EVERY THING IN ITS PLACE.
If Mary’s scholars wanted her aid about any thing, she would always help them, and they knew that she never required any thing of them, which could not be done.
At the close of every afternoon school, it was Mary’s practice to gather her little flock round her, and read to them out of the Bible. Sometimes, when the weather was very warm, she took them out into the woods, and sat down with them on the grass under a large oak tree. They liked to go out of doors to read; for they loved Mary, and they could sit very close to her under the oak tree while she read to them. Eddy Forester said he liked to read out of doors, for it seemed as if God was listening, up in the sky.
It was a very warm afternoon, and Mary said she would read under the oak tree.
Eddy Forester carried the Bible, and when they were all seated, Mary read to them the history of little Samuel, and how his heavenly Father called him when he lay down to sleep in the temple.
After Mary had done reading, Eddy Forester asked, why little Samuel went to Eli to inquire if he called him, when it was the Lord that called him?
Mary said, “Samuel was a very little boy, and he did not know that it was the Lord who had spoken to him. Our heavenly Father often speaks to little children now by his good Spirit, when they are too young to understand who it is that speaks to them.
“When we do right, we feel something which seems to say to us, ‘Well done!’ and then we are happy; and when we do wrong, we feel something which seems to say to us that it is wrong, and then we are unhappy.”
“Is it the Lord that makes us feel so?” asked Susan Field?
“Certainly,” said Mary, “and we should be very thankful to him that we are not happy when we have done that which we know to be wrong; and we should pray that God would teach us by his Holy Spirit what is right and what is wrong, and make us understand and love what he has taught us in the Bible.”