Article June 10, 1911 Issue

"FORBID THEM NOT."

LAURA GERAHTY.

To mothers, and to teachers in our Sunday schools, there comes frequently a very intense longing to be better able to express to the little ones the means by which they themselves are enabled to quiet the uprisings of mortal mind and to quell the disturbances of human desire and temperament. The sorrows and disappointments of maturity are no greater than the sorrows and disappointments of childhood; the destruction of the humble violet crushed under a passing footstep is the same in degree as the destruction of the forest tree by the force of disturbed elements. Both are seemingly destroyed by the aggressive and unauthorized power of material forces, and each one is as real or unreal as the other. The torrential tears of passionate childhood carry with them exactly the same appeal as the quieter and more hidden grief of manhood and womanhood, and likewise the simple desire to understand, the seemingly intenser desire to be able to impart.

Humanly speaking, the one requires no greater remedy than the other, for will not a tender word of Truth effectually cure them both? Scientifically handled, the subject is robbed of all its difficulty, for in God, infinite intelligence, we live, move, and have our being, and in that state of existence there can be no imperfection or incompleteness. Just as the swift passing ray of winter sunshine is part of the glorious and ever shining sun, so each one of us, according to his understanding, manifests something of the Mind which was in Christ Jesus, when we scientifically allay another's doubt, fear, sorrow, passion, or pain; and as we supply, however imperfectly, a child's simple spiritual need, so does he experience something of the result which is expressed in the sermon on the mount,—the divine assurance that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness "shall be filled."

"Jesus loved little children," Mrs. Eddy tells us, "because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right" (Science and Health, p. 236); and he said, "Suffer little children to come unto me, ... for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Jesus suffered them—took them in his arms and blessed them—made the purity and simplicity of their little hearts the atmosphere of the kingdom of heaven. Is there any fear, then, that the children of today will fare less liberally than the children of Jesus' time? Surely it is only our own belief in the superiority of manhood that gives any semblance of truth to the belief that the needs of the children cannot be met by spiritual means today as they were in Jesus' time. Just as the small forget-me-not at the side of the stream drinks in exactly enough for its need, and the tall willow by the great river a sufficiency to refresh it to the top of its highest green leaf, so we know that each one of God's little ones can reflect enough of the divine intelligence to satisfy his spiritual longings, enough of the ever-present and inexhaustible truth to counteract any seemingly present error of belief in stupidity or ignorance; and instead of lying low ourselves in the belief of our own incompetence to impart the truth of being to these little ones, let us "rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good" (Ibid., p. 393), all these temptations to be bound down by any fears or doubts of our own ability to preach the gospel and to heal the sick.

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