On Beauty and Art....

"It is impossible to doubt that the Decorator of the World shall not continue to serve to His later children, and in ever finer forms, the inspiration of beautiful things. More fearlessly than he has ever done so, the Christian of modern life will use the noble spiritual leverages of Art. That this world, the people's world, is a bleak and ugly world, we do not forget; it is ever with us. But we esteem too little the mission of beautiful things in haunting the mind with higher thoughts and begetting the mood which leads to God. Physical beauty makes moral beauty. Loveliness does more than destroy ugliness; it destroys matter. A mere touch of it in a room, in a street, even on a door knocker, is a spiritual force. Ask the working man's wife, and she will tell you there is a moral effect even in a clean tablecloth. If a barrel organ in a slum can but drown a curse, let no Christian silence it. The mere light and color of the wall advertisements are a gift of God to the poor man's somber world..."

from The Greatest Thing in the World by Henry Drummond