"Suppose a great sculptor carved a beautiful statue out of a block of marble. Before he began his work, he would have in his mind the form he wished the marble to take. Gradually, as he worked at it, the marble would become what his thought of it was. Then one day he would see it finished and perfect--just what he intended it to be. Then he would work no more at it. Afterwards, suppose some one came by, and took clay and mixed it with water into a paste, and then daubed the beautiful statue all over, till the limbs looked crooked, and the beauty of the face was spoiled. But it wouldn’t be really spoiled, would it? The statue would still be the work of the great sculptor, finished and perfect; the clay and the marble would be quite separate and distinct. Nothing could make them one. So when we read the chapter I have just read to you--the Lord God took the dust of the ground and made man--God’s man was already made, finished and perfect, and the dust, like the clay, could only seem to hide the perfect creation. But we have to know this and to realize it, if we are to get rid of the dust, and the clay, and the mist. When my cousin was explaining all this to me one day, she said, ’It is not known how or when the belief in a Lord God who made man of dust arose; but from that false belief came sin, sorrow, disease, and death. Jesus came to teach us the way back to God; to teach us to see ourselves as the children of God, not of the dust; and he said all who believed in him, in what he taught, would never see death.’ The day will come, my cousin said, when all men will so believe in Jesus the Christ, and will so understand and realize that God is their Father, that death will be overcome. Every case of sin and disease which is healed by this knowledge--by the Truth--is bringing that day nearer." The look of bewilderment deepened on the old man’s face. Surely, the boy was throwing a different light upon words with which he had been familiar all his life. "We’ll think over what you’ve told us, Master Carol--me and my daughter. It sort o’ goes to me that it’s true." Again the words came to him, "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings." The church clock chimed the half-hour. Carol stood up to go. "The time has gone so quickly. I must not stay longer now. I will come again next Sunday, and all the week will you try to know that God’s work was finished and perfect in the beginning, and everything that seems to have been added to it--rheumatism and fits--has no right to be?" "We will, Master Carol, we’ll just think of the marble statue and the clay. It will help us." "I will hold the right thought for you and the little girl, and I know that soon you will find that both the afflictions, which seem so real, belong to the mist." CHAPTER IX.--"IT IS THE TRUTH."