"The arms of divine Love"

[Written Especially for Children]

ONCE a little girl was taken ill while attending school, and asked to be excused so that she could go home. As she walked home she was encouraged and steadied by the thought that when she got there, her mother, who was a Christian Science practitioner, would take her in her arms and would declare the truth to her until the error was gone. However, when she finally got home, her mother was engaged with a patient and told her to take "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and read it until she could be with her. This book, written by Mary Baker Eddy, is the textbook of Christian Science and is used by students of Christian Science in somewhat the same way as a grammar or an arithmetic book is used by students of these subjects; for it contains rules, definitions, and laws, which give the student a usable knowledge of God.

As the little girl climbed up on a chair her sense of disappointment and discomfort were great. She was obedient, however, and so she began to pick out the words she knew, for she could not read very well yet; but she knew the words that meant God—"Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love"—which she had learned from the definition of God, found on page 465 of Science and Health. Then a wonderful thing happened to her—something she never forgot. She began to feel comfortable, contented, free, and well. And she was indeed happy that she could read and understand things she never knew before. She did not mind at all now that her mother was busy, for she had found the impersonal truth, which made her conscious of God, and healed her through the word of God, even as the Bible says: "He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions."

When her mother came to her, she found not a sick child, but a well, radiantly happy little girl who wanted to talk of what she had learned about God. That was her first healing through reading this book, even as her mother had been restored to perfect health years before just through studying it.

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February 18, 1933
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