Socrates' prayer that he might become beautiful within is in line with the Psalmist's petition, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us" (Ps. 90:17). Mankind have habitually measured beauty by physical or material means and have been sad when this sense of beauty fades away. However, through the ages many spiritual thinkers have glimpsed the fact that beauty is spiritual.
Every individual responds to beauty in some measure. The most hardened criminal will stoop to pick a delicate wild flower, and an unlearned savage will fashion his canoe in lines of beauty. This innate response to material beauty shows the spark of divinity that may be cultivated in each individual. When the beauty of Soul dawns upon thought, it constitutes a spiritualizing and healing animus because it originates in God.
Mrs. Eddy, through her communion with God, became aware of the beauty of Soul; and in her search for the Science underlying the teachings of Jesus, she learned the allness of Spirit and the nothingness of matter. She was able to establish Christian Science on this true foundation and to teach and practice its rules of healing. In her poem "Christ and Christmas" she gives a beautiful statement of Science in these lines (P. 53):
