Article April 12, 1919 Issue

The Simplicity of Truth

SUSAN A. PACKER

We occasionally hear remarks to the effect that Christian Science is hard to understand. To show the simplicity of its teachings, I wish to relate a true story of a little boy, four years old, who belongs to our Sunday school. Last winter he and his mother went across the hall in their apartment house to visit a neighbor who was not a Christian Scientist. It was on the day of a big blizzard, and they found the neighbor crying. On asking her what was the trouble she said she was afraid her husband could not get home on account of the storm. She also said he had telephoned that he would be home at two o'clock and it was then four, and he had not come. She added that a friend had told her over the telephone of some one whose feet had been frozen while trying to get home, that the cars were not running, and other distressing news.

The little boy listened to the recounting of these thoughts of fear, and then with childish enthusiasm asked her if she knew the story that he had learned in Sunday school about a good shepherd who had some sheep and lambs, and one little lamb got lost, so the good shepherd took all the rest home, and shut them up in the barn, and then went out to hunt for the poor little lamb that was lost. And when he found it, cold and hungry and afraid, he took it up in his arms and carried it home, and put it by its mother in the warm barn. "And," he added, "that good shepherd is God; and if Mr.------------is lost, God will find him and bring him home; and if he is cold, Love will make him warm!" Of course that truthful word, spoken so surely and simply, healed the fear, and the husband walked in two hours later in perfect condition.

But a very sweet part of this story is yet to come. Weeks afterwards the lady who had been thus comforted came to the writer's house with her mother and related the above incident almost word for word as it has been given, and added: "And we have come to you to have you start us in Christian Science, for the little boy said you were his Sunday school teacher, and we want to learn about Christian Science too." My eyes filled with tears of joy and gratitude, for when asked to take a class of children so young, I had told the superintendent I could not, because I did not know how to make the truth of God's protecting care simple enough so that such young children could understand it. I well remember his reassuring smile, and how after taking the problem to God in prayer, as an old hymn tells us to do with everything that troubles us, that which had seemed a difficult task became a joy. We indeed may plant and water, but it is God that giveth the increase, and "a little child shall lead them."

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