Helen Van-Anderson

"How shall I know if I do choose the right?"—Shakespeare.

"Truth is one,
And in all lands beneath the sun,
Whoso hath eyes to see may see
The tokens of its unity."
—Whittier.

"That is a very clear statement," said Mr. Hayden, as he handed the letter to Grace when she called the next evening.

"Do you think we can get much of an idea from it?"

"O yes, indeed we can; but you take it home and read it with Kate."

Grace went straight home with her prize for she was more interested than she cared to admit just yet, and Kate was still reluctant and fearful about the possible wrong.

Grace had awakened in the night, just after Mrs. Hayden had gone and found her crying. "What is the matter, Katie?" she asked.

"Oh, Grace, I am so worried about this Healing, and I am afraid I did wrong to even promise Mrs. Hayden I would read her letters," sobbed the poor child.

"Why, Katie dear, we could never know anything if we did not look into it and use the reason God has given us. Surely you are not afraid to examine into what claims to be such wonderful truth. You do not necessarily accept by examining it, and I am glad we can have the privilege of reading what Mrs. Hayden says, for she has such a fair, unprejudiced mind, and will give us the matter just as nearly right as she can; then we can judge for ourselves."

She reached over and drew Kate into her arms, but the sobbing did not cease at once. Grace was naturally kind-hearted, and respected people's feelings. To-night she was very gentle, as Kate gratefully realized.

"Come Kate, put away your fears. There's nothing can change the truth you have, and if it isn't truth, the sooner you change your mind the better. What makes you feel so, all at once? Has some one said anything?"

"Yes, Mr. Narrow gave me such a talking to when I asked him if it was wrong; for someway, I got so troubled that I did not know what else to do."

"Well, what of it; you don't see anything wrong in it yourself, do you?"

"N—o, not exactly."

"What are you afraid of, then?"

"I—I don't know," with a hysterical sob. She was ashamed to admit that she was half afraid of eternal punishment, something she had been in vague terror of all her life. It had been impressed upon her so vividly, and now she was suffering from a keenly reproachful conscience, because for so long a time she had been indifferent and neglectful of her religious duties.

Grace finally persuaded her it would be all right to give the matter a fair investigation. Then she went to sleep, comforted, for half her misery had been caused by her indecision and wavering.

When they read the letter together, Grace was delighted and Kate not much less so, though she demurred a little about some things.

"What beautiful ideas of God! It seems plainer than anything I ever heard. To say God is Principle, not person, makes it easier to apprehend His omnipresence," exclaimed Grace, laying down the letter.

"Y-e-s, in one sense," slowly assented Kate, "but in the Bible He is spoken of as Person, or at least as having personal attributes, and you know they frequently refer to what He says and how He talked with Abraham."

"O, I think that is figurative, if it is true at all. How can a being with a definite or outlined form be everywhere at the same time?"

"But surely, you believe His thoughts can be everywhere, and that is what is meant by this omnipresence," said Kate, earnestly.

"Then do you think of Him as sitting on a great golden throne, listening to the petitions of men below, and able to hear and to grant or refuse at the same moment every prayer that is sent to Him by the millions of His children on earth?"

"'God's ways are not our ways, and with Him all things are possible.'"

"But is it not much easier to say this is Principle, which is everywhere waiting for our recognition of its presence to become manifested to us?" pursued Grace.

"Yes, I don't know but it is."

"Now Kate, I am truly in earnest and mean to study this very earnestly. I know very little about the Bible, because it has been a sealed book to me every time I ever tried to read it, but during these three weeks that Mrs. Hayden is gone, I am going to put away my preconceived opinions as far as possible and see if I can learn something, and now let us get the Bible and see what it says on these questions. You have a concordance. Let us look up the word omnipresence and read some of the passages in which it occurs."

Kate was well pleased, not only to make the Bible the foundation of this study, but to find Grace so changed, and so ready to look into sacred things. "Perhaps she will be converted," she thought, and from that moment she, too, resolved to look fairly into Christian Healing. She brought the concordance and found there was no reference to omnipresence.

"We'll look for present or presence," suggested Grace. She glanced rapidly down the columns and found a reference to Ps. cxxxix. and turned to that.

"Yes, in the seventh verse it says: 'Whither shall I go from thy spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence?' and here is a marginal reference to Jer. xxiii: 24. 'Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth?' Now it seems to me that carries the idea of a personal Being," said Kate.

"Well, let us look up the references to God," suggested Grace again. "Here's one in Deut. xxxii: 4. 'He is the rock, his work is perfect; for all his ways are judgment; a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.' Yes, there He is compared to a rock. Of course that is symbolical, but find another. Isn't there one that tells of Him as spirit?"

"Yes, 'God is spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,' that is in John iv: 24, and in the first chapter of John it reads: 'In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.'"

"Ah! there we have it very plain; word is not flesh and blood or person. Doesn't it say in the letter that God is Intelligence, which is only another way to express the same thing?"

"Yes, and I remember when Jesus prayed for His disciples, He said: 'Sanctify them through thy truth, thy word is truth;' and some place in the Bible it speaks of God as truth," said Kate, quite willing to give all the corroborative testimony she could.

"Truth can only be considered as principle, so we have that statement confirmed by the Bible, and that would agree with what Pythagoras wrote," said Grace, quoting: "'There is one Universal Soul diffused through all things, eternal, invisible, unchangeable; in essence like truth, in substance resembling light; ... to be comprehended only by the mind.' Now it is comparatively easy to see manifestations of the Good. By the way, I think it a volume of explanation in itself to say Good instead of God, don't you?"

"Well, yes, it does seem peculiarly expressive, but the old way sounds a little better yet."

"Of course," pursued Grace, "it doesn't matter so much what we call this omnipresent power, as whether we understand it. All humanity worship the same Deity in the sense of recognizing an omnipotent Power. I once read something comparing the ideas of God among the different peoples, and it was really wonderful how similar they were, excepting, of course, each nation had a different name for Deity. I believe I have that book now somewhere;" and Grace went to look for it, but presently returned without finding it. "Well, it made such a vivid impression on me that I remember a few of the principal statements. One was that the Hindoos teach of an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent Being called Brehm who is the creator of all things, from whom all things emanate and by whom all things are sustained. The Persians, Egyptians, Greeks held similar ideas. The Persians called God, Ormuzd, the Greeks, Orpheus, the Egyptians, Osiris."

"I did not know the Pagans held such ideas of Deity. I always thought they believed in many gods," said Kate.

"They did, but as Edward Everett Hale, says: 'The innumerable Gods of the Pantheon are but manifestations of the One Being,' that is, they had special names for the different manifestations of God, as He appeared to them in the sun, the air, the earth, and also the different qualities of human character. They all alike believed in a Supreme Being, and made statements almost synonymous with many in the Bible. That is what may be called universal truth, and if this philosophy is what is consistent with fundamental truth, it will be just what I have been wishing to find." Grace leaned back meditatively, adding, "Mythology used to have a peculiar charm for me, and many of those old stories are coming back with a new significance."

"'There is but one foundation, other, can no man lay,'" quoted Kate, earnestly.

"Yes, my dear," and Grace rose and paced back and forth in deep abstraction. "There is but one Truth and we can not establish a falsity. But I want to carry my reflections a little further concerning this universal worship. To my mind, the power inherent in everything and recognized in some way by every individual is the supreme, perfect Power in different phases of manifestation. The man who trusts an unseen power to bring the seed he plants to full fruition, is believing in the true God, though he may not know it.

"The whole world lives on faith from one year to another, for there is not enough food produced in one season to last more than one year, and if men did not know every succeeding season would provide, they would be desperate indeed. What is this but believing in a supreme Power? Even materialists admit that the great First Cause is beyond matter. Herbert Spencer speaks of it as the 'Universal Reality, without beginning and without end.'"

"All people reverence and admire the sentiments of love and justice and truth and mercy. Let us agree they come from the same cause and are everywhere present, and we shall come nearer to worshiping God in spirit and in truth, than we ever have before. Now let's have your opinion, Queen Katherine," concluded Grace, looking at Kate with a playful smile as she finished her long dissertation.

"There is nothing I can add to that, and it seems a very good conclusion to our first lesson. I did not know you had thought so much about religious things, Grace."

"I always had a fondness for looking on the forbidden side of things, and I am afraid I was more curious than religious, but I am rather glad if there is an explanation to these things that have always puzzled me."