“Mama,” said Emily to me the other day, “I like to hear you tell Charles about God, and to see him listen as if he wanted to understand all you say, so very, very much. Do tell me how you first began to teach me, and whether I seemed to love to be taught as much as Charlie does. I suppose you began when I was a very little girl, and now I am nearly six years old; so of course I cannot remember such a long time ago.”
“I think, dear Emily, the first time I told you any thing about God was when you were a little more than two years old. I had been drawing different things to amuse you. After the house, and the tree, and the cow, which you so often hear little Charlie beg for, you asked me to draw the sun, and the moon, and the stars; then, lifting up your little face, you said, ‘But, mama, who could reach up and draw those pretty great pictures of the sun and moon that Emmie sees in the sky?’”
Emily.—“O then, mama, no doubt you told me that they were not really pictures, but great lights which God, who is better and wiser than we are, and can do every thing and reach every where, placed in the sky for our sakes; and then you could easily go on to tell me, about his creating us, and taking care of us by night and by day; and how we ought to thank and to love him.
“And did I love him, mama?”
“Yes, my Emily; and I believe you thought that every thing he made should do the same; for one day, when I was working in the drawing-room, and you were with me, I observed that you stood at the window quite quiet for a long time, watching something, but what I did not know. At last you turned round, and said, ‘Mama, how dearly the little birds must love God!—they fly up in the sky so often to see him. Emmie wishes she was a little bird too.’”