Page 340 - The Story of My Lif

She was very still for a few minutes, evidently thinking earnestly. She then

asked, “Who made God?” I was compelled to evade her question, for I could not
explain to her the mystery of a self-existent being. Indeed, many of her eager
questions would have puzzled a far wiser person than I am. Here are some of
them: “What did God make the new worlds out of?” “Where did He get the soil,
and the water, and the seeds, and the first animals?”

“Where is God?” “Did you ever see God?” I told her that God was everywhere,
and that she must not think of Him as a person, but as the life, the mind, the soul
of everything. She interrupted me: “Everything does not have life. The rocks
have not life, and they cannot think.” It is often necessary to remind her that
there are infinitely many things that the wisest people in the world cannot
explain.

No creed or dogma has been taught to Helen, nor has any effort been made to
force religious beliefs upon her attention. Being fully aware of my own
incompetence to give her any adequate explanations of the mysteries which
underlie the names of God, soul, and immortality, I have always felt obliged, by
a sense of duty to my pupil, to say as little as possible about spiritual matters.
The Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks has explained to her in a beautiful way the
fatherhood of God.

She has not as yet been allowed to read the Bible, because I do not see how she
can do so at present without getting a very erroneous conception of the attributes
of God. I have already told her in simple language of the beautiful and helpful
life of Jesus, and of His cruel death. The narrative affected her greatly when first
she listened to it.

When she referred to our conversation again, it was to ask, “Why did not Jesus
go away, so that His enemies could not find Him?”

She thought the miracles of Jesus very strange. When told that Jesus walked on
the sea to meet His disciples, she said, decidedly, “It does not mean WALKED, it
means SWAM.” When told of the instance in which Jesus raised the dead, she