By J.R. Miller
"Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us!" Psalm 90:17
When Charles Kingsley was dying, he seemed to have a glimpse of the heavenly splendor into which he was going, and of God in His brightness and loveliness, and he exclaimed, "How beautiful God is!"
Every revelation of God that is made to us--is a revelation of beauty. Everywhere in nature, in the flower that blooms, in the bird that sings, in the dewdrop that sparkles, in the star that shines, in the sunset that burns with splendor--we see reflections of God's beauty. "He has made everything beautiful in its time!" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). In the holy Scriptures, every revelation of the divine character presents God to us in surpassing loveliness. Christ was "God manifest in the flesh" (1 Timothy 3:16), the beauty of the invisible God made visible to human eyes, and such enrapturing beauty has never been seen, except in that one blessed life.
The beauty of God is frequently referred to in the Scriptures. In one of his Psalms David declared that the supreme desire of his heart, was to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life, to behold the beauty of the Lord.
Then, in the prayer of Moses, we have the petition, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." This was a prayer that the charm of God's excellence, might be given to His people, that the divine beauty might shine in them, in their lives, in their faces, in their souls. We think of the face of Moses himself, when he came down from the mountain after his forty days communing with God. He had been so long wrapped in the divine glory--that his very body was as it were, saturated with its brightness. Or we think of Stephen, before his martyrdom, when a window of heaven was opened and a ray of the glory from the holy place fell on him, so irradiating his features that even to his enemies, they appeared like the features of an angel.
There is a beauty of soul which makes the plainest face radiant, and the homeliest features lovely; which shines like a star in this world of sin. It is for this beauty that we are taught to pray, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us." It is not the beauty which fades--when sickness smites the body; or which is lost in the withering touch of years; or which blanches when death's pallor overspreads the features. But this is a beauty which grows lovelier in pain or suffering, which shines out in sorrow like a star in the night, which transfigures the wrinkled and faded features of old age--and which bursts out in death into the full likeness of Christ!
Every Christian life is beautiful--so far as it fairly and truly represents Christ. Anything in religion that is not beautiful, is not a just or adequate expression of the divine thought. Holiness of character is simply the reproduction in human life--of the likeness of Christ, and any feature that is not lovely and winning, is not truly Christlike, and hence misrepresents Christ. It is not the Christian religion itself that is unlovely in any case--but the human interpretation of it in disposition and conduct.
There are certain qualities that belong to the beauty of the Lord whenever it appears in any life. One of these is spiritual thirst. The eyes look upward and beyond the things of earth. The heart is fixed on things above. The aspiration is for more holiness, and finds expression in such yearnings as "Nearer, my God, to Thee," and "More love, O Christ, to Thee," and in the prayer, "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us."
A faith that is satisfied with any ordinary attainments, or that is ever satisfied at all, is not a living faith. The Master's benediction is upon those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. The longing soul is the healthy soul. Spiritual longing is the heart's cry which God always hears and answers with more and more of His fullness. Such longing is the ascending angel that climbs the starry ladder, to return on the same radiant stairway, with ever new blessings from God. It is nothing less than the very life of God in the human soul, struggling to grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ.
It is the transfiguring spirit in us--which cleanses these dull earthly lives of ours and changes them little by little into the divine image.
