"Mrs. Doyle! I have a good friend up in the sky who has a whole sky full of goodness, and he will give me as much goodness as I want to be good with all the time," emphasizing the last three words.
The nurse, a good-hearted Roman Catholic, who, like all the servants, had been forbidden to talk to the child about God or any kindred subject, looked at me startled, yet gratified, and said:—
"What will his mother say?"
I replied, "His mother will be very glad; she only wanted to wait till she thought he could understand. But I have told him enough for the present; don't talk to him about it; but if he says anything to you, come and tell me."
"Yes," said she, "and I thank God you have come to teach the poor child something."
I then said to her aside, "His mother is very anxious lest he be frightened; for she was frightened about God and death when she was a little child, and has suffered from it all her life long. She has been a double orphan ever since she can remember."
I said this to her for several reasons: one was my extreme desire to see what the one simple truth would do for the child, and this was the reason I gave good friend for God's name. Of course, the mother craved to know exactly what had passed on this important occasion, and was immensely relieved and gratified at what I told her, and wanted it all to be written down; and thus it happened that I made memoranda of this and subsequent conversations, and even of those held in her presence, for they continued to be no less interesting than they began.
Observe these points in the child's speech to the nurse: he interpolated the words up in the sky. I had given no place to the good friend, though I had said he had a whole sky full of goodness and love; and the sky being the glorious symbol of unboundedness, elevation, purity, and power to the human imagination, in all nations and times, as is proved by the earliest idolaters who worshipped the heavens, and the host of stars, and verifying the more spiritual conceptions of the Hebrew Psalmist, and of Job, who did not confound (nor did this child) the sign with the Living God who created it to signify His Being. Another thing: Observe it was not even as the giver of love and joy, but as the giver of goodness that the Person of Persons had seized the imagination of the child so powerfully. It was wonderful to see that very day, the effect upon his understanding of this conversation. The night before, when I told him the story of the little worm, I found his vocabulary so small that I could give my imagination a very narrow scope. But in the course of the day (in which, for the first time in his life) he talked incessantly, asking innumerable questions about his good friend, he seemed to have no difficulty in talking. I am very sorry I have not my written memoranda, because I should like to tell you everything in order; but I remember he wanted to know how his good friend "looked." I replied by asking him, "How does love look?" He laughed, and said, "Love does not look, but feels." "Well," said I, "so your good friend does not look, but feels. Don't you feel him now, putting love and goodness into you?" He laughed assent, and said, "Where is he?"
"Wherever love and goodness are," said I; "in you, in me, and in mother, in everybody who loves." I was encouraged to believe he would comprehend this language, unimaginable and inconceivable as such truth is to the mere understanding, for I had in my remembrance a conversation I once overheard between two children, one five and the other not three years old, at which I had not ceased to wonder since I heard it. I was sitting drawing with their mother in a recess of a room that hid us from the children's sight, when our attention was diverted by hearing the younger one say:—
"Can God see me now, when I am all wrapped up in this shawl?"