Spurgeon's Bold Defiance

If God is the great Giver, it is because He is the great Lover. The story is told by Luther that when his translation of the Bible was being printed in Germany, pieces of the printer’s work were allowed to fall care- lessly upon the floor of his shop.

One day the printer’s little daughter coming in picked up a piece of paper on which she found just the words, “God so loved the world that He gave “-the rest of the sentence not having yet been printed. It was a veritable revelation to her, for up to that time she had always been told that the Almighty was to be dreaded, and could only 0 2 The Art of Sermon Illustration be approached through penance. The new light thrown upon God’s nature by the scrap that had fallen into her hands seemed to flood her whole being with its radiance, so that her mother asked her the reason of her joyful- ness.

Putting her hand in her pocket, Luther tells us, the girl handed out the little crumpled piece of paper with the unfinished sentence. Her mother read it, and was perplexed: “He gave what was it He gave ?”

For a moment the child was puzzled, but only for a moment; then, with a quick intuition, “I don’t know; but if He loved us well enough to give us anything, we need not be afraid of Him” (John iii. 16).