_Her Religion_




XI

THE GIRL AND THE UNIVERSE


When Wonder suggests its first questions to her they are large
questions. They have to do with the Universe. They are eternal and
unanswerable questions. They fall from baby lips but they baffle sages.
It may be on some bright summer morning that she stands amidst the
daisies scarcely taller than they, listening intently to the words of
wisdom which tell her that God made the daisies every one, and all the
flowers and the butterflies and the cows in the meadows. After a time of
silence she puts her question, her clear eyes searching the face of her
would-be teacher. "Who made God?" she asks, and while the teacher wavers
she repeats her question until some sort of answer comes. That night
when she is tucked into bed her mind returns by way of her evening
prayer, to the subject of the morning. She hurls another question,
"Where is God?" Since she cannot be evaded she is so often told that
God is everywhere and accepting it with all the faith of the literalist
she begins her search for Him. She strives to solve the mysterious fact
that He can be everywhere and yet in all the places where one searches
He is not to be found.

Then her grandmother who sat in the sunny room upstairs as long as the