Isaiah 33:17 - Homiletics

The King in his beauty.

When Christ appeared on earth at his first coming, he "had no beauty that men should desire him" ( Isaiah 53:2 ). Roughly clad and toil-worn, whatever the heavenly expression of his countenance, he did not strike men as beautiful, majestic, or even as "comely" ( Isaiah 53:2 ). But at his second coming it will be different. St. John the Divine describes him as he saw him in vision: "In the midst of the seven candlesticks was one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength" Revelation 1:13-16 ). The description in Canticles is cast in a more terrene mould, but equally indicates a more than earthly beauty: "My beloved is white and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set. His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers; his lips like lilies, dropping sweet-smelling myrrh. His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires. His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars. His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely " (So Song of Solomon 5:10-16 ). The following adaptation by Dr. Pusey of the words of an ancient writer says all that can be said by unassisted human pen on a topic transcending man's power of thought or speech: "If we could ascend from the most beautiful form which the soul could here imagine, to the least glorious body of the beatified, on and on through the countless thousands of glorious bodies, compared wherewith heaven would be dark, and the sun lose its shining; and, yet more, from the most beautiful deified soul, as visible here, to the beauty of the disembodied soul, whose image would scarce be recognized … yea, let the God-enlightened soul go on and on, through all those choirs of the heavenly hierarchies, clad with the raiment of Divinity, from choir to choir, from hierarchy to hierarchy, admiring the order and beauty and harmony of the house of God; yea, let it, aided by Divine grace and light, ascend even higher, and reach the bound and term of all created beauty,—yet it must know that the Divine power and wisdom could create other creatures, far more perfect and beautiful than all which he hath hitherto created. Nay, let the highest of all the seraphs sum in one all the beauty by nature and grace and glory of all creatures, yet could it not be satisfied with that beauty, but must, because it was not satisfied with it, conceive some higher beauty. Were God forthwith, at every moment, to create that higher beauty at its wish, it could still conceive something beyond; for not being God, its beauty could not satisfy its conception. So let him still, and in hundred thousand, hundred thousand thousand years with swiftest flight of understanding, multiply continually those degrees of beauty, so that each fresh degree should ever double that preceding , and the Divine power should, with like swiftness, concur in creating that beauty, as in the beginning he said, 'Let there be light, and there was light;' after all these millions of years he would be again at the beginning, and there would be no comparison between it and the Divine beauty of Jesus Christ, God and Man. For it is the bliss of the finite not to reach the Infinite".