Beauty Is Your Destiny: How the Promise of Splendor Changes Everything

by Philip Graham Ryken

An Examination of Beauty in the Christian Life from Philip Ryken 

The world is full of beautiful things—the vibrancy of trees in fall, the joy of sitting around a table with family—but in our fallen world, many beautiful things have been turned into ugly distortions. How should Christians think about beauty in a world that is often ugly? 

In Beauty Is Your Destiny, Philip Ryken provides readers with an introduction to the theology and practice of beauty, striving to awaken a longing for beauty that he explains “can only be satisfied in the face of Jesus Christ.” Adapted from chapel messages given at Wheaton College, Ryken considers key topics on Christian thought—including the Trinity, the incarnation, sexuality, and racial diversity—through the lens of beauty, showing how beauty illuminates each of these biblical principles in our world today. 

Introduction to the Theology of  Great for college students, pastors, and small groups Biblically  Examines how beauty is seen in Christian doctrines such as eternity, the church, and the crucifixion  Written by Philip  President of Wheaton College and author of Grace Transforming; Is Jesus the Only Way?; and Loving the Way Jesus Loves

Genres: Christian, Theology, Nonfiction

186 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 21, 2023

About the author

Philip Graham Ryken is Senior Minister of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, where he has preached since 1995. He is Bible Teacher for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, speaking nationally on the radio program Every Last Word. Dr. Ryken was educated at Wheaton College (IL), Westminster Theological Seminary (PA) and the University of Oxford (UK), from which he received his doctorate in historical theology. He lives with his wife (Lisa) and children (Joshua, Kirsten, Jack, Kathryn, and Karoline) in Center City, Philadelphia. When he is not preaching or spending time with his family, he likes to read books, play sports, and ponder the relationship between Christian faith and American culture. He has written or edited more than twenty books, including Bible commentaries on Exodus, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Galatians.

Reviews

[Bobby Bonser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really great quick read on the Beauty inherent in God Himself and in Christ and the implications of that beauty for Believers and for the world.

I really enjoyed Rykens thoughts on the beauty inherent in Christ Himself and some of the ideas pertaining to the beauty inherent in small or "mundane" acts of faithfulness. Something needn't be extravagant to be beautiful.
He deals well with the effects of Sin in the world and makes great contentions for the existence of God arguing from the beauty of the world.

There were several places his personal view on the environment and race came into view and I think went a bit beyond what Scripture speaks to for those things. But I generally agree we are stewards or creation and are called to care for the world. What that looks like specifically is what I would disagree slightly with him on (global warming, etc.).
Similarly, I agree that the church is diverse and beautiful because of unity in Christ(Revelation). But what are the implications? Do we need to "pursue" diversity, or is Christ enough to draw people from every nation, tribe and tongue? I would argue the latter is Scriptural, and while Ryken i think would agree, there were some comments that seemed to promote actions beyond merely the gospel to reconcile race (he brought up Obamas as an example at one point).

But overall I think this book was super helpful and insightful into a topic we rarely discuss, but is present throughout the Bible. Just be aware of some of the more liberal Wheaton College ideas bleeding through the pages in certain points.

[Asher Ardizzoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was caught between giving this book three or four stars. I think it deserves four stars because it did exactly what Ryken intended. It whet my appetite for theological aesthetics and a desire to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. It was a bit dry but that comes with it being an overview and an introduction to the study of beauty. I would recommend it to my evangelical brothers and sisters who are also hungry to see a focus on beauty in our churches.

[Jennifer Ritchie · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Throughout this book, we have taken a hard look at the ugliness around us—the depravity, division, and degradation—and at the same time tried to see the eternal beauty that God wants to create in us. By the power of the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead to immortal splendor, beauty is our destiny. With this goal in mind, we are called to live a beautiful life—what the prophet Jeremiah described as a life ‘beautiful with good fruit’ (Jer. 11:16).”

This is an inspiring and beautiful book that meditates on the beauty of God himself, and on the resulting beauty found in creation, in human beings, and especially in the gospel and in Christ’s beautiful bride, the church. A truly hopeful and inspiring read, well grounded in Scripture. This is one of the best new Christian books I’ve read.

[Michael Dionne]

A fine introduction to the theology of beauty for someone who hasn’t done any reading on it and is curious.

Strengths: the chapter on the cross. Wow. Some great meat in there. Also, the explanation of why we need beauty and what its purpose is were helpful.

Weaknesses: no discussion of the beauty of God’s Word. This surprised me. Special revelation is the counterpart to natural revelation, and is explicitly better than natural revelation. The Word is beautiful. Also, sections felt politically or culturally motivated and seemed a bit tacked on.

[Gareth Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book - a different slant on the gospel. Its beauty, Christs beauty and our beauty. Give it a read.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall, great book. Reads a lot more academic than pastoral, with all its referencing to theologians and history in addition to the Bible, which is to be expected from the author’s background, but perhaps not so much from the title. Along the same line, not much practical points on exactly what it means to incorporate the beauty transcendental to one’s “destiny.” Greatly inspiring, nonetheless. (4.5 rounded up)

I did appreciate the breadth of the topic, particularly on the exegesis of various Biblical passages on beauty, and the references of many a theologians and artists. Among these were: beauty in the midst of suffering (Isaiah 61); thinking about what is ugly or distorted while thinking about beauty (1 Peter 3); (inability to) define beauty and glory as it pertains to the Beatific Vision of seeing the face of God (Psalm 27); viewing the image of God as a creative act, a meaningful one, thus ultimately a beautiful creation (Psalm 139); the beautification and glorification of those who bear God in splendor and majesty at His kingship (2 Corinthians 3); of “better beauty” that reveals other transcendental attributes of God, among them truth and goodness (Zechariah 9); the Holy Spirit’s love of making things beautiful (2 Timothy 3); the attention, adoration, and protection of the beauty of the natural world (Psalm 19); the paradoxical beauty of sacrifice by the utter ugliness of the cross (Isaiah 53); the ugliness of self-centered, self-righteous sin breaking beauty (Matthew 23); beauty’s arrest of our attention, to linger in the presence of what we know is beautiful (Isaiah 33); beauty’s manifestation through various loves, for example in how God romances you (Song of Solomon 3); beauty in healing, in time (Ecclesiastes 3); beauty of unity and diversity, with the Trinity as the muse (John 15, 1 Peter 2, 1 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 5); beauty as ought to be remembered (Mark 14); the beauty of sharing the gospel (Isaiah 52, Romans 10); etc.

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“There is beauty all around us in this grace-filled, sometimes smoldering world, if only we have the eyes to see it.”

“We also know beauty experientially. In a talk titled “Why Beauty Matters,” the poet Dana Gioia mentions four stages of engaging with something beautiful. First, it arrests our attention; the world stops while we look or listen. Second, we have a sudden thrill of pleasure in the presence of what is truly beautiful. As the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar testified, “Within the beautiful the whole person quivers.” Third, we have a sense that we are in touch with ultimate reality. Beauty is transcendent, reminding us of God. Fourth, the moment passes, and all we have left is the happy memory, which never quite matches the experience. To Gioia’s list we can add the instant desire that beauty brings to share the joy of our experience with someone else. The point is that we all experience beauty, and in that sense it is universal. What we see as beautiful may vary across cultures (which is yet another reason to value diversity—it helps us behold more beauty, as we see with new eyes). We also have different capacities for recognizing beauty (an aesthetic appreciation that we can develop). But beauty is more than merely a personal preference or a social construct. If God is beautiful and his creation is beautiful, then beauty is objectively there! …God has put his beauty into the world, and we are witnesses.”

“In a fallen world—a world in bondage to decay (Rom. 8:21)—even the best things can become the worst. Human beings take what God made to be beautiful and turn it into something ugly. So we plunder the earth, making unsustainable demands on natural resources and devastating the visual landscape in our relentless pursuit of more. We exchange the beauty of our sexuality for the degradation of pornography. We take the ethnic diversity that ought to be one of the most beautiful things in the world—a signpost of divine creativity—and turn it into a source of damage and division. Sadly, even God’s holy, beautiful church can become a place where people experience ugly abuse. We see some of this brokenness in the world of art, where we expect instead to see rare beauty. While ugliness has its place in art that responds to a fallen world, beauty ought to have its proper place there too…we continue to suffer tragic loss in the visual arts, where beauty too often is dismissed, diminished, or even derided. Roger Scruton observes that ‘recent art cultivates a posture of transgression, matching the ugliness of the things it portrays with an ugliness of its own. Beauty is downgraded as something too sweet, too escapist, and too far from realities to deserve our undeceived attention.’ One result of this contemporary attitude, writes Marilynne Robinson, is that beauty “as a conscious element of experience, as a thing to be valued and explored, has gone into abeyance among us.”

“The sacredness of our physicality has implications for how we treat other people too. What a difference it makes when we look at each and every human being and say, “Now there is a beautiful person, fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of my beautiful God.” Our calling to love one another is a call to see his beauty in one another and then to treat one another with the holy reverence that sacred beauty demands…When, for whatever reason, we conclude that someone does not deserve our care or respect, this is a form of sacrilege against the holy artistry of God, who has set his image—however distorted it may become—in every human being…”God’s work in creation is too wonderful, too ancient, too beautiful, too good to be desecrated.””

“As people made in the image of God—and even more as people remade in the image of Jesus Christ—aesthetic awareness is an integral aspect of who we are. We are, after all, God’s “workmanship” (Eph. 2:10), which is a good translation for the Greek word poiema, from which we derive the English word poem. As masterpieces of God’s artistry, we have been made and remade to become artists ourselves—not for art’s sake but for God’s sake.”

“We struggle with our own desire for beauty. This too is broken. Not that wanting to be beautiful is wrong in itself. If beauty is our destiny, then our desire to be beautiful is divinely ordained. Yet our perceptions are problematic—both of our own beauty and of the beauty of others. We focus on what is merely external rather than on what is truly and intrinsically beautiful. Too often we see ourselves as a distorted image…What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?”

“When theologians throughout church history have contemplated the beatific vision, they have considered not only what we will behold but also what we will become. To behold the beauty of the Lord is to enter ever more completely and gloriously into the light of our Savior. As we gaze at him in wonder, he looks back at us with love. This face-to-face encounter causes an interchange of glory, which Jonathan Edwards described as “both the emanation and the remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature and is reflected back to the luminary.” As a result of this interchange, we are changed from the inside out…’The pleasure of seeing God is so great and strong that it takes the full possession of the heart; it fills it brimful…it is impossible that they who see God face to face…should have any such thing as grief or pain in their hearts.”

“The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper argued that our ‘direct seeing’ of the risen Lord Jesus Christ ‘with the bodily eye’ will be accompanied with ‘a spiritual vision’ of his divine beauty. We will see within Christ’s outward, incarnate, resurrected appearance to comprehend the beautiful essence of his inward divine nature with our minds and hearts. The visible will be a portal to the invisible.”

“By faith we may contemplate the beauty in the other divine attributes revealed in sacred Scripture. There is beauty in the love God shows to people who are lost and forgotten. There is beauty in his grace for penitent sinners—the grace that the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins referred to as God’s “better Beauty.” There is beauty in the kindness God shows in taking care of us every day and providing everything we truly need. There is beauty in his justice; he will right every wrong. There is also beauty in our Savior’s humility—in the way he stoops to our level so that we can know him and love him. The list goes on. There is also beauty in God’s goodness and truth. For Hans Urs von Balthasar, beauty “dances as an uncontainable splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good.”

“Hopkins closed by imagining the Holy Spirit as the one who “over the bent / World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.” This was the poet’s way of saying that the Holy Spirit gives the world its grandeur, its beauty. We should also bear in mind that everything we read in the Bible was breathed out by the Holy Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16), including everything the Scriptures say about the beauty of the Father and the Son—we may deduce that the Holy Spirit loves to make things beautiful. If the Spirit is the beautifier of the Father by inscripturating his beauty, the Spirit is also the beautifier of the Son by raising him from the dead in his glorious resurrection body…as Jonathan Edwards say, “It was made especially the Spirit’s work to bring the world to its beauty.””

“It was said of Saint Francis of Assisi: “In beautiful things he saw Beauty itself and through his vestiges imprinted on creation he followed his Beloved everywhere.” …the problem of wonder. Everyone can see the beauty in this world, even when it is broken. Such beauty surely requires a beautifier. Yet when skeptics see the world’s beauty, they have no one to thank for it and no one to praise. How frustrating it must be to receive the gift of beauty and yet be unable to acknowledge it properly. One of our everyday privileges as believers in Christ is knowing whom to worship.”

“Referring to the church…Augustine said, “To render her beautiful he loved her even when she was ugly.” Then he proceeded to make a still more daring assertion: “To make her beautiful he became ugly himself.” …To understand this true biblical paradox and to receive and indeed to become the beauty that God has promised in his word, we must not turn away from the cross but look toward it. Commenting specifically on Isaiah 53, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth wrote, “If the beauty of Christ is sought in a glorious Christ who is not the crucified, the search will always be in vain.” But when we look to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ, we see the beauty of what he has done for our salvation. The gospel is beautiful!”

“There is beauty in every human body. Too often, we use the word beautiful to describe certain people, whom we distinguish from people we think are average looking or even homely. But we are all fearfully and wonderfully made, and God made each of us just the way he wanted us to be. We are called, therefore, to look at one another with what Esther Lightcap Meek calls “the generous, self-giving gaze, the noticing regard of another person.”

“Wherever we turn, beauty seems to be broken. But the most tragic loss of beauty is within us. Plotinus—a wise philosopher of the third century AD—grimly yet accurately described the human soul as “ugly, ill-disciplined and unjust, full of cravings and all kinds of disturbances, in the midst of fears because of cowardice, and of jealousies of petty-mindedness, thinking of everything in so far as it thinks of them at all, as mortal and lowly, twisted in every respect, in love with pleasures that are impure.” If Plotinus’s description sounds familiar, it is because our ugliness also turns out to be more than skin deep. Jesus used a horrific image to describe our inner lack of beauty—especially when we claim to follow God but our hearts are far away from him…Sometimes a fair visage is merely the death mask for a vicious soul.”

“I have met many people who radiate divine beauty…all of them had a glowing countenance that seemed to shine with the light of their inner beauty…whom the Holy Spirit had been making more beautiful for their entire lives. When I was with them, I sensed that they were bringing me closer to the presence of God, and I wanted to linger.”

“Simply put, God is too good an artist to leave all the ugliness as it is. What he did for the body of his Son beyond the grave is the same thing he will do for everyone who belongs to his body, the church. By “engaging directly with the world’s wounded and deformed beauty,” writes Jeremy Begbie, “the incarnate Son, crucified, risen and now exalted,” has reached “the ultimate measure of created beauty” and has given us “an anticipation of God’s re-creation of the world’s beauty,” including our own re-created beauty. As surely as he beautified and glorified his beloved Son, our loving Father will mend what is broken. He will heal what is wounded. He will raise what is dead. He will do what he promised and make “everything beautiful in its time” (Eccl. 3:11). Standing on this side of eternity, still enduring the woes of a fallen and wounded world, the beauty of the ugly cross remains a strange paradox for us. But one day—when we are finally beautified—it will all make perfect sense. Our bodies will bear witness to the truth of a memorable epigram from Augustine: “He hung on the cross deformed, but his deformit4y is our beauty.””

“To say this another way, the church is the outworking of God’s triune beauty. There is only one God, yet there is diversity as well as unity within and among the three persons of the Trinity. According to Bavinck, the Trinity “reveals God to us as the fullness of being, the true like, eternal beauty. In God, too, there is unity in diversity, diversity in unity.” Simply put, God is beautiful community, and we, in turn, are called to embody that beauty: “God is the apex of unchanging beauty as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in eternally existent, mutually glorifying, loving, honoring, and supporting diverse community. As his people, when we are mutually glorifying, speaking, and acting in ways that enhance the reputations of one another, striving to bring praise and honor to others, and submit to one another—especially across lines of difference—we are imaging God’s beauty.””

“Together, we bear the image of God. Here is how the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck explained God’s beautiful plan: “The image of God…is much too rich for it to be fully realized in a single human being, however richly gifted that human being may be…Only humanity in its entirety—as one complete organism, summed up under a single head, spread out over the whole earth, as prophet proclaiming the truth of God, as priest dedicating itself to God, as ruler controlling the earth and the whole of creation—only it is the fully finished image, the most telling and striking likeness of God.” Our collective calling to represent the image of God together means…in this splendid community, we are meant to see the beauty of God’s image, the beauty of embodied humanity, and the beauty of the Savior who came to make us one—all brought together by the beautifying power of God the Holy Spirit.”

“The woman with the alabaster flask’s simple extravagant sacrifice was also memorable—so memorable that we are still talking about it today. A small dinner party, which took place in a poor village over two thousand years ago, turned out to be one of the most famous meals in history. Jesus declared, “Truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her” (Mark 14:9). The poet John Keats must have been right, therefore, when he claimed, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.” Certainly, this famous aphorism is true of what happened in Bethany. Whenever we call this incident to mind, we fulfill the prophecy of Jesus once again and honor the woman who poured out her perfume, as well as the Savior she loved so much that she wanted to do something beautiful in his honor.”

“Never forget that preaching the gospel is beautiful too. In fact, the prophet Isaiah said that even the feet of someone who proclaims good news are beautiful. The result is even more beautiful: hearts are changed, lives are transformed, and heaven rejoices. One…described the moment when Jesus came into her life. She honored the host who had welcomed her…by saying, “You built a bridge to me—a bridge of friendship. Then one day Jesus came walking over the bridge.” Beautiful! There are so many ways to live a beautiful life. If beauty is the visible glory of God, then we should make whatever life sacrifices it takes for others to see his beauty alongside us.”

“When people see in us the good news of God’s love, we point them toward eternity. Their new experience of beauty awakens in them a deep longing that can be satisfied only be believing in a beautiful Savior. Even if they do not know fully how to express it, they want to see his beauty re-created in their lives. Like C. S. Lewis, they are haunted by “the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heart, news from a country we have never yet visited,” and they confess, “The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.” And not just to find it but also to join it. As Lewis also wrote, “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, to bathe in it, the become part of it. When the early church father Gregory of Nyssa experienced the same ineffable longing, he turned it into a prayer for grace. “The ardent lover of beauty,” he wrote, “longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype. And the bold request which goes up the mountains of desire asks this: to enjoy the Beauty not in mirrors and reflections, but face to face.””

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Some (of very many) references:
- “Beauty will save the world.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
- “Why Beauty Matters” – Dana Gioia, poet
- “To What Serves Mortal Beauty?” by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Amanda (aebooksandwords) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by Philip Ryken, “Beauty Is Your Destiny” reminds us that God’s beauty is all around us. It shows us that the beauty in all of life is intertwined with the ultimate beauty of Jesus’ life.

The book’s aim is that we yearn for God’s love and beauty anew, knowing that this yearning can only be satisfied in the face of Christ. Ryken writes, “Beauty is our destiny. We were born to be beautiful—to behold the beauty of our God and to be so transfixed and transformed by it that we become beautiful ourselves.”

I found this book to be a delightful addition to topical theology books. As the lovely fall leaves colorize the landscape around me, I was inspired to pay attention to the beauty God has placed both in & around us, whether in ourselves (as those made on His image), in His created world, in our relationships, and especially in Himself & His Word.

Highlights:

“What makes us beautiful—after all our wounds and scars—is God the Holy Spirit.”

“When we keep our eyes wide open, we see the beauty of God everywhere we look, from earth to sky. Our loving Lord gives us these varied glimpses of intrinsic beauty to awaken in us a transcendent, expectant desire that will be fully and finally satisfied when we gaze into the face of Jesus Christ.”

“If you are a child of God, made pure by the righteous blood of your Savior, then beauty is your destiny too—the eternal, shining beauty you will behold and become forever when you see your crucified, risen Lord Jesus face-to-face.”

“Are we working harder on what is inside us or on what people see from the outside? Does who we are matter more to us or who people think we are? True beauty works its way from the inside out.”

“Our calling to love one another is a call to see his beauty in one another and then to treat one another with the holy reverence that sacred beauty demands.”

“If beauty is the visible glory of God, then we should make whatever life sacrifices it takes for others to see his beauty alongside us.”

“Where do we learn how to live such a beautiful life? From the beautiful life that Jesus lived and the beautiful death he died.”

Total: 4.5 Stars

Readability: 5
Impact: 4
Content: 5
Enjoyment: 4

Thank you to the publisher for gifting me a copy of this book. I am leaving this review voluntarily and was not required to leave a positive review. All opinions are my own.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ryken believe he's found a good hook to engage with college students (these were originally chapel sermons). Perhaps he has. The book is basically a look at the biblical storyline through the lens of beauty. And beauty is very close to glory, so at times the book reads like watered-down John Piper. Now, to be clear--watered-down John Piper is still pretty good.

The best chapters are clearly the ones that focus most on Christ--the beauty of his life and the beauty of his death. But all chapters touched on the gospel, mostly in typical terms (again, nothing wrong with that). A few of his applications go askew--he's clear drunk too much of the water there on his college campus. Perhaps he ought to spend less time around environmental studies majors. But he's a good preacher and an excellent communicator, and this work is no waste of time.

[Kaycee Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love when I see familial themes in authors. Leland Ryken was such a giant in the theology world of art and beauty and to see his son contributing in the same manner warms my heart 💓 This book was thoughtfully organized and a collection of wonderful quotes for my commonplace. Here is one of my favorites:

“The ardent lover of beauty longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype. And the bold request which goes up to the mountains of desire asks this: to enjoy the Beauty not in mirrors and reflections, but face to face” (Gregory of Nyssa)

The title says it all: Beauty IS our destiny!

[Emily Strite · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful book on the beauty of God and his world!

I first heard about this book on The Great Christian Books Podcast and, because it was my favorite episode thus far, I decided to read this book. While it is an amazing book, I honestly liked the podcast episode about it more. So, I would recommend listening to that episode, and if you’re really interested, check out this book!

[Blake Western · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book points to the destiny of the Christian. Even in all the ugliness that we see, God is working for our ultimate beauty. Some books on the subject are more academic or philosophical, but this book is practical and down to earth.

[Kara Perrault · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so good!!! Really opened my eyes to seeing beauty around me… ultimately recognizing that my heart’s longing and my destiny is to gaze upon the beauty of Jesus, the Most Beautiful, and inquire in his temple. Can’t wait!!!

[Ruthie Haas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really beautiful look at what it means to be created for beauty and created by a beautiful God. Deep and yet attainable Dr. Ryken looks at many different examples of artists and writers along the way. It felt a little slow at some moments but over all so good.

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked chapter 2. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have kept going.

[Doug Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful! Super encouraging.
This book isn’t about defining beauty as much as calling Christians to live beautiful lives.
First half is fantastic. Second half was a little weaker, but still great.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book around the theology of beauty. Ryken explores both the profound and the ordinary topics. As an artist I loved the premise that beauty is not superfluous, but a core tenet of God’s creation. Not only does God create beauty, but he cares about it. He takes the time to paint beauty into every aspect of his creation, even the unobserved. I loved the reflection on how science speaks to God’s beauty in the beauty of equations or structures such as DNA. Lovely little book.