Editorial July 18, 1901 Issue

Christian Science Doctrine

Editor

Whether our good friend, The Watchman, a Baptist journal, is aware of it or not, the sentiments contained in the following articles—"A Sunny Disposition," and "The Sanctity of Home"—are in exact accord with the Christian Science doctrine.

You will find in the books devoted to such subjects many counsels as to the unwisdom of setting young children bad examples in the home. The orderliness and courtesy, for example, that are manifest in the habits of the older members of the household will be reflected in the conduct of the little children. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if precept of all kinds could be safely discarded for example. Especially is this true in regard to the prevailing mood of the child's inner life. Whether it is morose or happy, irritable or cheerful, largely depends on the prevailing atmosphere of the home. The sunny disposition is not wholly, or even chiefly, perhaps, a matter of inborn temperament. It is largely a reflection of the conditions of early childhood. When the mother's tone and manner are irritable and petulant, when the father is impatient and censorious, the conditions of the home are fatal to that inner serenity and good cheer that are so important to a happy and useful life. Parents often practise painful self-denials in order to give their children peculiar educational advantages; but there are few things that any school can give any child that are of such priceless worth as a pleasant disposition, the serene and cheerful temper that, like the sunbeam, transforms everything it touches. The self-restraint of parents in controlling their own petulance and irritability would often be worth as much to children as the self-denial which enables them to give their sons and daughters superior advantages.

Surely this "new era" of light regard for marriage bonds might be checked in its inroads upon the happiness of our generation, if at their own firesides children found their parents dealt vigorously with the terrible intrusion of divorce cases into the common conversation of the family, and that a light or joking allusion to broken faith and wrecked homes was treated as a desecration.

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