A Girl’s Horror of God

A little girl who lived in Luther’s day had been brought up with a perfect horror of God. She thought of Him as always watching her, taking note of every wrong thing she did, and just waiting to visit judgment upon her. Her parents could not get that fear out of her mind. Her father was a printer, and was working on Luther’s first German Bible. One day she was in his shop, when just a corner of one of the sheets of the Bible caught her eye. She looked at it, and as she read it, her whole attitude toward God changed, and she said, “Mother, I am not afraid of God any more.”
“Well, my dear,” said the mother, “I am glad of that, but why are you not afraid of God?”
“Oh,” she replied, “look what I found, a piece of the Bible, and it says, ‘God so loved, that he gave.’ “ It was just a part of two lines.
“Well,” her mother said, “how does that take away your fear of God? It doesn’t say what He gave.”
“Oh, but if He loved us enough to give anything, I am not afraid,” said the child. And then her mother sat down and opened up the whole truth to her.
People are stumbling over the simplest things. Take, for instance, that word believeth. You would think that was plain enough for anybody, but all my life I have heard people say, “I have always believed, and yet I am not saved.” It does not say, “Whosoever believeth the Bible, or creeds, or even the gospel story,” but it does say, “Whosoever believeth in him.”
What is it to believe in Him? It means to put your soul’s confidence in Him, to trust in Him, God’s blessed Son. When in Toronto, I picked up a copy of a broad Scotch translation of the New Testament, and the first thing I noticed was that this word believeth is not found there at all. Instead of believeth there is the Scotch word, lippen, and it means to throw your whole weight upon. This is the way it reads, “Whosoever lippens to Jesus should not perish, but have the life of the ages” ―the life that runs on through all the ages.