Article July 3, 1909 Issue

A CHILD'S FAITH

ELLA T. GEORGESON.

He was a little Scientist of six summers, and with his mother and a few friends made up a party who were spending a month at one of the mountain hotels in northern California. What is known as poison-oak was in flower and everywhere in evidence, and all the party, especially the children, were repeatedly warned against touching or approaching it; but the children who had learned the falsity of the material law because of the actuality of the spiritual law, handled the plant with impunity, breaking switches of it to urge on the old pony when they rode him, and bringing in sprays of the beautiful leaves with the wild flowers they found on hill and roadside.

One evening the landlady, who had formed a great attachment for our little six-year-old, was, with him, watering the roses in her garden. This garden was situated at the base of a very steep hill, and the poison-oak fairly overhung the flowers on two sides of it. As the spray dashed from the roses over the offending bushes, she called to the little fellow to step aside, saying that the wind was blowing directly upon him from off those wet bushes, and that she did not want the dear little boy to be hurt by the poison-oak. "Why, it won't hurt me; I'm not afraid of it!" he answered in surprise. "That's all right, little one," she said energetically, with an incredulous smile. "The next time I get poison-oak I shall say, 'I'm not afraid of it—it won't hurt me! Poison-oak isn't poison—God never made poison'"! etc.

The child was troubled—he felt the thrust without understanding it. Then, raising his big blue eyes to hers, be answered with intense earnestness, "You've got to believe it!" The lady's face clouded and her eyes filled with tears. "That's just the trouble, dear;" she said, and hastily turning off the water she went inside. The child's mother, who had seen and heard unobserved from an upper window, thought of the Master and the blessed children of ancient Galilee. She remembered that Master's rebuke to the chief priests in the temple. "Have ye never read, Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?" also our Leader's words on page 130 of our inspired text-book, Science and Health, "The author has often remembered our Master's love for little children, and understood how truly such as they belong to the heavenly kingdom." How many adults in years and understanding would have answered so wisely or so will as did this child?

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