Article July 28, 1917 Issue

Divine Protection

ELSIE R. SARGEANT

When my son was about five years old we were living in one of the suburbs of New York City, and he spent most of his time out in the fields about the house, running around in barefoot sandals. Many times in those five years he had run through patches of so-called poison ivy with no fear, and consequently with no bad results. One day, however, while I was busy about the house, he came to me very much disturbed because a little friend with whom he had gone off to gather wild cherries had told him that he must go right home, as he had walked through some poison ivy and would be poisoned. I reminded him of the many times he had done that same thing, and that he had never suffered from it, and told him to run on and play and forget all his fears.

It was not long before he was back again, in tears, telling me that his friend had said, "You must be poisoned, because you walked right in the poison ivy; and you simply have to be." By this time the child was manifesting all the signs of a severe case of poisoning, and it seemed right to deny, then and there, this law which mortal thought was holding over him so strongly, and the fear which it had developed. I therefore stopped my work, and we sat down together to reason about it from the standpoint of Christian Science.

The little fellow was very fond of the wild things of the fields, and at home of the domestic animals, which he loved very much, especially a cat with her family of kittens. We talked about all these things, how they wandered about in the fields and grass, and did not stop when they came to the ivy, but went right through it without fear, and that he knew they were never poisoned. We talked about the ants and caterpillars and grasshoppers, and all the other wild things in which he was interested, and found that none of them were afraid,—that God protects all His creatures and does not put things in the fields to harm them. Before we had gone this far all the tears were dried, and the attempts to scratch the irritated parts were over. We both saw plainly that God would no more poison a little boy than He would a little kitten, and the child was ready to go out to play without ever again suffering an instant from poison, and with absolutely no sign of it on his legs, which but a few moments before had been quite swollen and inflamed.

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