Editorial March 18, 1911 Issue

"AS NEWBORN BABES."

John B. Willis

Among the most distinctive features of the little child are its innocency and its instinct. At a time when it makes irresistible appeal to the love that cannot give it the least instruction, it begins to evidence an astonishing capacity to do for itself far better than it could possibly be taught, and as one thinks of this fact he finds himself increasingly interested in St. Peter's counsel that "as newborn babes" we should "desire the sincere milk of the word, that [we] may grow thereby."

That the guilelessness which is so sweetly symbolized by the little nursling has everything to do with our receptivity to truth, is universally recognized, and yet in no way, perchance, are we more frequently deceived and defeated than in the matter of the sincerity of our asserted desires. No faithful Christian Scientist can ever forget Mrs. Eddy's pungent putting of the fact that no one word expresses the demands of Science more effectively than the word "genuineness," even as no word presents the weakness of Christian profession more pointedly than the word "pretense." (See Science and Health, pp. 8, 9) Well may the warning "Watch!" be inscribed on every guide-post in the path of life, so multiplied and so subtle are the mesmeric seductions to insincerity.

There is yet another phase of the apostle's illustration which is helpfully illuminating. The child's instinctive desire for and appropriation of the food it needs, is suggestive of that spiritual intuition which is surely the richest endowment we can pray for. It is that satisfying right sense which reaches a clear conviction of truth quite apart from the reasoning process, and which for the individual often becomes as authoritative as a voice out of the sky. Humanly speaking, this capacity may be cultivated, so that the apostle's counsel becomes mandatory for those who have not consciously possessed "the instinct for good."

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