The desire to be beautiful is natural and right. Holiness is beauty. The human form, when it first came from the Creator’s hands, was perfect in loveliness. It was the embodiment of all that is noble, graceful, winning, impressive and charming. We cannot doubt that God made a perfect body as the temple and home of a perfect soul that bore his own image. He who made all things beautiful certainly gave the highest loveliness to his masterpiece.
But sin has marred the grace of the human form. Perfect physical beauty is not found in any one. There are fragments of the shattered splendor found – one feature in one, and another in another – by which we have hints of what the original was. The artists have tried to reproduce the first perfect beauty by gathering from many forms these fragments of loveliness and combining them all in one, which they call the ideal human beauty. They point to certain remains of ancient Greek sculpture as presenting, as nearly as human skill can do it, the restored beauty of creation.
How far art may have succeeded in achieving its aim we know not. We cannot tell whether the Apollo Belvedere is or is not a restored Adam, or whether the Venus de Medici fairly represents the beauty of Eve. This is not our inquiry at this time. But we know that all Christian life is a growth toward perfect beauty. Christ came to restore ruined nature to its lost loveliness. This is true not only of the spiritual life, but also of the physical form. We are to wear the spotless image of our Lord in the future world. Perhaps we do not always realize the full meaning of this truth as it is declared in the Scriptures. It is explicitly and positively taught that Christ will change our vile bodies and fashion them like unto his own glorified body. This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. This is not the place for speculations as to the nature or material of the resurrection body, and it may only be said further that the plain, clear teachings of inspiration are that all blemishes and infirmities are to be left in the grave. There will be no deformities in the new body. There will be no sin and no disease. All the work of sin is to be undone by redemption, and hence the body will be restored to its original perfectness. Thus the development of Christian life is toward perfect beauty, and the desire to be beautiful in form and feature, unless perverted, is a proper and holy desire.
What, then, is true personal beauty? Answering the question from a Christian point of view, we know that it does not consist in mere physical charms, in proportion, grace, figure, complexion, but in the life, the soul that looks out through these windows.
“What is beauty? Not the show
Of graceful limbs and features. No;
These are but flowers
That have their dated hours
To breathe their momentary sweets, then go.
‘Tis the stainless soul within
That outshines the fairest skin.”
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