Have you ever witnessed a mountain so majestic, a sunset so serene, a summer's day so perfect you are left speechless? Beauty can be a very sensual encounter and sometimes difficult to express. For this reason, C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. He puts into words thoughts of beauty I, otherwise, have no way to articulate. One of my favorite lines comes from Lewis's The Weight of Glory. He writes:

"We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough.  We want something else which can hardly be put into words - to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves."

            We see and acknowledge beauty, such as the sunset in the above image, in a different realm of our souls, sometimes sparking feelings we cannot understand. When reading Mill's autobiography, I was reminded of this passage of Lewis's. Mill explains how "Wordsworth's poems...expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought, colored by feeling, under the excitement of beauty."(263 Mill)

            For me, beauty as such draws my eyes and my mind heavenward. Not to the azure blue of the sky but to the realm of God. As man, I believe we search, even long to belong to something grand, something wonderful: something bigger than ourselves. Carlyle eloquently expresses: "Man's Unhappiness... comes from his Greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite...there is in a man HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he can do without Happiness, and instead therof find Blessedness."(267 Caryle) It is important to the author to proclaim the "Everlasting Yea"(Caryle 267), a commitment of self-denial and submission. Carlyle's concept of  surrender through "Annihilation of self"(266 Caryle) echoes that of Jesus when He explains, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me."(Luke 9:23) (This picture represents the cross Christ calls his followers to carry) 

It is an understanding of, and submission to, a higher power.