The word itself has suffered, as all
large words are apt to suffer, when they are transferred to another
language, because the big, ultimate words of every tongue connote a
number of ideas which cannot be exactly rendered by a single word
in another language. Let us be mildly philological for a moment,
and realise that the word charis in Greek is the substantive of
which the verb is chairo, to rejoice. We translate the word charis
by the English word "grace," which means, apart from its theological
sense, a rich endowment of charm and beauty, a thing which is
essentially a gift, and which cannot be captured by taking thought.
When we say that a thing is done with a perfect grace, we mean that
it seems entirely delightful, appropriate, seemly, and beautiful.
It pleases every sense; it is done just as it should be done,
easily, courteously, gently, pleasantly, with a confidence which is
yet modest, and with a rightness that has nothing rigid or
unamiable about it. To see a thing so done, whatever it may be,
leaves us with an envious desire that we might do the thing in the
same way. It seems easy and effortless, and the one thing worth
doing; and this is where the moral appeal of beauty lies, in the
contagious sort of example that it sets. But when we clumsily
translate the word by "grace," we lose the root idea of the word,
which has a certain joyfulness about it. A thing done with charis
is done as a pleasure, naturally, eagerly, out of the heart's
abundance; and that is the appeal of things so done to the ordinary
mind, that they seem to well up out of a beautiful and happy
nature, as the clear spring rises from the sandy floor of the pool.
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