Library Collections: Document: Full Text

What is a spirit? Did Jesus go to school when he was a child? Teacher cannot find anything about it in the Bible. How does God deliver people from evil? Why do the people say that the Jews were very wicked, when they did not know any better?

Where is heaven? My teacher says it does not matter where it is, so long as we know that it is a beautiful place, and that we shall see God there and be happy always. But I should like to know where it is, and what it is like. What is conscience? Once I wished very much to read my new book about Heidi when teacher had told me to study. Something whispered to me that it would be wrong to disobey dear teacher. Was it conscience that whispered to me it would be wrong to disobey?

Dr. Brooks replies: --

I think that it is God's care for us all that makes us care for one another. It is because we are in the Father's house that we know that all people are our brothers and sisters. God is very anxious that we should know that he is our Father. We can imagine something of how any father must feel whose children do not know that he is their father. He must be very anxious to tell them, and so God tries in every way to tell us. I think he writes it even upon the beautiful walls of the great house of nature which we live in, that he is our Father; as a child who found herself living in a lovely house might guess that he who built that house and put her there loved her very dearly.

And then again, God tells us in our hearts that he is our Father. That is what we call conscience, -- God's voice in our hearts. You say that you try to do what is right in order to please your teacher, and you ask whether that is conscience. But what is it that makes you want to please your teacher? Why do you want to show her that you love her? Why do you love her? It is God in your heart that makes you grateful and makes you want to make other people happy. Your heart takes God into it as the flower takes in the sunshine; and then when you think God's thoughts and do God's actions, it is a sign to you that God is in you and that you belong to him.

People have always thought that God must be their Father because he showed himself to them in the beautiful world, and because he spoke to them in their hearts; but he wanted to make it perfectly clear and sure to them, and so he came and lived among them. He took our human life and lived in it. He showed us what our life would be if it was absolutely filled with his spirit. That is what you read in the beautiful story of Jesus; and when Jesus had lived in the world for some time, he said one day to his friends, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father!" How they must have looked at him after that! How they must have listened to everything he said! How they must have tried to get near to him! for to get near to him was to get near to God, their Pattern. And we can see him and hear what he says and come near to him too; for we have the story of the precious words which he spoke, and of how he was willing even to suffer to make men good; and we know that he promised when he went away that he would always be where people could talk to him and love him and tell him all their troubles and their needs.

I suppose that Jesus went to school when he was a little boy. Indeed, we have one story of his going up to the temple and asking the wise doctors the questions which had come up in his mind, and that was really going to school. At any rate, we know that he lived in his mother's house and was very obedient. And so we know that even in the simplest things, in obedience and faithfulness to those who love us, we may be like God.

Helen manifests the same eagerness to learn about spiritual things that characterizes her search for knowledge in other departments. Her vivid imagination enables her to avoid many difficulties which Laura Bridgman encountered on all sides. When anything is described to her, she seems to form from the words a picture which she perceives with some inward power of vision.

She received the idea of God as a loving Father as naturally as the flower exhales its perfume. How could it be otherwise? She knew nothing of sin and suffering; her life was as free from care and sorrow as that of the birds of the air or the flower of the fields. The assertion that she was God's child, that he loved her, had always loved her, and wished her to love him, met with a glad assent; and, to a child of her loving and clinging disposition, it was a source of the greatest pleasure to think that we are all brothers and sisters, whose duty it is to love and help one another.

She has not as yet been allowed to read the Bible, because I do not see how she can do so at present without giving her a very erroneous conception of the attributes of God. I have already told her in simple language of the beautiful and helpful life of Jesus, and of his cruel death. The narrative affected her greatly when first she listened to it. Her tears flowed freely, but she seemed disinclined to talk about it for several days. Like most sensitive and imaginative children, she shrank from laying bare her own deepest feelings.