John Chrysostom served the early Church as elder, deacon, chief preacher, and, finally, in A.D. 397, as Bishop of Constantinople. Renowned as an outstanding preacher, here he offers advice for people looking for a spouse. Husbands are to look for godliness first, not outward beauty.

Seek thou for beauty of soul. Imitate the Bridegroom of the Church. Outward beauty is full of conceit and great license, and throws men into jealousy, and the thing often makes thee suspect monstrous things. But has it any pleasure? For the first or second month, perhaps, or at most for the year: but then no longer; the admiration by familiarity wastes away. Meanwhile the evils which arose from the beauty still abide, the pride, the folly, the contemptuousness. Whereas in one who is not such, there is nothing of this kind. But the love having begun on just grounds, still continues ardent, since its object is beauty of soul, and not of body.

. . . Let us seek in a wife affectionateness, modest-mindedness, gentleness; these are the characteristics of beauty. But loveliness of person let us not seek, nor upbraid her upon these points, over which she has no power, nay, rather, let us not upbraid at all, (it were rudeness,) nor let us be impatient, nor sullen. Do ye not see how many, after living with beautiful wives, have ended their lives pitiably, and how many, who have lived with those of no great beauty, have run on to extreme old age with great enjoyment. Let us wipe off the “spot” that is within, let us smooth the “wrinkles” that are within, let us do away the “blemishes” that are on the soul. Such is the beauty God requires. Let us make her fair in God’s sight, not in our own.1
 
Footnotes:
 
1  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 13, ed. Philip Schaff (Grand Rapids, MI: WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 145. See in other translations Homilies on Ephesians: Homily XX on Ephesians v.22-33.
 
article from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located in Perryville, MD across from the newly built Principio Health Center.