Article February 25, 1950 Issue

TOMMY BUILDS AN ARK

MARY E. IRWIN

Tommy was nearly four years old, and he had attended a Christian Science Sunday School since he was three. One Sunday, Tommy's Sunday School teacher told the class the story of Noah and the ark. She explained that it was God who had told Noah to build an ark. Then she read part of the definition of "ark" given by Mary Baker Eddy in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 581): "ARK. Safety; the idea, or reflection, of Truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle; the understanding of Spirit, destroying belief in matter." They talked of the ark, or spiritual understanding, as a place where all were safe from the floods of error. For when Noah had finished the ark, God told him to take all his family into it and two each of all the animals.

The teacher also told them that each of them could build an ark of safety with what they knew, or understood, of God as Love and of man as His reflection, or image and likeness. This understanding would take them safely over any waves of error, just as Noah's ark had ridden the floodwaters and kept his family safe. The teacher then explained how each of them could take all his family — father, mother, brothers, sisters—and even his playmates and pets into his ark of spiritual understanding by seeing that each is really spiritual and belongs to God.

The following week Tommy's dog was hit by a car. The little dog dragged himself into the house and lay down by a radiator, where he stayed all night.

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