A child tends to come to each new lesson with a clean slate—fresh and ready to learn. Watching young children gives us a glimpse of how much potential is ours. When it comes to learning the spiritual concepts taught in Christian Science, we learn eagerly by becoming childlike. 

Childlikeness, which is not anything like childishness, embraces an almost uncountable number of strong qualities. They include purity, faith in God, humility, innocence, trust, and a love for good that includes a natural rejection of wrong. Above all, children are teachable. 

Children were welcome in Christ Jesus’ presence. The great Teacher associated childlikeness with the kingdom of heaven and encouraged his disciples to be like children. The disciples once asked Jesus, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He answered, “Whosoever … shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:1, 4). 

It took the wisdom of the Master to recognize the value of a humble, receptive thought. Jesus told his students the rewards of the uplifted thought of a child: “In heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).

What could be more heavenly than to see and understand God? The innocence and purity of a child are nearer to divine Truth than the “grown-up” thought, which often has been turned away from God by worldliness and sin. The child thought, with its purity, brings heaven to earth. Whether we are an adult or still a child, we need childlikeness. It is an essential quality in getting to know God as Spirit and ourselves as God’s offspring, or spiritual idea.

Even if we feel all grown up, we never really can escape from being God’s child. The simple logic of the Lord’s Prayer, which begins with “Our Father,” tells us that we belong to God as His offspring. God, Spirit, claims us as His own reflection. Divine Spirit, or Soul, is and always will be the loving source of our being, as Christian Science teaches. When this truth takes root in a receptive heart, it brings out a humility that makes us eager learners.

Mary Baker Eddy had a deep appreciation for a child’s ability to learn spiritual truths and practice them. She presents many lessons learned from children in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In one passage, which may sound very familiar to readers of her book, Mrs. Eddy observes: “Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear,—this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress” (pp. 323–324). 

Mortal consciousness, try as it might, cannot get beyond the limits of matter, but childlikeness opens thought to the spiritual sense God is giving us. 

Christian Science is strikingly new to old, mortal ways of thinking. Every page of Science and Health has ever-fresh concepts of God and man that replace the outworn theories we may have been holding on to. Approaching our prayer and study as a child, we grow out of false beliefs about God sending both good and evil, and come to understand God as immortal good. 

While we learn of God’s nature as divine Love, never sanctioning hate, we also get to know ourselves as Love’s manifestation. Finding out that Spirit creates spiritually, not materially, we begin to reason that we cannot be material beings, but must reflect the spiritual substance of our creator. These new views presented in Science and Health and indicated in the Bible transform us, leading us to rely on Spirit rather than matter for life and health.

In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy relates the experience of a little girl she knew. This child had occasionally heard Mrs. Eddy explain Christian Science. The girl badly injured her finger and didn’t appear conscious of it. When asked about the injury, she repeated what she had learned from listening to Mrs. Eddy—that matter doesn’t have sensation—and then went off happily, telling her mother that her finger didn’t hurt at all. Mrs. Eddy concludes, “It might have been months or years before her parents would have laid aside their drugs, or reached the mental height their little daughter so naturally attained” (p. 237).

Human thought has to be educated out of mistaken beliefs and educated up to spiritual understanding. Mortal consciousness, try as it might, cannot get beyond the limits of matter, but childlikeness opens thought to the spiritual sense God is giving us. 

Spiritual sense rescues us from the beliefs of sin and sickness that material sense produces. Stubborn materialism must give way to the Christ, the true idea of God, which eliminates the false belief that man is mortal. We gain a stronger faith in God’s power to heal as Christ, Truth, lifts our thought off of the material body to the wholeness of our spiritual individuality, which forever dwells in divine Life and Love.

Mrs. Eddy remained a willing student of Science throughout her life. She writes about all of us as learners when she says, “When, as little children, we are receptive, become willing to accept the divine Principle and rule of being, as unfolded in divine Science, the interpretation therein will be found to be the Comforter that leadeth into all truth” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 189). 

Getting to know ourselves better as the children of God, we enter the kingdom of heaven Jesus spoke of—that is, experience the harmony that Christian Science brings to our lives. It’s a promise worth learning about.

Susan Stark, Managing Editor