The Test of the Spirit's Genuineness

“* Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.” — x JOHN iv. 2,

rm WHE test of any spirit’s genuineness is, my power to feel its presence in the

=“lowliest things; the true artist proves himself by the detection of hidden beauties. Even so, St. John says, the test that I have the Spirit of God is my power to feel His presence in the dust. To confess “that Christ has come in the flesh” is to love the divine in its garb of humiliation. It is to penetrate beneath the disguise and say, “‘Thy speech bewrayeth Thee.” To confess His beauty in the heavens does not require so pure a spiritual artist; spirits less finely touched are able to do that. But to confess Him “in the flesh,” where there are no stars and systems, no thunderings and lightnings, no flashings and gleamings, where every suggestion points to frailty and impotence and death — that is to be God’s artist, that is to see the King in His beauty.

O Thou who art the altogether lovely, give me for Thy beauty an artist’s soul. Give me the power to see that beauty even where it tries to hide itself. Give me that exquisite perception of Thy loveliness which can detect Thy loveliness even amid the forms of the commonplace. Help me to confess Thee “in the flesh” — in the disguise of that which is not beautiful. I have recognised Thy presence in things above me; I have seen Thee in the firmament; I have worshipped Thee on the mountains; I have traced Thy footprints in the tread of empires; in these Thou art a God that revealest Thyself. But there are things beneath me as well as things above me; there is poverty and squalor and toil and weariness and death. And Thou art there too, O my God; there Thou art a God that hidest Thyself. Be it mine to detect Thy hiding-place and unmask Thee. Be it mine to discover Thy beauty sleeping in the grass, Thy glory hidden in the dust. Be it mine to track Thy warmth beneath the snow, Thy light below the shadow, Thy life amid the grave. Be it mine to see Thy presence in struggle and in sorrow, in labour and in ladenness, in Galilee and in Gethsemane. Then shall I know that I have an artist’s soul for Thee and that the beauty by which I see Thee is Thine own beauty; I am partaker of Thy Spirit’s loveliness when I have learned to worship it “in the flesh,”