The disciples once asked the Master (Matt. 18:1), "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Jesus answered by calling a little child to him and telling the disciples that they must become as little children if they would enter the kingdom of heaven.
The innocence of childhood greatly happifies human experience. Children teach us many lessons with their spontaneous joy, ingenuous sweetness, and loving trust in good. But surely, in this incident, speaking to men of mature years who had been arguing among themselves as to who should be greatest, the Master was calling attention, not to youngness, but to childlike qualities. He knew that these men needed to change their thinking, needed to retreat from a materially matured viewpoint of worldly ambition to a childlike willingness to fill their places and do their parts in modesty and simplicity. Jesus well knew that without childlike qualities, such as innocence, receptivity, obedience, teachableness, one cannot enter the kingdom of heaven—the consciousness of health, harmony, and immortality.
Like the Master, Christian Science points out the need of a right mental attitude if one would succeed in the demonstration of spiritual truth. From the graces of Spirit, not from the wish to overshadow others, spring the spontaneity, selflessness, and humility which soften and brighten human experience. These graces are not confined to the young. They are present in all right thinkers. In true Christianity, depth of thought and childlike dependence on God go hand in hand.
