"Just only _six days_ it took God to make _everything_" she said; "think of that!"
"My dear child," remonstrated her uncle, "_that_ isn't the point at all --the _amount_ of time it required! As a matter of fact, it took thousands of years to make the world. The word 'day' in that connection means a certain period of time, not twenty-four hours."
"Oh!" cried the little girl, in disappointment; "that takes the wonderfulness out of it!"
"Not at all," protested her young uncle. "And, supposing it did, can you not see that the world could not have been made in six of _our_ days?"
"Why," said the child, in surprise, "I should think it could have been!"
"For what reason?" her uncle asked, in equal amazement.
"Because God was doing it!" the child exclaimed.
Her uncle did not at once reply. When he did, it was to say, "You are right about _that_, my dear."
Sometimes it happens that a child finds in our careful explanation of the meaning of a religious belief or practice a different or a further significance than we have indicated. I once had an especially striking experience of this kind.
I was visiting a family in which there were several children, cared for by a nurse of the old-fashioned, old-world type. She was a woman well beyond middle age, and of a frank and simple piety. There was hardly a circumstance of daily life for which she was not ready with an accustomed ejaculatory prayer or thanksgiving. One day I chanced to speak to her of a mutual friend, long dead. "God rest her soul!" said the old nurse, in a low tone.
"Why did she say that?" the little four-year-old girl of the house asked me. "I never heard her say that before!"
"It is a prayer that some persons always say when speaking of any one who is dead; especially any one they knew and loved," I explained.
Later in the day, turning over a portfolio of photographs with the little girl, I took up a picture of a fine, faithful-eyed dog. "Whose dog is this?" I asked. "What a good one he is!"
"He was ours," replied the child, "and he was very good; we liked him. But he is dead now--" She paused as if struck by a sudden remembrance. Then, "God rest his soul!" she sighed, softly.
Most of the answers I read in response to the question, "Should churchgoing on the part of children be compulsory or voluntary?" did not end with the brief statement that it should be voluntary, and the reason why; a considerable number of them went on to say: "The children should of course be inspired and encouraged to go. They should be taught that it is a privilege. Their Sunday-school teachers and their minister, as well as their parents, can help to make them wish to go."