Our Story

The Guides began with Emily writing lessons for her own boys, as well as for other students in her Charlotte Mason community who were also using the Strayer-Upton Practical Arithmetic Series. As more and more lessons were written and used, the Lord prompted her to make them available to more families who may benefit from them. They have been a labor of love and an absolute joy to write.  

The name Beauty & Truth Math comes from the desire that math not be seen as a simply utilitarian subject that students must learn. Rather, it reflects the nature of God himself. 

Mathematical truths are unchanging, absolute, eternal, and infinite. Mathematics is beautiful. We see the glory of God displayed in the patterns, truth, unity, connections between different topics, and Order.

Mathematics, a Mountainous Land.––Another realm open to Intellect has an uninviting name, and travelling therein is difficult, what with steep faces of rock to climb and deep ravines to cross. The Principality of Mathematics is a mountainous land, but the air is very fine and health-giving, though some people find it too rare for their breathing. It differs from most mountainous countries in this, that you cannot lose your way, and that every step taken is on firm ground. People who seek their work or play in this principality find themselves braced by effort and satisfied with truth. Intellect now and then calls for the aid of Imagination as he travels here, but not often. My Lord Attorney-General Reason is his chosen comrade.

Reason in Mathematics.––Never are the operations of Reason more delightful and more perfect

vol 4 pg 63

than in mathematics. Here men do not begin to reason with a notion which causes them to lean to this side or to that. By degrees, absolute truth unfolds itself. We are so made that truth, absolute and certain truth, is a perfect joy to us; and that is the joy that mathematics afford. Also, there is great joy in standing by, as it were, and watching our own thought work out an intricate problem. There is on record a case of a mathematician who had gone to bed perplexed by a problem, with pencil and paper beside him. He slept, as he believed, soundly all through the night; but, behold, beside him when he awoke, was the problem worked out in the clearest way. He must have done it his sleep.