True or False?

[of Special Interest to Children]

RUTH T. STAHL

John hurried home one day, eager to tell his mother about the lovely new game they had learned at school called "True or False?" It was just like the grown-ups' program on the radio. It was so much fun learning about the cities of our country that way that it was no work at all. From then on "True or False?" helped John with all his schoolwork, and he and his mother had many good times learning together.

Then, one night, John woke up in the dark with such a pain in his ear that he cried out for his mother. She hurried to his bedside, and with her arms around him whispered, "True or false?" It seemed very true to John, but his mother talked to him in a low voice, reminding him of the wonderful truths he had learned in the Christian Science Sunday School, and at home too. She told him that God is Love, and that God made everything and made it good; that an earache is not good, so God did not make it; and if God did not make it, it was not made at all, for He made everything that was real. So an earache was not something real and true; it was false! As his mother talked in this way, the pain grew less. Then she sat in the chair beside John's bed and sang Mary Baker Eddy's hymn (Poems, p. 4), "O gentle presence, peace and joy and power."

The next thing John knew, the morning sun was streaming in through his window. He bounded out of bed and ran to his mother. "An earache is false!" he shouted. "It really is false!"

then his mother asked John to play "True or False?" in the Christian Science way all that day. Everything that was brought to his attention, he must test according to Science, and answer silently whether it was true or false.

When school began that morning. the teacher read the beautiful twenty-third Psalm. "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."

"True, true, true," sang John to himself, for he knew that divine Love meets till our needs, just as it had met his in the night.

A little later, when the teacher wished to open the window, she asked John to change his seat. "You might take cold," she said. "False," whispered John to himself. "I know a lovely breeze that God sends could not harm His child." But he quickly changed his seat and smiled at the teacher, for he knew she was kind and loving.

At recess something happened that puzzled John, and he felt that he could not answer either true or false. The children were talking about one of the boys in the class. He had taken some money from the teacher's desk. Later he had given it back and said that he was sorry, and that he would never do it again. "But he is a thief," said one of the boys. John felt sad about this, for he liked the boy very much. He was his friend.

As soon as school was over, John took the whole problem to his mother. "Is he a thief, Mother? Is it true?" asked John anxiously.

"Did God make a thief?" asked his mother, instead of answering his question. John felt that God certainly never made a thief. "But he even said he took the money," said John miserably.

"And last night," said his mother, "you even said you had an earache. We proved that was false; let us see this as false too."

So she opened her Bible and read, "So God created man in his own image." "That means that man is good too," said John.

Then his mother turned to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, and read these words (p. 475): "Man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. The real man cannot depart from holiness, nor can God, by whom man is evolved, engender the capacity or freedom to sin." She read many other beautiful passages, all showing that man is good and true.

"These are the right thoughts for us to have about your little friend," said his mother. "Let us hold fast to them, and know that God's child can express only what God has—goodness, and honesty, and love. These things are true, and whatever is unlike them is false." John was very happy that what had troubled him about his friend was "false." The next day they all played together. Soon everyone had forgotten the ugly incident, for it had been wiped out of thought. "This is the best 'True or False?' of all," said John.

It has been well said that our thoughts make our lives, and that we can no more think sickness and live health than we can think miserably and live joyously.—Dr. Herman N. Bundesen.

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