right living, imprisoned at Rome for the light that was in him, wrote letters to those new Christians in picturesque Greece and Macedonia, and embodied in one of those epistles the ethics of true beauty that will last through all time.
"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be praise, think," (feed your mind and heart), "on these things."
Paul would train the daily thought of man, would give him food for growth of character, knowing that as a man thinketh in his heart so is he.
History tells us that since those words were penned in the Mamertine Prison nearly two thousand years have sped into eternity, but to this day they are the criterion of character, hence character-expression we call art.
Things lovely, strong, tender, and true have ever appealed to the heart of man. Every sound mind is susceptible to these influences, be it beauty of color, loveliness of face or flower, tenderness of action, strength of thought or purpose, nature's message or the message of God's truth expressed in the soul's output for the world.
Pictures that stand out as Kohinoors in the art treasures of the centuries have this hall-mark which we call feeling, for no language can express it. Being spirit it alone touches our spirit, nor hath need of words, "even as love is known of love, nor needs the sense of hearing."
As depicted in art from its most crude forms, representations of woman have registered for us the rise and fall of the peoples of earth. True, their methods and morals were crude, so were their perceptions and ideals. The adjuncts for a rounded character were there but undeveloped, untrained and lacking knowledge, unrestrained till law from Sinai said, "Thou shalt not," and gave humanity the ethics of morals; unspiritualized till Christ brought the uplifting spirit for the race and entreated them to love one another.
The unfolding of the spiritual in the merely physical man may seem slow, but wisdom dwells not with us. Time is man's gauge, not God's.
Woman as represented in art shows to a certain extent this unfolding. When man would aspire, would climb, he has, since the era of emancipation, rested the heaven-formed ladder of his desires upon the star of his ideal—woman's character.
You have watched the oncoming waves of the sea, the stronger absorbing the lesser, as they roll shoreward with an ever increasing volume and velocity.
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