p. 7 | The Test of Life

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jul 22, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 30.

The Test of Life.

LOVE is the sure test of your spiritual life. The man or woman who does not love has no spiritual life. “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death.” Hate or indifference is the attitude toward others that the prince of death tries to make us assume. We need not hate every one, either; if he can get us to hating only one or two with a good, warm hatred, that is enough for his purposes. He knows that then death has begun to set in. The love of which John writes is not possible in our own strength; it must come from the Lord of Life. But we may make sure of it, if we want it. It is not a feeling; it is the unselfish preferring of others, putting them always ahead of ourselves, in thought and word as well as in act. When, in Christ’s strength, we are winning the fight that it takes to do this, we have begun to live as He meant we should live. For God is love, and love is life.—S. S. Times.