Many wise-sounding sayings are often adopted thoughtlessly into everyday speech through repetition. One such pronouncement which is sometimes declared with the assurance of law is that experience is the best teacher. Experience as a requisite for skills or as a preventive of needless experimentation is invaluable, and in this connotation all might agree that experience is. desirable.
The negative inference implied in this popular saying led the writer to question it. Her study of Christian Science had awakened her to look more deeply into cause and effect than she had previously done; and she reasoned that if experiencing trouble were a necessary preparation for wisdom, only those who had made enough mistakes could be expected to express good judgment. This savored of fatalism and belied the optimism of Christian religions in general. In his Epistle, James gave a directive that rings with undiminished authority and tenderness today (1:5): "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him."
A teacher in a Christian Science Sunday School was moved by a desire to lift the weight of self-condemnation from one of her pupils who had blundered, with troublesome consequences. The boy was apparently convinced that the incident was unavoidable, even necessary to teach him a lesson. Ruefully he remarked that he supposed he would always have to learn things the hard way. The lad was lovingly directed to read from the twenty-second chapter of Job (verse 28), "Thou shalt . . . decree a thing, and it shall be established unto thee."
