In Section 8 of Article XXIII of the A Manual of The Mother Church, Mrs. Eddy says, "Members in good standing with The Mother Church, who are members of the faculty, instructors, or students in any university or college, can form and conduct a Christian Science organization at such university or college, provided its rules so permit." She recognized that the understanding and practice of Christian Science must permeate college training, like any other phase of human affairs, if the experience is to be really worth while. The energetic application of intelligence is certainly necessary in the problems of what is known as college life, in order that their actual solution may prove them to have been not obstacles but opportunities. And Christian Science practice is, in fact, just that, —the utilization of one's understanding of infinite divine intelligence in every circumstance of daily activity.
The best education, in the last analysis, is neither disciplinary nor vocational, in the ordinary meaning of those much abused terms. Its function is even less the training of the hands and mortal senses to do material things than it is the so-called training of the mental faculties. Christian Science shows us that the only real Mind is God, divine intelligence, which, instead of needing to be trained, is already manifesting in accurate, orderly fashion, complete wisdom, of which human knowledge is at most a counterfeit. Christian Science shows us also, however, that the training of a human being to use merely human means for general or even specific purposes is likewise but a poor travesty of that genuine schooling which is scientific because it depends upon Principle. The highest education is the training of human thought to turn to Principle, to discover, rely upon, and use Principle unerringly amid no matter what complexity of makeshifts.
In college, as elsewhere, the one interested in Christian Science has to adhere steadfastly to the true idea of education. Even though no college course may be taught upon any such basis, it is for the student himself to apply his understanding of Principle and see the true idea in place of every counterfeit. Mrs. Eddy saw this in her own education, of which she writes on page 10 of "Retrospection and Introspection": "Etymology was divine history, voicing the idea of God in man's origin and signification. Syntax was spiritual order and unity. Prosody, the song of angels, and no earthly or inglorious theme." Just as there is the right idea of etymology, syntax, and prosody, so there is the right idea of mathematics, chemistry, history, economics, or what not.
