SO HOW LONG 


DOES IT TAKES TO MAKE A SLICE OF BREAD?



“OH, I'm so hungry!" cried Paul, running in from play; “give me some bread and butter quick, mother!"

"The bread is baking, so you must be patient," said his mother. Paul waited two minutes, and then asked if it was not done. "No," answered his mother, "not quite yet."

"It seems to take a long time to make a slice of bread,'' said Paul.

"Perhaps you don't know, Paul, how long it does take," said his mother. 

"How long?" asked the little boy. 

"The loaf was begun in the spring" Paul opened his eyes wide "and was doing all summer; it could not be finished till the autumn."

Paul was glad that it was autumn, if it took all that while; for so long a time to a hungry little boy was rather discouraging. 

"The farmer dropped his seed in the ground in April," his mother went on to say, partly to make waiting time shorter, and more, perhaps, to drop good seed by the wayside, "but the farmer could not make them grow. All the men in the world could not make a grain of wheat, much less make a stalk of wheat grow. 

An ingenious man could make something that looked like wheat. Indeed, you often see ladies' bonnets trimmed with sprays of wheat made by the milliners, and at first sight you can hardly tell the difference."

"Put them in the ground and see," said Paul.

"That would certainly decide. The make-believe wheat would be as still as bits of iron. The real grain would soon make a stir, because the real seeds have life within them, and God only gives life."

"The farmer drops the seed into the ground and covers it up (that is his part), and then leaves it to God. God takes care of it. It is he who sets mother earth nourishing it with her warm juices. He sends the rain, he makes the sun shine, he makes it spring up, first the tender roots, and then the blades; and it takes many weeks with fair and foul weather to ripen the grain. If little boys are starving, the wheat grows no faster. God does not hurry his work; he does all things well."

By this time, Paul had lost all his impatience. He was thinking.

"Well," he said at last, "that's why we pray to God, 'Give us this day our daily bread.' Before now I thought that it was you, mother, that gave us daily bread; and now I see that it was God. We should not have a slice if it were not for God, would we, mother?" 





Child at Home.