Yesterday, Andrew Preston Peabody spoke of an unlovely kind of "holiness." Today its more beautiful side:
"On the other hand, there is a beauty of holiness, in which there are the hardier muscles and sinews that do the heavy lifework, but filled in and rounded out in perfect symmetry and grace. Such are the characters that wear the aureola of a perpetual sainthood, recognized not by this or that sect or party, but by all who love what is good of every type, the Fe'nelons, the Oberlins, the Florence Nightingales, those whose names the heart thrills in hearing, those who cease not to shine on earth when they become stars in heaven. It is beauty that makes their sainthood as precious to man as to God. Without it, they might still be diamonds, yet diamonds in the rough, of which only the expert can know the value; but God, when he "makes up his jewels," polishes the precious stones, cuts facets on them for the multiform reflection of his own ineffable beauty, and sets them in the purest gold."
Blessings
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