Young Woman's Guide to Excellence

<h5 id="id00668">HEALTH AND BEAUTY.</h5> <p id="id00669" style="margin-top: 2em">Dr. Bell's new work on Health and Beauty. Its value. Adam and Eve probably very beautiful. Primitive beauty of our race to be yet restored. Sin the cause of present ugliness. Never too late to reform. Opinion of Dr. Rush. An important principle. The doctrine of human perfectibility disavowed. Various causes of ugliness. Obedience to law, natural and moral, the true source of beauty. Indecency and immorality of neglecting cleanliness.</p> <p id="id00670">Dr. Bell, of Philadelphia, whose reputation as a medical man and an author is deservedly high, has written a volume, as the reader may already know, entitled, "Health and Beauty"—in which he endeavors to show that "a pleasing contour, symmetry of form, and a graceful carriage of the body," may be acquired, and "the common deformities of the spine and chest be prevented," by a due obedience to the "laws of growth and exercise." These laws he has endeavored—and with considerable success—to present in a popular and intelligible manner.</p> <p id="id00671">Nor was the task unworthy the efforts and pen of the gifted individual by whom it was executed. Young women, of course, are inclined to set a high value on beauty of form and feature, as well as to dread, more than most other persons, what they regard as deformity. Surely they ought to be glad of a work like that I have described.</p> <p id="id00672">I have no wish to disparage beauty; it is almost a virtue. There can hardly be a doubt that Adam and Eve were exceedingly beautiful; nor that so far as the world can be restored to its primitive state—which we hope may be the case in its future glorious ages—the pristine beauty of our race will be restored. It is sin, in the largest sense of the term, which has distorted the human "face divine," disrobed it of half its charms; and deprived the whole frame of its symmetry.</p> <p id="id00673">Does any one ask, of what possible service it can be to know these facts, when it is too late to make use of them? The truth is, it can never be too late. There is no person so old that she cannot improve her appearance, more or less, if she will but take the appropriate steps. I do not, of course, mean to say, that at twenty or thirty years of age a person can greatly alter the contour of the face, or the symmetry of the frame; though I believe some thing can be done, even in these respects. It was the saying of Dr. Rush, that husbands and wives who live happily together, always come to resemble one another more and more, in their very features; and he accounted for it on the principle of an increased resemblance in their feelings, tastes or dispositions. And there are probably few who have not observed how much bad passions and bad habits distort the features of every body, at every age. Then why should not Dr. Rush be right; and why should not good feelings and good affections change the countenance, in a greater or less degree, as well as bad ones? And what reason, then, can be given why every young woman—certainly those who are far down in the column of <i>teens</i>—cannot change her countenance for the better, if she will take the necessary pains for it?</p> <p id="id00674">That she can do but little, is no reason why that little should not be done. The very consideration that she can do but little, enhances the importance of doing what she can. Let her remember this. Would that the principle were universally remembered and applied! Would that it were generally believed—and the belief acted upon—that the latter day glory of the world is to be brought about in no other way than by having every individual of every generation, through a long series of generations, do all in his power, aided by wisdom and strength from on high, to hasten it.</p> <p id="id00675">Do not suppose that I entertain the belief, as foolish as it is absorb, that in any future glorious period of the world's history, mankind will be perfectly beautiful, or perfectly conformed to one standard of beauty. I entertain no belief in human perfectibility. I believe—and I wish to state this belief once for all, that I may not be misunderstood—that we are destined, if we are wise, to approach perfection forever, without the possibility of ever attaining to it;—to any perfection, I mean, which is absolute and unqualified.</p> <p id="id00676">Nor do I believe that all mankind will ever become perfectly beautiful, according to any particular standard of beauty. This were neither useful nor desirable. There will probably be as great a variety of features, and possibly, too, of size and symmetry, in the day of millennial glory, as there is now.</p> <p id="id00677">What I believe, is this. That in falling, with our first parents, we fall physically as well as morally; and that our physical departure from truth is almost as wide as our moral. I suppose all the ugliness of the young—not, of course, all their variety of feature or complexion, but all which constitutes real ugliness of appearance—comes directly or indirectly from the transgression of God's laws, natural or moral; and can only be restored by obedience to those laws by the transgression of which it came.</p> <p id="id00678">It is not tight dressing alone which spoils the shape; but improper exercise, neglect of exercise, over exercise—and a thousand other things also. Nor is it the application of <i>rouge</i> alone, which spoils the beauty. There are a thousand physical transgressions that dim the lustre of the eye, or sink it too deep in the socket, or flatten it, or paint a circle round it. So of the face in general. There are a thousand forms of transgression that take away the carnation of the lip and cheek, and leave unnatural hues, not to say pimples and furrows, in its stead.</p> <p id="id00679">I might be much more particular. I might show how every physical transgression—every breach of that part of the natural law which imposes on us the duty of proper attention to cleanliness, exercise, dress, air, temperature, eating, drinking, sleeping, &amp;c.—mars, in a greater or less degree, our beauty. Such a disclosure might be startling; but it ought to be made. Dr. Bell, in the volume mentioned, has led the way; and his work entitles him to a high place among the benefactors of our race. But he has only begun the work; the important honor of completing it, remains to him, or to some of his countrymen.</p> <p id="id00680">But enough on this subject, for the present, if I have convinced the reader whence her help, in this respect, is to come;—if I have convinced her that, under God, she is to restore her beauty only by becoming a true Christian; by having her whole being—body, intellect and affections—brought into subjection to divine law, especially by a prompt, and minute, and thorough obedience to all the laws of health and life, as far as she understands them; and by diligent effort to understand them better and better, as long as she lives; and, lastly, by the smiles of Almighty God upon her labors and efforts.</p> <h2 id="id00681" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXVI.</h2> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />