‘BEAUTIFUL AND PRECIOUS’

The older I grow the more beautiful and precious life seems to me. The time will come, I know, when there will be nothing else to pray for except life and everlasting life. Give me that and an even break between joys and vicissitudes, the same right I have here to choose goodness, and I would cheerfully risk existence longer than a pious saint could stand with folded wings singing in heaven. But I know very little about this. Maybe I shall be changed when my corruption puts on incorruption, acclimated to all this music and brightness and the high level of perfect goodness. In the meantime, surely the Lord will respect my honesty in clinging to my human feelings, since I am subject to them according to His will.

I do not know how it is, but there is a doctrine which teaches damnation like consequences in all the churches with which I am familiar, either by election or predestination--terms which distinctly imply the exclusion from salvation of those not elected or predestined. I can find no Scripture in the Bible that justifies these interpretations without giving the passage a theological twist. The Methodist church, which makes such generous provision for salvaging and saving those who fall from grace, is not without blame in this matter. It covers the whole ground for the doctrines of election and predestined damnation, or salvation as the case may be, with the doctrine of apostasy. The only difference is that an apostate chooses his own fate and is not predestined to it from the foundation of the world. This is only apparently putting the blame where it belongs. The threat hidden beneath is that the Lord will stand just so much, then His spirit ceases to strive with a man. When you think about it, this is the worst fate of all. What is to defend a person highly sensitized spiritually from the perpetual fear of being forsaken in his sins?

I had my first lesson in theology very early--religion is something else. If you have the mind to believe, the Scriptures are singularly clear; but only a student and a scholar can make heads and tails of theology. It is a sort of puzzle the wavering minds of men have made from the Word of God, to the end that sinners have been exalted by a creed, saints burned at the stake for the sake of a doctrine, and thousands obliged to flee from one country to another to save their necks and their liberty of conscience.

Maybe all that was for the best. Certainly, if you give it time, the worst turns out for the best.

Mother was the kind of Methodist who could afford to believe without much personal anxiety in this doctrine. She was a truly good woman, with an Old Testament mind. Somewhere along the way she warned me of the danger. She impressed me with the fact that if I hardened my heart the spirit would cease to strive with me. The time came when God abandoned the willful sinner and left him to his fate. I went around with this red-hot coal of fire on my spiritual back for a long time. I acquired habits of thought then that worked havoc with my peace for half a lifetime. I have never entirely escaped the fear that I may turn out to be an apostate after all. It seizes upon me like a malady. I am troubled by the realization that the spirit does not seem to strive with me as it did when I was younger. This is a fearfully lonely feeling, and not rational. But sanity, in my opinion, is an achievement. I have seen very few well-balanced people in my life who were not dunces.

I was finally soundly converted and joined the church. At the time that experience seemed more miraculous than it does now; I have been born again so many times since. First I had to adjust myself to the heavenly mind. Then I must adjust myself to the ministry of my husband. Finally, after his death, I had to be born again to the world, capable of dealing with it sensibly and honorably. My experience is that this last requires more divine inspiration than being a private Christian protected by all the defenses that marriage and religion raise about a woman’s life.