Article March 2, 1918 Issue

God's Care Realized

S. KING RUSSELL

On a somewhat busy street of one of our western towns the people gazing from the windows of a passing street car beheld a sight which for a moment arrested their attention. A boy of ten or twelve years stood on a ledge surrounding an apartment house balcony two stories above the street. Along this narrow footing he walked, boy fashion, holding to the rail of the balcony and smiling at his watching companions, all unconscious of the attention he had aroused below. Then came this characteristic comment from a lady in the car: "He'll fall and be killed!" "Tell the child to go in," exclaimed some one else. "He's in danger!"

This is typical of mortal mind's attitude toward the perils which beset frail mortals throughout the dream of human existence. In babyhood each is expected to have all the diseases allotted in the infants' category. In growing years the child is warned against cold, till it becomes a very real specter to his disturbed consciousness. As the years go on he is told that he cannot eat this or drink that, until the consciousness which began with a natural buoyancy and freedom is cluttered with fears that haunt it to a discordant old ago. Mortal mind unknowingly and inadvertently hangs a millstone about its own neck.

The spectators in this instance were kindly and well intentioned; their only thought was for the child's safety. Yet how much kinder it would have been to realize that as God's child he was safe, because, as the psalmist says: "He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." This truth would both correct any disobedient tendency of the child and neutralize the effect resulting therefrom; it would also serve to put the child in his right place.

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