"SUFFER LITTLE CHILDREN"

IT would appear to be the privilege of the human mind to consider itself immune from the perpetration of sins recorded against past generations of the human race; and this is because the human mind acts in a reverse manner to that indicated by Paul, the metaphysician, and wrestles with flesh and blood instead of with impersonal evil manifesting itself through every age and race. Many Christians have sung the stanza:—

But those who have sung this hymn have little deemed themselves guilty of the same mistaken attitude as that which the disciples exhibited in "Ju-dea by the farther side of Jordan."

Having limited the Christ to the personal Jesus, orthodox Christianity naturally limits the children to those brought on that memorable occasion. If we accept the "Lo, I am with you alway," we must accept the responsibility of our own attitude of either forbidding or welcoming the coming of the children of our day to the Christ. To the human mind, seeking always to shirk a decision, the easier way seems to be to drift with the tide of human opinion and "trouble not the Master." This is in itself a "forbidding" thought and would prevent the child from coming to the Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus."

The errors which to-day claim to prevent the children's approach to the Christ are legion, but they will be destroyed even as the legion wandering among the tombs of Gadara. The belief in anatomy would declare, for instance, that structural defect of the skull is preventing a child from acting intelligently. It says, "Trouble not the Master"—submit to the surgeon's knife. This surgical belief shakes its head and sententiously opposes the proposal that the power of the Christ shall be relied on for healing such a condition. Physiology scoffs at the suggestion that the prayer of a man or a woman who knows nothing of physiology could avail in a case of organic disorder. It demands that instead of the parent obeying, on behalf of the helpless little one, the call, "Come unto me [the Christ], all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," the parent shall consult the disciple of Æsculapius; in other words, shall adopt the advice of materia medica. Bacteriology stoutly declares that before the child could possibly come into the presence of the Messiah the innocent's little body must be made the arena and shambles for conflicting hordes of loathsome germs and bacteria. Heredity and its step-brother environment join hands and drive off with mocking laughter many who would fain claim that they are "joint-heirs with Christ." "Your 'fathers have eaten sour grapes,'" says the former. "Your forbears and parents and you have lived in congested areas," says the latter, and they both condemn their victim to exile from the Christ-mind. Scholastic theology, declaring that there is a "Friend for little children," nevertheless places that Friend "above the bright blue sky" where the outstretched fingers of the little ones cannot reach even the hem of his garment.

These are some of the well-defined repelling beliefs of the human mind, but there are countless ill-defined ones, prenatal fears, postnatal dreads and anxieties, conscious and unconscious mental malpractice on the part of relatives and friends. Christian Scientists have overwhelming proof that the rebuking of these adversaries permits the child to come and receive the blessing of the Christ. One night the mother and father of two little children felt that pang of fear which clutches at the human heart at the approach of danger to the child. They had been entertaining some visitors, and as they showed the last one out they heard again that sound which during the latter part of the evening they had attributed to the hoarse bark of a distant dog. Both children were breaking the silence of the bedroom with the smothered cough of that fear infecting lie, the croup. The parents were young in Christian Science, and each was too filled with fear to trust the other with the sole treatment of the complaint. They were too panic-stricken to be able silently to declare and realize the truth as taught in Christian Science. A testimony from a Christian Science periodical came to their thought, telling how an elderly couple found healing accomplished by audibly reciting the Lord's Prayer, with its spiritual interpretation from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. The parents sought refuge in a similar process. Time after time they repeated this prayer, trying to realize some measure of its truth, intent, and purpose. To the thought of one of the parents there were hosts of adversaries. When that parent had fought and overcome the fear of fatal consequences, and had banished the visions of stern figures of relatives and friends pointing the finger of condemnation for neglecting to call in the doctor, the horror of a legal summons, the scathing indictment of the coroner, and the adverse verdict of the jury; when this parent had faced these lying arguments and defied them with the strength gained from the Lord's Prayer, the children were relieved. The parents went to bed, and beyond being awakened once or twice in the night by a little coughing, all four had a good night's rest. Within a few days both girl and boy were completely healed.

The figure that is apt to interpose its form between the child and the Christ is the parental one. The truth of what Mrs. Eddy has stated on page 179 of Science and Health has been proved again and again: "The sedulous matron—studying her Jahr with homœopathic pellet and powder in hand, ready to put you into a sweat, to move the bowels, or to produce sleep—is unwittingly sowing the seeds of reliance on matter, and her household may erelong reap the effect of this mistake." The seeming opacity of the mental concepts of the parent tend to obscure the "light of the world" and so cast a shadow on the life, health, and happiness of the child. Mrs. Eddy therefore writes on page 412 of Science and Health, "If the case is that of a young child or an infant, it needs to be met mainly through the parent's thought, silently or audibly on the aforesaid basis of Christian Science." That Jesus searched and healed the thought of the parent is evidenced by his treatment of the Syrophœnician mother and the father of the epileptic boy. The disciples' failure to heal this latter case was due to their materiality, which rendered them blind to the necessity of getting this father's lack of faith out of the way of the child's approach to the healing, impersonal Christ.

Healing in Christian Science results from the removal of all that claims to interpose itself between the patient and God. This is achieved through the understanding that it is unthinkable that an idea can be separated from Mind. Whatever claims to break this unity of Mind and its ideas cannot be a creation of Mind, hence is a delusion or falsity. It can be no fault on the part of the eternal Christ that a child is not healed through Christian Science treatment. We need to know that the same vigilant activity which detected the mistake on the disciples' part and rebuked it, is operating on behalf of our little ones. The Christ is the rebuking truth to every error that has ever claimed or will ever claim to prevent the ratification of the unity which eternally exists between the infinite Father-Mother and the child, whether the practitioner is aware of the particular phase of forbidding error or not.

Parents can reassure themselves that the pictures portraying Jesus lovingly extending open arms to the children is a true symbol of the Christ here and now. Mothers may have to submit to the searching analysis of their thought, as had the Syrophœnician woman, to see if there are any racial or fleshly sins operating to produce the mental pictures of disease which are being externalized on the bodies of their children. Fathers may have to sacrifice their pride of intellect, the egotism of philosophical doubt, and in humility expose their weakness by crying, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief." The intellectual egotist as he stands at the foot of his child's cot and sees his "fortuitous concourse of atoms" theory displaying its phenomena in the form of his pain-stricken little one, is more ready to acknowledge defeat of his materialistic philosophy than in the halls of scientific debate and so is more willing to yield to the Christ, Truth, as revealed in Christian Science. Instead of leading he is willing to be led. He helps his child by becoming a child; and holding the hand of his baby girl or boy is led into the kingdom of heaven on earth. Thus he obeys the words of the "Friend for little children," "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."