A CHILD'S FAITH | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 12, 1861

A CHILD'S FAITH.

A GOOD lady, who had long known and loved the Saviour, was ill with a lingering disease. Her poor, frail body began to draw down the spirit with it, and she could not think or feel or pray as she once did. As she could not see Jesus now, she began to fear that she had never seen him. This made her very sad, and often she would shed tears and say, "Jesus hear me, Jesus pity me!"

She had a dear little daughter, who would sometimes throw her arms around her neck and ask, "What ails you mother?" But she was too young to understand her case, and thought her grief was because no physician could cure her. One day the lady sat looking out upon the glorious works of God—the lovely landscape, the deep sea and the cloud-flecked sky, and wishing that He who made and rules the world would only stoop to pity her. Her little M. came into the room just then, with an open book in her hand. Her face was bright with smiles, and her blue eyes lighted by some joyful news. "Oh! mother, dear!" she cried, "I've found out a way in which you can be cured, and it is such an easy way! I was looking for my Sunday-School lesson, and I found this place. It tells of a woman who was very sick indeed. She had spent all her

money trying to be made well, but everything she did only made her worse. Just think, mother, she had been sick twelve years! Well, I suppose she had heard about Jesus, for she went where he was, and believed that he could heal her if he pleased; so she slipped softly behind him, touched the hem of his garment, and whispered to herself that 'doing only that would make her well again!' And Jesus was pleased, mother, and he told her to take comfort, for she should be healed. And so she was. Can't you touch the hem of his garment too?"

The lady looked in wonder at the little teacher God had sent her, and bursting into tears, said, "Oh! my darling, that woman could see Jesus!"

"But mother, you have always told me that he is just as really near me as if I could see and touch him."

Thus were the lessons of faith which this suffering mother had given beside the little crib at the evening hour, returned with bountiful interest into her own bosom; and she said, "Blessed Jesus, although I cannot see I will trust. I will put forth my hand, as did the woman in the gospel, and touch the hem of thy garment. I will put my trembling hand in thine, to be led and guided by thy will even through the darkness."—Child at Home.