My sister Sophia went over to the asylum to model Laura's bust, and one day asked her teacher (who was with her always) to translate into spoken words the conversation that she saw was passing between them by means of the hand language. Very soon occurred the following:—
Laura. I want to go to walk.
Teacher. You cannot go to-day, because it rains.
Laura. Who makes it rain?
Instead of making a direct reply, the teacher went on to explain how moisture exhaled from the earth by the action of the sun, and was collected in masses which were called clouds, and when the clouds were so full as to be heavier than the air, it fell to the earth in drops of rain.
Laura said, reverently, "God is very full."
The teacher was startled, and said, "Who told you about God?"
Laura. No one told me. The Doctor is going to tell me about him when I know more words. But I think about God all times.
The teacher said to my sister, "This is very important," and went to tell the Doctor, who was a good deal moved, but found himself at somewhat of a loss. That evening he came to a little gathering at our house to talk about it. He said that nearly a year before, if not longer, Laura had come upon the word God in her reading, and immediately stopped and asked the meaning of the word. According to his directions, she was then sent to him, and he was so anxious not to do any harm, especially not to frighten her with the idea of Infinite Power (which is the main element of our conception of God, even eighteen hundred years after Christ's manifestation of Infinite Love), that he was embarrassed, and said to her that she did not yet know other words enough to explain the word God, but when she had learned more words, he would tell her, and meanwhile he wished she would not ask any one else. But now he was pondering what was the best way to proceed. I suggested that perhaps Laura could teach him more than he could teach her about God, and asked what was the sentence in which she had found the word. But this he had never known. It was then suggested that probably the word had explained itself, for no sentence could possibly contain the word, not even in an exclamation, that would not suggest to such a perfectly clear thinking mind as Laura had always shown, the fact of supreme love or wisdom. The company present proved this by trying to make sentences. I do not know what he finally concluded to do or say to Laura. I think certainly that the true way would have been to have drawn her out, and according to what she said or seemed to need, to have shaped whatever teaching he had to give, taking great care not to negate any of her positive assertions; for we could not doubt that God was manifesting himself to the imagination of her heart, if not yet in the forms of the human understanding.
If I had known how to use the hand language, I would have solicited the privilege of going to learn what this hermit soul could have told me before it was darkened by our traditional theology, which did not originate in children,—