“How many gods are there?” Honoré Willsie asked her older brother. Brought up on Greek mythology, she had never been to Sunday school nor had any Christian training in her home. Her brother knew no more than she did. When she asked, “How many gods are there,” he could only answer, “I don’t know for sure, but there’s an awful lot of them!”
Her childhood was darkened by the death of a little sister, and then came the accidental death of her brother’s friend. By that time, Honoré had heard something about God, and she prayed that the boy might live. But so far as she could understand, the prayer was useless and the boy died. She came to feel that there was nothing but sorrow and useless suffering in the world.
At last she found a real friend, a teacher. Honoré was in her Latin class, and on a certain day each pupil was asked to translate the quotation she liked best. She chose one from Horace. Putting it into English, it read: “He must have a heart thrice bound with bronze who puts forth on the world’s wide sea.”
The teacher asked, “Why did you choose that?”
“Because life is like being on a ship that has no captain,” she answered.
The teacher looked at her. “There’s always God,” she said quietly.
But Honoré shook her head and sat down.
The teacher asked her to stay a few minutes after school. Looking at Honoré sympathetically, she said, “That was the saddest thing I ever heard a child say.”
Honoré was silent.
“Have you ever told anyone how you felt?”
The pupil shook her head again.
Then the teacher took out a little New Testament and opened it to John 14. “My dear, before you go to bed tonight, will you read this chapter through three times?”
Honoré promised.
That night she began reading as her teacher had asked, and she discovered the great words of Jesus: In My Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. . . . I am the way, the truth, and the life. . . . I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. . . . Because I live, ye shall live also. . . . Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
Her heart was thrilled by the beauty of the words of the Lord Jesus, and she found the one true God who could satisfy her heart as the Greek myths and legends had never done.