Ezekiel 27:3 - Homiletics

(last clause, "Thou hast said, I am of perfect beauty")

AEstheticism as a religion.

The craze for aestheticism has been exalted into the creed of a new religion. It is well so see once for all what this means, and how hollow, foolish, and fatal are its pretensions.

I. AESTHETICISM AS A RELIGION IS THE WORSHIP OF BEAUTY .

1. It is more than the enjoyment of beauty, which is innocent and even helpful to a right appreciation of God's wonderful works. Beauty implies harmony and refinement; it excludes everything harsh and coarse. So far it is good.

2. AE stheticism is more than the effort to produce beauty. This aim of art is good.

3. It is more also than the consecration of beauty to the service of religion. This is right; we should bring our best to God; religion should be honored with the homage rendered to it by art.

4. But aestheticism as a religion makes an idol of the sacrifice, by putting the beauty, which should be enlisted in the service of God, in the place of God himself. It is bowing the knee to beauty. It sees nothing higher than the perfection of grace and color and melody. This is as much idolatry as the Hottentot's adoration of a hideous fetish.

II. AESTHETICISM AS A RELIGION MAY BE JOINED TO THE GREATEST ERRORS . The beautiful is not always the true. There are lovely lies and there are ugly truths. By exalting the idea of the beautiful above all else, we sacrifice truth wherever the two do not agree. Thus the sterner facts of life are ignored and its less attractive duties left out of account.

III. AESTHETICISM AS A RELIGION RISKS MORALITY . It is satisfied with something lower than the beauty of holiness. If it rose to the celestial beauty, it could not afford to discard goodness, for all beauty that admits evil is corrupted with moral ugliness; but this is not perceived by the religion of aestheticism. Therefore there is a degradation of the very idea of beauty. Too often this is in danger of falling even lower, till Beauty becomes a tempter to sin.

IV. AESTHETICISM AS A RELIGION WILL NOT SATISFY THE SOUL . A man cannot live on the perpetual contemplation of a lily. Too much beauty cloys. The soul needs the sustenance of solid truth. It requires inward spiritual grace. In the hour of temptation and in the season of great sorrow the religion of beauty utterly fails. It may charm the sentimental; it has no spell for the suffering; it cannot save the fallen; it has no evangel.

V. AESTHETICISM AS A RELIGION CANNOT AVERT RUIN . Tyre was proud of her beauty and confident in it. But this was only a piece of senseless self-deception. Her imposing palaces did not keep back the invader; they rather invited his ruthless armies. She found no security in the vain boast, "I am of perfect beauty." There is no redemption in aestheticism. The sinner will not find here any refuge from the doom of his guilt. It would be a poor diet for unfallen angels; for fallen men it is assuredly no healing balm. Beauty has been brought down to shame and suffering. No culture of art or literature will lift the refined mind out of the danger that threatens "the common herd" of sinners. Cultured and rough people must come through the same strait gate of penitence and walk the same narrow way of the footsteps of Christ if they would hope for salvation.