# “Holiness is a most beautiful and lovely thing” by Jonathan Edwards

- Link: https://tollelege.net/2009/06/11/holiness-is-a-most-beautiful-and-lovely-thing-by-jonathan-edwards/
- Published: 2009-06-11T23:24:23-05:00
- Author: tollelege

“Holiness is a most beautiful and lovely thing. We drink in strange notions of holiness
from our childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing;
but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely. ‘Tis the highest
beauty and amiableness, vastly above all other beauties.

‘Tis a divine beauty, makes the soul heavenly and far purer than anything here on
earth; this world is like mire and filth and defilement to that soul which is sanctified.‘
Tis of a sweet, pleasant, charming, lovely, amiable, delightful, serene, calm and
still nature. ‘Tis almost too high a beauty for any creatures to be adorned with;
it makes the soul a little, sweet and delightful image of the blessed Jehovah.

Oh, how may angels stand, with pleased, delighted and charmed eyes, and look and
look, with smiles of pleasure upon their lips, upon that soul that is holy; how 
may they hover over such a soul, to delight to behold such loveliness! How is it
above all the heathen virtues, of a more light, bright and pure nature, more serene
and calm, more peaceful and delightful!

What a sweet calmness, what a calm ecstasy, doth it bring to the soul! How doth 
it make the soul love itself; how doth it make the pure invisible world love it;
yea, how doth God love it and delight in it; how do even the whole creation, the
sun, the fields and trees love a humble holiness; how doth all the world congratulate,
embrace, and sing to a sanctified soul!

Oh, of what a sweet, humble nature is holiness! How peaceful and, loving all things
but sin, of how refined and exalted a nature is it! How doth it clear change the
soul and make it more excellent than other beings! How is it possible that such 
a divine thing should be on earth?

It makes the soul like a delightful field or garden planted by God, with all manner
of pleasant flowers growing in the order in which nature has planted them, that 
is all pleasant and delightful, undisturbed, free from all the noise of man and 
beast, enjoying a sweet calm and the bright, calm, and gently vivifying beams of
the sun forevermore: where the sun is Jesus Christ; the blessed beams and calm breeze,
the Holy Spirit; the sweet and delightful flowers, and the pleasant shrill music
of the little birds, are the Christian graces.”

–Jonathan Edwards, _The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500_, in _The Works
of Jonathan Edwards_, Volume 13, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1994), 13:163-164.

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