Sometimes when we were children attending school, we had mixed feelings about our schoolmaster. This is because a teacher seemed to us a somewhat contradictory character who at one time was gentle and kind, at another stern and dictatorial. But when we grew up and were able to look back from a position of wider wisdom and experience, we then understood the reason for his behavior. We saw the value of his friendly encouragement and also of his stern discipline. Both had been needed for our mental development.
When we graduated from school and entered upon our adult occupations, we discovered another important fact. We really had not left school at all! We found that the whole of human life, when viewed rightly, is an educational experience of tremendous scope. And then, as we grew in our understanding of Christian Science, we saw, too, that we still needed a schoolmaster—an unerring guide to go before us to point the way.
Mrs. Eddy says: "Human theories weighed in the balances of God are found wanting; and their highest endeavors are to Science what a child's love of pictures is to art. The school whose schoolmaster is not Christ, gets things wrong, and is ignorant thereof." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 365;
