Part 8 (2/2)

You rean this course of lectures, it was said that he posed his elder brother with his questionings of God's wisdoement of the social sphere

Unable to answer him, the instinct of his love led him to divert the child's attention into a department of nature where apparent discords were seen to be harmonized for the production of beauty and use, that the poor little perplexed and bewildered child ave hith to conquer the Minotaur He had no idea of educating, but only of co Thus, unconscious of any theory of education, he solved the problem practically, first for the child Frbel himself, later for mankind to whom the man Frbel has revealed it with such ample illustrations as to make an era in human history that, as we hope, shall retrieve the past Childhood understood, leading in the pro et the Babel confusion of its first experi of the Pentecostal miracle

LECTURE VII

A PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION

PART SECOND

IN our little F's case, as it became perfectly plain to hisunbounded space as well as ti hoould receive the fact of death, so painfully and prematurely forced upon her own soul,--whether his ulf in which hers seemed to sink at the utterance of the word

But the difficulty for him seemed to be to conceive of death at all I tried to approach the subject in such a manner that he should have the initiative, as it were, in any conversation upon it There was a poor old man who occasionally passed the house in the clothes of a pauper, supporting his steps with a stick One day when he did so, F asked me, ”What makes men old?” and before I had time to answer, added, ”Mary [the name of a former servant] used to say _many days_, when I asked her Do many days make men old?”

”Yes,” said I, ”just as many days make your clothes and shoes old That oldthat they are quite worn out, and he has looked so long with his eyes that they are dirown dull, and his back has groeak, and his whole body is so worn out that it will not do what his thoughts tell it to do, as your little fresh legs and eyes and ears and as your whole body does”

He received this intimation quietly, but raised no question as to the ultimate result; and as often as the old man walked by, he would ask the same question and receive the same answer

At last I took down from the book-closet Mrs Trimmer's story of the robins and read it to him, and he became very much interested in the little nest and its inhabitants After a while, the children in the story had birds of their own in a cage, which they took care of assiduously, but at length on one occasion went away and left theht on through the page on which it was told that on going to the cage when they ca on their backs with their beaks wide open, stark dead! I paused in , and he repeated, ”stark dead! what do those words mean? What was the matter with the birds?” I laid the book down, and said, ”You know that sos only keep” ”Yes,” said he I continued, ”You know that living beings feel pain or pleasure, one or the other, all the tis that only keep do not feel at all”

”Yes,” said he

”Well, things that live and feel--living beings--always eat and drink; they continue to live by eating and drinking, and God tells thes Now these little birds lived by eating and drinking, and if they had been free, they would have found food and drink somewhere in the world; but those children had shut theo away and forget the birds that they had undertaken to take care of, the little birds grew hungry, and you know it is not pleasant to feel even a little hungry, but they grew hungrier and hungrier till their poor little bodies were as full of pain as they could be Now our Heavenly Father could not possibly have them suffer so much pain, and so He told theht out of their bodies, and then their bodies were just like everything else that only keeps; they could feel no more pain”

”What a dear, dear, dear Heavenly Father it is!” said the child; ”what nice ways He has about everything!”

”Yes,” said I, ”He has the ways of love”

He asked no questions at this tieneralization I took up the book, and read on about the children's burying the bodies of the birds, etc

Thus the death of the body was first presented to his iination as only a relief from pain of the life that inhabited it He was immensely interested, and the subject became the most common topic of conversation

There were some books in the house which had pictures of hunts, and one was of a stag-hunt, the stag at bay, the dogs seizing hi These books had been carefully kept from him I now took them down, and showed the for its life, and its ingenious devices to elude the dogs by swis had seized it, or the huntsman fired the cruel shot which tore the breast or side of the poor beast, the final release, God's call of the life to Hiht: that final escape was _the best of all_

This story was so interesting, it absorbed his attention, and he did not generalize But it took its place aood deeds of God's love, that when life became too painful in the body it was taken away to enjoy itself with God

His mother, in whose presence were all the conversations, was intensely interested; but still as he did not think of human death, she hardly felt that he had conceived the idea

I told hi their life in eggs as soon as they were born When the old man ca out of his body, but he did not think of death as a relief for hi out of thefor some purpose, he nearly lost his balance, and it was only byout I said, ”F, what if you had fallen out on those rocks and been broken all to pieces!” He shrieked with horror, ”I don't want to! I don't want to!” ”But what if you had!”

said I, calmly ”You came very near it What should you have done?”

”What could I?” he screamed ”What could I do, all broken to pieces!”

”Why, don't you think,” said I, sht into His own bosom?”