Theodore F. Seward, in his admirable address before the Episcopalian Congress of Providence, reached a climax when he uttered these words: "One effect of Christian Science is of immeasurable importance. It brings Christianity back to the child standard, where its divine Founder placed it. The essential distinction between Christ's message and that of Buddha, Confucius, and all other founders of religions, is right at this point. They told the children that they must become like their disciples. Jesus told his disciples that they must become like little children."
This is indeed a distinction between Jesus' teaching and that of all other religionists. Yet it has never been comprehended even by Christendom. Christianity as popularly taught has been a difficult thing to understand. Its formularies have been technical and definitional. There has been too much taught the idea of an unapproachable and unreachable God, and a far-off heaven. A God that the adult could not understand, and a heaven beyond human conception; both so distant from present human life that they could be known only after death.
Jesus did not so teach. He taught an all-present Father and a heaven that was "at hand," and declared that both God and His kingdom were accessible to the little child—aye, that only the child-thought could understand God and Heaven, for none other could enter therein; "Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein."
