Welcome to our Sunday Talks, an exclusive series for the patrons of the inspirational

living podcast. Today's talk was edited and adapted from

Pushing to the Front by Orison Sweat Martin, published in 1911.

What is the best education?

Someone asked Plato many centuries ago.

It is, he replied, that which gives to the body and soul all the beauty and perfection of which they are capable.

The life that would be complete, that would be sweet and sane as well as strong, must be

decorated, softened and enriched by a love of the beautiful.

There is a lack in the makeup of a person who has no appreciation of beauty, who does not thrill before a great picture,

or an entrancing sunset, or a glimpse of beauty in nature. Character is fed largely through

the eye and ear. The thousand voices in nature of bird, insect, and brook, the rustling of the wind

through the trees, the scent of flower and meadow, the myriad tints in earth and sky,

in ocean and forest, mountain and hill, are just as important to the development of a real

woman and man as the education they receive in schools. If you take no beauty into your life

through the eye or ear to stimulate and develop your aesthetic faculties. Your nature will be hard, dry,

and unattractive. Beauty is a quality of divinity, and to live much with the beautiful

is to live close to the divine. Indeed, the more we see of beauty everywhere, in nature, in life,

in man, woman and child, in work and rest, in the outward and inward world, the more we see

of God. There is much evidence in the New Testament that Christ was a great lover of the beautiful, especially in nature.

Was it not he who said,

Consider the lilies of the field.

They toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these back

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