Article November 28, 1914 Issue

Believing Good to be True

MYRTLE B. S. JACKSON

Some years ago, when walking with a cousin down the main street of our village, we saw two ragged little children standing on tiptoe, gazing longingly into the window of a small jeweler's shop. Seeing that the trinkets which they were exclaiming over were marked fourpence and sixpence, my companion bent down to the children with sympathetic impulse, and said: "Would you like to have some of those bracelets? I'll give you both one if you like." They looked up at her with saucy derision, and responded with wise incredulity. The next minute, however, she had vanished into the shop, and ere they had realized her purpose, she slipped a shining ring of silver round each little wrist. "They are yours," I heard her say; "yours to keep." Then we walked on, while the children moved away, apparently too dazed to be quite sure of what had happened.

Since that time the incident has often come back to mind and assumed more metaphysical interpretations; for how often do we grown-up children, ragged and poor enough in our meager experiences of health and happiness, stand in the streets of this mortal pilgrimage and gaze at some faint concept of good, finding it too dazzling to believe that it could ever become our own possession. Mortals, so wise in their expectation of poverty and sickness and desolation, mentally turn away with a questioning shrug when the hint of a loving creator, a beautiful life, and abundant provision for their needs, is presented for their acceptance, so far removed from such blessedness has been their past experience. Yet this eternal good and these inexhaustible riches are here for us all; it is God's good pleasure that we should have them, and our present concept of good things is as a child's toy compared with the treasures of Spirit, which, St. Paul tells us, "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man" to conceive, but which he assures us are prepared for us by our Father-Mother God.

It is recorded in the fifth chapter of St. John that Jesus once saw by the pool of Bethesda an impotent man, who for thirty-eight years had looked on, while many of his fellow beings received some measure of relief from suffering, without being able to get any himself. Going to him, Jesus asked the startling question, "Wilt thou be made whole?" and the man replied (we can imagine with what dull despair), "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me." Then the miracle, to mortal sense, took place. Jesus, by spiritual power alone, healed him instantaneously, and he "took up his bed, and walked."

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