Page 343 - The Story of My Lif

associated with blindness.

Of all the subjects which perplex and trouble Helen, none distresses her so much
as the knowledge of the existence of evil, and of the suffering which results from
it. For a long time it was possible to keep this knowledge from her; and it will
always be comparatively easy to prevent her from coming in personal contact
with vice and wickedness. The fact that sin exists, and that great misery results

from it, dawned gradually upon her mind as she understood more and more
clearly the lives and experiences of those around her. The necessity of laws and
penalties had to be explained to her. She found it very hard to reconcile the
presence of evil in the world with the idea of God which had been presented to
her mind.

One day she asked, “Does God take care of us all the time?” She was answered
in the affirmative. “Then why did He let little sister fall this morning, and hurt
her head so badly?” Another time she was asking about the power and goodness
of God. She had been told of a terrible storm at sea, in which several lives were
lost, and she asked, “Why did not God save the people if He can do all things?”

Surrounded by loving friends and the gentlest influences, as Helen had always
been, she has, from the earliest stage of her intellectual enlightenment, willingly
done right. She knows with unerring instinct what is right, and does it joyously.
She does not think of one wrong act as harmless, of another as of no
consequence, and of another as not intended. To her pure soul all evil is equally
unlovely.

These passages from the paper Miss Sullivan prepared for the meeting at
Chautauqua, in July, 1894, of the American Association to Promote the Teaching
of Speech to the Deaf, contain her latest written account of her methods.