A Young Christian Scientist, who had attended the Christian Science Sunday School from childhood and is now a member of a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, not having long passed the Sunday School leaving age of twenty, wrote to me recently. He commented that Christian Science is a "dynamic religion," and that this fact should prove attractive to young people "since they seem to appreciate something that swings."
The Scientist knows that mankind's salvation from the pains, discords, and evils of materialism can be achieved only through the revelation of the Christ, the revelation that spiritual being is the truth of being, as the Bible has declared. The extent to which young, active Christian Scientists are nourished by today's branch churches will influence deeply the continuing impact of the Christ, Truth, upon mankind's experience, greatly determining the capacity of future church memberships to multiply their vital redemptive work. Church members, therefore, might well ponder their aliveness to this fact. Christian Science meets every need of the stages which the human mind supposititiously presents. The broader, the more tender a church's comprehension of the needs of these stages, the more representative of human life its membership roll. A large proportion of older people need not comprise a church membership. Should that ever be the case, the evident need may be earnest self-examination by each member to determine how pure, how unsullied by physical estimates, by world views, is his individual concept of youth.
Each member may well pray to be cleansed of the physical sense of youth and to discern the true sense, to say in the words of the Psalmist, "Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood: that our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace" (Ps.144:11,12). Young people, often unconsciously hungry for the truth of their identity, will advance to membership with or be newly attracted to a church whose members hold consciously, actively, the true, Christianly scientific sense of them.
Youth is a time of private hopes, of courage, and of the quelling of limitations, the time when young people first sense their proper capacity for achievement. Rarely do they voice their dreams to the adult world. How important, then, that the adult should remind himself frequently of the high hopes of his own youth! How important that time and materialism's supposititious infiltration of human consciousness, claiming to dim his expectation and weary his zeal, do not sap the vitality of his life as a Christian Scientist or adulterate the real concept of youth as spiritual, do not obscure for him the deep need of today's youth for examples of a vital faith from its seniors, its legitimate need for "something that swings."
Well I remember longing from childhood for a concept of life that transcended that being slowly formed through my human experience. Anxiously, and I felt unsuccessfully, evidence of genuine adult mastery over human experience was sought in the homes of my friends and in my own enlightened home. None knew of this longing. The answer came at last when, from an employer, I learned of God as Christian Science explains Him, as divine Principle, Love, and of the dominion this realization brings to young and old alike!
A much-loved definition of "children" on page 582 of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy presents the truth of their being as "the spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love." It continues with the mortal concept (p. 583), "Sensual and mortal beliefs; counterfeits of creation, whose better originals are God's thoughts, not in embryo, but in maturity; material suppositions of life, substance, and intelligence, opposed to the Science of being."
The unselfed work for youth today by religious, educational, and philanthropic bodies is gravely weakened by tacit acceptance of the false concept of children our Leader here defines. And will not the church member's or Sunday School teacher's unadulterated adherence to the spiritual definition, and his rejection of the unspiritual concept, determine the genuine effectiveness of his work with youth? Yes, indeed, since the true understanding alone has sufficient spiritual power to offset the universal Adamic misconception of immature mortals, in whom false attraction, irresponsibility, arrogance, and sensuality are often evident.
Christian Science offers to youth through the quiet ways of spiritual instruction in the Biblical truths concerning spiritual creation and God's divine parentage all that rampant materialism, clamoring that man is a creative, biological organism, asserts its agencies can give. Satisfaction, right companionship, genuine manhood, innocent joy, are the fruits of spirituality.
The alert church member does not concur with the common belief that youth, fearing to be different, will inevitably detour through the common pattern of materialistic, pleasurable living. Thus he upholds that young student, demonstrating his spiritual capability for continuing as an active Christian Scientist, and paves the way to Christian Science for those seeking a richer sense of life. He rigorously rules out of himself a personal sense of judgment if he encounters lapses in wisdom and behavior, thus easing the path of the erring one back to higher conduct. He strives to understand today's swiftly changing world as it must appear to young people having known no other.
The perceptive Sunday School teacher or the practitioner has the opportunity to stabilize youth's paramount search for right companionship. He knows that the finding of the happy, enduring companionship of manhood or womanhood by youth depends on the extent to which the spiritual qualities of the sons or daughters of God are cherished as the ideal. He makes it plain that thought determines the human experience. Thus the high ideal generally entertained by youth stands firm against the earthly values all too frequently assailing it through commercialism, entertainment, and current literature; it is preserved from entering into any relationship for the superficial consideration of security, indulgence, or social advantage, a consideration which would gravely obstruct genuine development.
Those well-taught Sunday School pupils who may later marry non-Scientists know that they need not abandon temporarily or finally their individual right to pursue the study of Christian Science. They have realized from their study that they need not assume a defensive position, since their religion will bring to home and family the greatest gift of all—a practical understanding of true being.
The firmer the quiet dignity of this realization, the less the opposition from relatives and friends. The more active the application of spiritual understanding, the greater and more unmistakable its blessings to that home and family. An alert branch church membership supports such young people as it affirms the essential attraction of Christian Science and the normality of spiritually enlightened living.
When I first became a student of Science, I spent seven years living with scores of young people in community conditions as the only Christian Scientist. Many were the occasions on which I healed myself through applying the teachings of this Science—of colds, fever, fungus infection of the ear, bilious attack, timidity, and discordant relationships. I was able to fulfill the requirement of Christian Science for abstention from smoking and social drinking without self-consciousness, rejoicing in the clarity of mind this requirement brings.
During the last three years of this period I was several years older than university students I then studied and lived with. I had held positions of responsibility, and my personal experience had been extremely severe. I was completely at a loss to find a meeting ground with these younger girls. I then came upon Mrs. Eddy's passage in Miscellany (p. 344), "If we say that the sun stands for God, then all his rays collectively stand for Christ, and each separate ray for men and women." This imagery brought such a sense of illumination that from then onwards, the mortal claims of difference in age and experience faded in the recognition that each individual has the need for love and understanding, that each responds when a lively interest in his welfare is expressed. These three years were among the richest of my life.
At the end of the second year a group of these students from faculties which included medicine, physiotherapy, social and natural science, and arts asked me informally to explain what Christian Science is. It was possible to present Christian Science as dynamic indeed, holding promise, when joyously applied, of something of the unsurpassed dominion, service, and glorious victory of the master Christian, Christ Jesus.
From this group two became students of Christian Science and have remained so; others listened thereafter in my room to lecture broadcasts and the weekly Christian Science radio program. The Christian Science Sentinel was read; some healings were experienced. Several of these girls even attended for a time the senior Sunday School class in a branch Church of Christ, Scientist. Who knows how many of these university students may recall the seeds of Truth sown at that time as materialism discloses in their lives its incapacity to solve its own problems?
Let us remember our own past high hopes, assess the vitality of our present demonstration of Christian Science, and dispose of the caution and compromise that too often present only human wisdom based on adult material experience, instead of vibrant spiritual facts. Let us make it clear to youth that Christian Science is indeed "something that swings," for them and us! Did not Christ Jesus, upon whose ministry Christian Science founds its work in today's world, define his mission thus to all mankind (John 10:10): "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly"?
