THE "childish things" which Paul tells us he put away when he became a man, certainly did not include the childlike attitude of mind which Jesus declared necessary to the attainment of the kingdom of heaven. We use the words childish and childlike with almost opposite meanings. The childlike mind is the mental attitude which is open to instruction, which is "wax to receive and steel to retain" whatever teaching is given it. In childishness there is no thought beyond self, and self-gratification is its only law. Through lack of knowledge of anything beyond its own wants and impulses, it attaches supreme importance to their present gratification, and these wants met, there comes a sense of complete satisfaction and happiness which is expressed by the cessation of all conscious mental action, the yielding to sleep — oblivion. It seeks to appropriate to itself all that comes into its consciousness. There is no knowledge either of the future or of the rights and needs of others.
There is scarcely an expression of anything beyond the animal instinct of physical comfort and self-preservation. A very little child seizes everything within his reach and tries to put it into his mouth. His one idea is to satisfy his desire for food, the only appetite he knows as yet. A little later comes the idea that all things are not to be eaten, but the grasping tendency is still present and there is strenuous resistance to any attempt to separate him from that which he has appropriated. When other children come into his understanding there is further evidence of the selfish thought of appropriation to himself and for his own pleasure. "I want" is among the first expressions he learns. He wants the best toys and all of them, quarrels for their possession and manifests anger and grief when refused or thwarted. He also lives in and for the present moment, regardless of to-morrow or the effects of the acts of to-day. He quickly forgets, and has not learned to associate cause and effect with any accuracy.
When does the child become a man? Paul might have stated the converse of the line quoted above, and said that he became a man when he put away childish things. Surely until one has ceased to manifest childishness he cannot claim to have become a man. No matter how many years are counted, the one who holds to childish beliefs and practices has still to emerge from childhood into manhood. Does it matter whether the toy over which there are quarrels, tears, and hatred is a train of tin cars on the nursery floor or of steel ones across the continent; a penny bank or a million-pound one; a bon-bon or a nation's food supply; a Noah's ark or the cattle on a thousand hills; a ribbon or an emporium; the leadership in a game or the power behind a throne; a fire-cracker or a navy? Whatever the aim, if wisdom is not used in its accomplishment, manhood has not been attained. There is no thought of proscription of food for mortal mouths nor of toys for the little and the big. Material things are still needed, and the best are none too good if so be they are come by unselfishly and used with understanding. Childishness lies in the immature and false sense of values, not in the size or names of the things valued.
One whose civil state is that of a man, a citizen, is supposed to be familiar with the laws of the government under which he lives. He must know and understand what allegiance to such laws means and that he is under oath of such allegiance. The common law says that ignorance of the law does not excuse a citizen for its infraction. Such childishness is therefore seen to be criminal. What is the "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" to which Paul joyfully submitted and under which he claimed manhood and citizenship in the Christian kingdom? It is noteworthy that his statement that he had put away childish things is made near the close of the chapter which contains what is probably the most famous and beautiful passage in his writings, his definition of love. And elsewhere he says, "Love is the fulfilling of the law." Jesus gave the law for man: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. . . . Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
The Scriptures elsewhere say that God made man in His own image and likeness. The Christian Science text-book clearly interprets the spiritual meaning of the Scripture and defines man as "that which has no separate mind from God; that which has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which . . . reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker" (p. 475); also, "Man is in a degree as perfect as the Mind that forms him" (p. 337). According to these teachings a man is one who reflects the attributes of God, who understands the law of Love and is in a state of allegiance thereto. He who fails to see the distinction between mine and thine, he who deprives his neighbor of anything which by right belongs to his neighbor, be it money, freedom, happiness, peace of mind, reputation, or love, is not only dishonest, he is childishly ignorant and has not come to years of discretion and manhood. He who is obsessed with the idea of getting and having things, and sacrifices to this obsession his own sense of real values, his opportunity to love God and man as he might, no matter how many figures or titles are required to sum up that which possesses him, he is still a child in understanding. Also he who allows himself to be influenced by the glitter or size of another's possessions, so that he is blinded to the venality of the means by which they were obtained, is manifesting foolish childishness and stunting his own growth into manhood.
And the man who has thus sacrificed manhood and wisdom for mere things, to the extent that he has dominated others by the magnitude of his material getting, has not only taken away from his fellow-men material possessions to which he had no right, but he has debauched them by destroying their sense of honesty and honor and by substituting therefor the untrue sense with which his success and the methods of its accomplishment have made them familiar. He has therefore hindered them from putting away childish things from their lives, by offering them a false standard of possession. Such a man not only stultifies himself and cheats himself out of manhood, but he is a far more dangerous enemy to the world than the more easily recognized criminal. Therefore, until there is put away the childishness of such ignorance as permits the sway of material appetites of any kind, — jealousy, rivalry, selfishness, hate, dishonesty, falsehood; in fact, anything which is not a manifestation of unselfed love—one falls short of the attainment of perfect manhood, "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." This is the teaching of Christ Jesus and of Christian Science.
