IN the light of Christian Science, one of the profoundest needs of mankind is correct religious education. Such education is based on the understanding that God is infinite and perfect Spirit, and that man and the universe are spiritual and perfect. Inasmuch as the process of education is the unfoldment of spiritual thought, real religious education is the leading of one out of false thinking into the realm of the real. The truth of being, as understood, taught, and practiced by Christ Jesus, seemed later to become buried under an avalanche of materialism, and for centuries its healing power appeared to be lost. Through the discovery of Christian Science and the application of its laws to human needs, the healing power of the gospel has been restored. The spiritual understanding that is imparted through Christian Science is rapidly displacing false materialistic beliefs.
In the present period, when so many religious beliefs are breaking up and many people are asking Pilate's question, "What is truth?" right religious education is of vital import. The value of such education to the young cannot be overestimated. The harvest of the future will, in large measure, be commensurate with the seed sown in the present. The understanding of God as infinite Spirit, and of man and the universe as spiritual, is "an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil." The mere theory of Christianity no longer satisfies the inquiring thought or meets the need of those who desire to know God "in spirit and in truth." The understanding that the infinite God alone is real is the premise from which all instruction in the Christian Science Sunday School proceeds. And our work is to teach, as Paul taught, that "in him [God] we live, and move, and have our being."
Sin, disease, and death are the result of wrong education. To redeem mankind from these ills, thought must be educated in the spiritual understanding of Truth. The journey from sense to Soul is education out of the false into the true understanding of Being. How important, then, that this education should begin in childhood and be continued into manhood and womanhood.
