Joy in Believing by A. J. Cole

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 7, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 48.

Joy in Believing

By A. J. Cole

Found Her Way to God — Rejoiced to Find Him a Tender, Loving Father — The Sadness All Taken Out of Her Life

By A. J. COLE

The following extract is called “Joy in Believing,” and is from the “Chronicles of Else,” an innocent-hearted maiden, who at last succeeded in disentangling herself from the Roman Catholic Church.

The joy of an artless soul in discovering what a simple thing Christianity in reality is, and its outpouring gratitude, are drawn with great beauty, tenderness, and power.

The extract was in two parts. The first part was dated March, 1513, and this Else was described as one of the Schonberg Cotta family, who were among Martin Luther’s earliest friends, and were associated with him while he was a Catholic priest.

TAUGHT BY DR. LUTHER

MARCH, 1513.

Dr. Luther has consented to be our confessor. Thank God! I do believe at last I have found the religion which may make me, even me, love God. Dr. Luther says I have entirely misunderstood God and the Lord Jesus Christ. He seemed to understand all I have been longing for and perplexing myself about all my life, with a glance. When I began to falter out my confessions and difficulties to him, he seemed to see them all spread before him, and explained them all to me. He says I have been thinking of God as a severe judge, an exacter, a harsh creditor, when He is a giver, a forgiving Saviour, yea, the very fountain of inexpressible love.

“God’s love,” he said, “gives in such a way that it flows from a Father’s heart, the well-spring of all good. The heart of the Giver makes the gift dear and precious; as among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, ‘It comes from a hand we love,’ and look not so much at the gift as at the heart.”

PURE, UNUTTERABLE LOVE

“If we will only consider Him in His works, we shall learn that God is nothing else but pure, unutterable love, greater and more than any one can think.

“The shameful thing is that the world does not regard this, nor thank Him for it, although every day it sees before it such countless benefits from Him; and it deserves, for its ingratitude, that the sun should not shine a moment longer, nor the grass grow; yet He ceases not, without a moment’s interval, to love us, and to do us good. Language must fail me to speak of His spiritual gifts. Here

He pours forth for us, not sun and moon, nor heaven and earth, but His own heart, His beloved Son, so that He suffered His blood to be shed, and the most shameful death to be inflicted on Him, for His wretched, wicked, thankless creatures. How, then, can we say anything but that God is an abyss of endless, unfathomable love?”

“The whole Bible,” he says, “is full of this, that we should not doubt, but be absolutely certain, that God is merciful, gracious, patient, faithful, and true; who will not only keep His promise, but already has kept, and done abundantly beyond what He has promised, since He has given His own Son for our sins on the cross, that all who believe on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

EACH ONE LOVED OF GOD

“The apostles are always exhorting us,” he says, “to continue in the love of God; that is, that each one should entirely conclude in his heart that he is loved by God, and set before our eyes a certain proof of it, in that God has not spared His Son, but given Him for the world, that through His death the world might again have life.”

“It is God’s honor and glory to give liberally. His nature is all pure love; so that if any one would describe or picture God, he must describe one who is pure love, the divine nature being nothing else than a furnace and a glow of such love that it fills heaven and earth.”

“Love is an image of God, and not a dead image, nor one painted on paper, but the living essence of the divine nature, which burns full of all goodness.”

“He is not harsh, as we are to those who have injured us. We withdraw our hand, and close our purse; but He is kind to the unthankful and the evil.”

“He sees thee in thy poverty and wretchedness, and knows thou hast nothing to pay. Therefore He freely forgives, and gives thee all.”

MY GRACIOUS FATHER

“It is not to be borne,” he said, “that Christian people should say, ‘We cannot know whether God is favorable to us or not.’ On the contrary, we should learn to say, ‘I know that I believe in Christ, and, therefore, that God is my gracious Father.’”

“What is the reason that God gives?” he said one day. “What moves Him to it? — Nothing but unutterable love, because He delights to give and bless. What does He give? — Not empires merely, not a world full of silver and gold, not heaven and earth only, but His Son, who is as great as Himself, that is eternal and incomprehensible — a gift as infinite as the Giver, the very spring and fountain of all grace, yea, the possession and property of all the riches and treasures of God.”

Dr. Luther said, also, that the best name we can think of God is “Father.” “It is a loving, sweet, deep, heart-touching name; for the name of ‘Father’ is, in its nature, full of inborn sweetness and comfort. Therefore, also, we must confess ourselves children of God, since there is not a sweeter sound to the father than the voice of the child.”

All this is wonderful to me. I scarcely dare to open my hand, and take this belief home to my heart.

It is then, indeed, thus we must think of God. Is He indeed, as Dr. Luther says, ready to listen to our feeblest cry, ready to forgive us and to help us?

HAVE COME BACK

And if He is indeed like this, and cares what we think of Him, how I must have grieved Him all these years! Not a moment longer — I will not distrust Him a moment longer. See, heavenly Father, I have come back!

Can it indeed be possible that God is pleased when we trust Him, pleased when we pray, simply because He loves us? Can it indeed be true, as Dr. Luther says, that love is our greatest virtue, and that we please God best by being kind to each other, just because that is most like Him? I am sure it is true. It is so good, it must be true. Then it is possible for me, even for me, to love God. How is it possible for me not to love Him? And it is possible for me, even me, to be religious, if to be religious is to love God, and to do whatever we can to make those around us happy.

But if this is indeed religion, it is happiness, it is freedom, it is life.

Why, then, are so many of the religious people I know of a sad countenance, as if they were bond servants, toiling for a hard master?

I must ask Dr. Luther.

LUTHER UNMASKS THE DEVIL

APRIL, 1513.

I have asked Dr. Luther, and he says because it is the devil makes a great deal of the religion we see; that he pretends to be Christ, and comes and terrifies people, and scourges them with the remembrance of their sins, and tells them they must not dare to lift up their eyes to heaven; God is so holy, and they are so sinful. But it is all because he knows that if they would lift their eyes to heaven, their terrors would vanish, and they would see Christ there, not as the judge, and the hard, exacting creditor, but as the pitiful, loving Saviour.

I find it a great comfort to believe in this way in the devil. Has he not been trying to teach me his religion all my life? And now I have found him out. He has been telling me lies, not about myself (Dr. Luther says he cannot paint us more sinful than we are), but lies about God. It helps me almost as much to hear Dr. Luther speak about the devil as about God — “the malignant, sad spirit,” he says, “who loves to make every one sad.”

With God’s help, I will never believe him again. But Dr. Luther said I shall, often; that he will come again and malign God, and assail my peace in so many ways that it will be long before I learn to know him.

TOLD ME A BEAUTIFUL STORY

I shuddered when he told me this; but then he reassured me by telling me a beautiful story, which he said was from the Bible. It was about a good shepherd, and silly, wandering sheep, and a wolf who sought to devour them. “All the care of the shepherd,” he said, “is in the tenderest way to attract the sheep to keep close to him; and when they wander, he goes and seeks them, takes them on his shoulder, and carries them safe home. All our wisdom,” he says, “is to keep always near this good Shepherd, who is Christ, and to listen to His voice.”

I know the Lord Jesus Christ is called the good Shepherd. I have seen the picture of Him carrying the lamb on His shoulder. But until Dr. Luther explained it to me, I thought it meant that He was the Lord, and owner of all the world, who are His flock. But I never thought that He cared for me as His sheep, sought me, called me, watched me, even me, day by day.

WHY IS IT NOT PREACHED?

Other people, no doubt, have understood all this before. And yet, if so, why do not the monks preach of it? Why should Aunt Agnes serve Him in the convent by penances and self tormentings, instead of serving Him in the world by being kind and helping all around? Why should our dear, gentle mother have such sad, self-reproachful thoughts, and feel as if our family were under a curse?

This, then, is what the crucifix and the Agnus Dei mean. Doubtless many around me have understood all this long ago. I am sure, at least, that our Eva understood it.

But what inexpressible joy for me, as I sit at my embroidery in the garden, to look up through the apple blossoms and the fluttering leaves, and to see God’s love there; to listen to the thrush that has built his nest among them, and feel God’s love, who cares for the birds, in every note that swells his little throat; to look beyond to the bright blue depths of the sky, and feel they are a canopy of blessing, the roof of the house of my Father; that if clouds pass over, it is the unchangeable light they veil; that even when the day itself passes, I shall see that the night itself only unveils new worlds of light; and to know that if I could unwrap fold after fold of God’s universe, I should only unfold more and more blessing, and see deeper and deeper into the love which is at the heart of all!

SAW JOY IN EVERYTHING

And then what joy again to turn to my embroidery, and, as my fingers busily ply the needle, to think, This is to help my father and mother; this, even this, is a little work of love. And as I sit and stitch, God is pleased with me, and with what I am doing. He gives me this to do, as much as He gives the priests to pray and Dr. Luther to preach. I am serving Him, and He is near me in my little corner of the world, and is pleased with me, even with me.

Oh, the change which has come over my heart, now that I have learned, through Dr. Luther’s teaching, that God is love — is our Father; that Christ is the Saviour, who gave Himself for our sins, and loved us better than life; that heaven is our Father’s house; that holiness is simply loving God, who is so good, and who has so loved us, and loving one another; that the service we have to render is simply to give thanks and to do good; when, as Dr. Luther said, that word “our” was written deeply in my heart — that for our sins He died, for mine; that for all, for us, for me, He gave Himself up!