Article May 15, 1915 Issue

Scientific Unfoldment

CASSIUS M. LOOMIS

For a long time the writer has been a close observer of the changes taking place in educational methods. One has but to look back for a period of fifty years and the difference is most noticeable. Perfunctory teaching, the enforced learning of hard and fast rules, etc., was then in vogue, but during the last decade, signs have appeared which go to show that the educational system of the future must rest upon a more metaphysical basis. Man, seen in his perfection, is not a creature of limitation ; hence every child at his best is surely endowed with the faculty for acquiring all knowledge. Education should therefore be a progressive and rational unfolding of the child's inherent capacities, rather than an effort to inject into his mentality information acquired by another. One instinctively expresses the truth according to the degree of his spiritual unfoldment. Such a worshiper needs little tutoring; and if educators were aware that an unlimited inheritance of wisdom, which comes direct from the Father's exhaustless store, belongs to every child, they would seek to awaken the learner to a realization of what he has, rather than to put a competitive premium upon what he can get.

The child Jesus affords a striking example. In Biblical history we have no record that he was taught as were other children of his time, but it is manifest that he was more spiritually awake than any person of whom we have any knowledge. Awake to what? Awake to man's inheritance of wisdom. At a tender age he was found discussing serious problems with learned doctors, the sages of his day. Throughout his ministry his words were of the Spirit and highly intelligent. Love gave him power to heal, and his teachings startled the then known world. It was asked, "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" Thus did the Jews marvel because a child who had been reared among them was found fully equipped, even in childhood, to preach a gospel of deliverance to the captives of sense.

Our Leader tells us: "Jesus was the offspring of Mary's self-conscious communion with God. Hence he could give a more spiritual idea of life than other men, and could demonstrate the Science of Love—his Father or divine Principle" (Science and Health, p. 29). Do not these words strike a chord of vital import to teachers? Along with the Master's wisdom came his demonstration of the Science of divine Love and Truth ; certainly a very essential accessory to any and all spiritual attainment. Let the world love more and worship worldly wisdom less, and a higher order of intelligence will find natural access to the consciousness of those who "hunger and thirst after righteousness" and wisdom.

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