It has been said that "all mankind love a lover." We may safely add to this and say that all the world loves childhood. Its charm is all its own, and quite too short-lived are its innocence, its trustfulness, its joy. Unfortunately, however, the ideal often fails in popular estimate, and the modern child is often held in severe condemnation. The Puritanical severity of one era dissolves into the laxity of government of the present, and it is the province of Christian Science to adjust the balance and reveal the divine idea.
All who have studied the lives of great men and women know that invariably, in early life, they were under government which was inflexible in exacting obedience. Christian Scientists know that the stern lessons which sooner or later confront each individual are best met by that mentality which has early learned to obey; for the imperative demands of Truth take the place of the imperative demands of parents, and if mortal mind has learned to yield in one instance it will yield much more quickly in another.
Courage, faith, steadfastness, and strength are the fruitage of obedience, and the child who has been taught how to demonstrate these qualities has the foundation rock against which the waves in later life will beat in vain. Every practitioner knows with mathematical certainty that the child in Christian Science who is not readily healed is usually the stubborn, self willed, indulged child, who thrusts these mental qualities between himself and Truth.
