Our Leader founded and established the Christian Science movement to benefit, bless, enlighten, and reform the human race. The basis of Christian Science is the fact that the realm of Spirit, divine Mind, is not a domain of mystery, is not unattainable, but is the realm of facts which are understandable and demonstrable here and now while we seem to be in the flesh.
Christian Science challenges the educational systems founded on the belief that man is mortal and material, that death is inevitable and is of value as a means of salvation. It thus liberates human consciousness from the fear and restriction and despotism of mortal experience. The whole work of the Christian Science movement is spiritual education, by which mortals emerge from the darkness, gloom, chaos, and dissatisfaction of the evidence of the material senses, into the light, joy, glory, and completeness of man as God's likeness. Every branch of the movement has its rightful place to fill, and none may say that any one branch of the work is more needed or more important than any other. It is with meekness, joy, and thanksgiving that we recognize the divine wisdom, guidance, and clearness of vision of our Leader in providing for the needs of the human race within this great movement for spiritual education.
All mankind is being tremendously blessed by the awakening, the liberation gained by the young people in our Christian Science Sunday schools, and it is with this branch of our work that we are here especially dealing. We read that after the children of Israel had come up out of the land of Egypt, Moses was bidden to number them; and those "from twenty years old and upward" were counted,—all that were "able to go forth to war in Israel." Again, when Amaziah was king in Jerusalem he gathered Judah together and "numbered them from twenty years old and above, and found them three hundred thousand choice men, able to go forth to war, that could handle spear and shield." In Ezra we read of the appointment of the Levites "from twenty years old and upward, to set forward the work of the house of the Lord."
