"NOTHING TO THANK GOD FOR."
"Have you nothing to thank God for?" asked the mother of a little girl named Helen.
"No," said Helen; "you and papa give me everything."
"Not for your pleasant home?" asked mother.
"It is my papa's house; he lets me live in it."
"Where did the wood come from to build it?" asked mother.
"From trees," answered Helen, "and they growed in big forests."
"Who planted the big forests? Who gave rain to water them? Who gave the sun to warm them? Who did not allow the winter to blast them? Who kept them growing from little trees to trees big enough to build houses with? Not papa, not man; it was God."
Helen looked her mother in the eye, and then said, "Papa bought nails to make it with."
"What are nails made of?" asked mamma.
"Iron," answered Helen; "and men dig iron out of the ground."
"Who put iron in the ground, and kept it there safe till the men wanted it?" asked mother. "It was God."
"We got this carpet from men," said Helen, drawing her small foot across it.
"Where did the carpet-men get the wool to make it from?" asked mother.
"From farmers," answered Helen.
"And where did the farmers get it?"
"From sheep and lambs' backs," said the little girl.
"And who clothed the lambs in dresses good enough for us? for your dress, I see, is made of nothing but lambs' wool. Where did the lambs get such good stuff?"
"God gave it to them, I suppose," said the little girl. "It is you that gives me bread, mother," said she quickly.
"But," said her mother, "the flour we got from the shop, and the shopkeeper bought it from the miller, and the miller took the wheat from the farmer, and the farmer had it from the ground, and the ground grew it all itself."
"No," cried Helen suddenly, "God grew it. The sun and the rain, the wind and the air, are His, and He sent them to the corn-field. The earth is His too. And so God is at the bottom of everything, isn't He, mother?"
"Yes," said mother; "God is the Origin of every good and perfect gift which we enjoy."
The little girl looked serious. She looked thinking. "Then, mamma," she said at last, "I can't make a prayer long enough to thank God for everything."
"Oh, that men," even as the creatures of God, "would praise the Lord for His goodness, and for His wonderful works to the children of men!"