The opinion occasionally expressed that life today is complex, confusing, and mechanistic should be promptly identified as a counterfeit of the unalterable truth of spiritual being. The Christian Scientist holds that man's existence as the child of God is harmonious in action and complete in fulfillment of the design of God.
In refuting false claims that human experience can become burdensome, frustrated, or futile, the earnest seeker for the truth waits on God, renewing his strength through the divine, unfailing energies of Spirit. He reaffirms a basic fact that God's plan for man and the universe graciously unfolds in paths of order, beauty, and holiness.
Innocence and purity provide the key to true achievement in every area of human experience. As the vast potentialities of mathematics derive from but ten digits, which children early master, so the highest demands for practical demonstration of God's all-encompassing law rest on simple truths, deriving from man's inalienable oneness, or unity, with his Father-Mother, God.
Christ Jesus taught that purity and innocence—qualities of childlikeness—are concomitants of wisdom and judgment. He rebuked the disciples, who sought to turn the children away, with the declaration (Matt. 19: 14), "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." He did not look upon these little ones as immature or imperfect persons. He saw them as children of God and, in the words of Paul (Rom. 8:17), "if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."
We may remark that human experience is not child's play and that business, professional, and domestic problems are today somewhat beyond the comprehension of a child. Such attitudes quite overlook a careful distinction to be made between childlikeness, which Jesus welcomed, and childishness. Innocence and purity are enduring qualities, which neither age nor experience outgrows. These are not among the childish things to be put away as we grow into the stature of manhood in Christ. On the contrary, they are essential to maintaining the "simplicity that is in Christ," as the Bible tells us (II Cor. 11:3).
In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy's definition of "children" reads in part (p. 582), "The spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love." God—Life, Truth, and Love—is inseparable from the perfect man of His creating.
Life can never become too taxing, Truth too complex, or Love irrelevant to man's genuine selfhood. They cannot be superseded, exceeded, or improved upon. However, it is our privilege to manifest, that is, to demonstrate Life, Truth, and Love and the facts of concrete spiritual being more and more fully each day.
The first verse of Hymn No. 291 in the Christian Science Hymnal reads:
Quiet, Lord, my froward heart,
Make me gentle, pure, and mild,
Upright, simple, free from art;
Make me as a little child,
From distrust and envy free,
Pleased with all that pleaseth Thee.
True childlikeness bears no relation to adolescence or the passage from childhood to maturity. Adolescence implies the belief that intelligence is developed or retarded during certain periods of growth, that one may be bright or dull according to a mortal pattern determinable by chance, mortal opinion, or heredity. Christian Science teaches that man reflects the Mind of Christ, complete and perfect; he is God-inspired and divinely sustained.
Man's being is spiritual, free from earth weights, which false beliefs would impose. How often the apostles addressed those in their charge as "little children," recalling to them the power of Love, which was able to keep their hearts and minds stayed on the holy purpose of demonstrating the Christ-idea! The tenderness of divine Love's regard for its children is also illustrated by the shepherd of the flock caring for his lambs.
"Adulthood"—the word stems from the same Latin root as "adolescent"—is a term likewise inapplicable to the real man. Man need not achieve prescribed height, weight, or length of days to reach perfection, since the perfection of God's being is not subject to theories of mortal measurement.
David, while very young in years, showed his spiritual strength in mighty works; Jesus gently reminded those who sought him at the age of twelve that he must be about his Father's business.
We cannot hold that God is eternal Life, but that man is a temporal being; that Truth is infinite, but now and then must be qualified for material ends; or that Love is available for our friends, but not for our enemies. Peacemakers, Christ Jesus said, are the children of God. The advancing footsteps in the demonstration of man's being are always spiritual.
Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, pp. 323, 324), "Willingness to become as a little child and to leave for the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea." Note that thought becomes receptive not to the elementary, latent, or immature idea, but to the "advanced idea." The higher the demand, therefore, the purer must be our concept of sonship with the Father.
A student of Christian Science was confronted with the problem of an uncomfortable growth on his head. His first step in healing the condition was to overcome fear of those laws which mortal mind would attach to such evidence. As the result of earnest prayer, he was then led to turn to the Concordances to the Bible and to Mrs. Eddy's writings. He found that the "advanced idea" which he needed in order to overcome this physical problem was the expression of a purer affection, a more steadfast gentleness, and freedom from pride. From that time, the growth lessened until it disappeared.
The Apostle Paul, perhaps recalling the days before his vision of the Christ on the road to Damascus, urged the Corinthians not to turn from a clear, guileless trust in God. He wrote (II Cor. 1:12), "Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world."
Rejoicing in an unfaltering and godly sincerity "renders thought receptive of the advanced idea" and points the way to harmonious action loosed from the bondage of complexity and confusion engendered by trust in material-mindedness. Accepting our real heritage as children of God enables us the more earnestly to love the right and to reject the wrong, to apply a standard of undeviating purity to business, home, and social contacts, and to experience in increasing measure untrammeled freedom of action through inspired, consecrated living.
