SOCIETY OF CENTKAL ILLINOIS. 131 



real, the substitute may answer as well or better than the reality, 

 but it is of the intrinsic value of each that we speak. 



Where the natural in beauty is lacking, it has become an uni- 

 versal obligation to supply by artificial means the deficiency, for, at 

 no period earlier than now, has the beautiful become more of a 

 necessity to our existence. Without that which is pleasing to the 

 higher senses, we would become barbarous and degenerated, reduced 

 to the level of our primitive ancestors in their uncultivated state. 



Rob us of the apparently needless song of birds, the kaleido- 

 scopic sky. the gaily-decked clothing of field and woodland, the 

 music of the spheres, the panorama of the universe, as it sweeps in 

 lines of beauty to the song of the morning stars ; rob us, I repeat, 

 of all in nature and humanity that is entrancing to the sense of 

 admiration, and life, as far as its pi-esent enjoyment is concerned, 

 would not be worth living. But let us see in everything a trace of 

 the Infinite, the symmetr}^ and grace of every object fashioned by 

 the hand that moulded the most minute of His creations, and life 

 will become to us a wonderland and a museum, inviting us ever to 

 new fields of exploration, and leading us onv/ard and upward, beyond 

 the seen and temporal, toward the spiritual and supernal. 



Natural beauty subdivides itself into beauty of Nature and 

 physical beauty. We shall speak first of the endowments of Nature, 

 — not physical. Nature is boldly suggestive. The earth need not, 

 have been made picturesque as she is. The useful only in vegetable 

 and mineral creations need to have been formed. 



" God might have made the earth bring forth 

 Enough for great and small, 

 Without a flower at all." 



Mankind might have flourished as well on level plains as on ter- 

 raced woodland. The ever-changing variety of natural scenery is 

 not necessary to either comfort or life, i. e., man could have lived 

 without the majestic ocean, the towering mountain, or the trellised 

 windows of heaven. 



But not so the Creator's design. He cradled the mighty deep 

 in the loving arms of Mother Earth. He pinioned the rock-bound 

 continents to their places with the Rockies, the Alps and the Hima- 

 layas; He swept his beneticient hand over hill and dale and the 

 carpeted, ornamented and lovely home of man sprang into existence. 

 The fields blossomed in multiform hues, animal life attired itself in 

 holiday colors and the tinted bow of promise spanned heaven's dome. 

 All Nature smiled her sweetest smile and the Almighty saw that it 

 was good. God intended the world to be beautiful, but he did not 

 intend to leave man the progressive creature that he is, without an 

 opportunity to exert his God-given powers. 



