Article September 11, 1909 Issue

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE PARENTS' PROBLEMS

W. H. JENKINS

The greatest task ever set before men is to unlearn the errors in their lives,—to reform habits already formed. Most parents have suffered from the pains and limitations of material thinking and living, and they wish their children to escape them. They are trying to teach their children rightly in the home, and when their children come in contact with other children, those who because of home influences know little else than the sensual, the parents must meet what seems a hard problem. This is especially true in a village or country neighborhood, where children play together and are brought together in the schools.

Boys who enjoy athletic games and sports want to be together often. A neighbor across the street may be a man who is profane in his talk, who uses tobacoo and liquor and is very material in many ways; still we feel that he is our brother; one whom we would help to be himself. We are on friendly terms, and we wish to remain so. His boy comes to our house to play with our boy. We know this boy reads a low class of fiction, hears error voiced constantly in his home, tries to excel other boys in profanity and other bad habits, and we feel that our boy may absorb some of this evil by contact with him. If we send the neighbor's boy home, or prevent their playing together, we make the boy our enemy, and friendly relations no longer exist between the two families.

Again, the Science parents may live in a locality in which there is no Christian Science church, society, or Sunday School, and there may be another church near them which has a Sunday School. The children were members of this Sunday School before their parents found Christian Science, and their teacher has become attached to them and pleads for them to remain. They have made friends with other children in the school, and these ties are broken, the children may be ostracized for a time from the society where Christian Science is not wanted.

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