Article January 22, 1916 Issue

Christian Education

FRANCES THOMPSON HILL

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it," is a commonly heard maxim, and one with Scriptural authority. In the world at large today, the training of the child from youth to manhood is a problem to which much thought and time are given. Indeed, one of the chief objects of a community or a nation is that its citizens be of the highest type of manhood, and that this type be improved in each generation. One and all agree that only through the proper training of the individual can this be attained. Our great philosophers and pedagogues have searched long and written much upon this subject of education, and have given us valuable material in this line; still there is a crying and ever increasing need for better lives, better people, and this shows that we have yet much to learn along the lines of the proper education of our children, who will in turn become our citizens, our lawmakers, our politicians, our populace.

The maxim states broadly, "Train up a child in the way he should go," but what the specific way is and how it is reached are questions upon which there seem to be various and varying opinions. The greatest Teacher of mankind said: "I am the way," and surely he spoke these words for our earnest consideration. May it not be that in all our searching after pedagogical methods we have largely overlooked the simplest, safest, and best way given to us by the wisest guide the world has ever known? The Master said, speaking of material knowledge as compared to spiritual, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst," showing that material methods do not make for lasting right education, but that spiritual knowledge leads to the realization of eternal life.

On page 196 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says: "If materialistic knowledge is power, it is not wisdom. It is but a blind force. Man has 'sought out many inventions,' but he has not yet found it true that knowledge can save him from the dire effects of knowledge." Again on page 312 we read: "How true it is that whatever is learned through material sense must be lost because such so-called knowledge is reversed by the spiritual facts of being in Science."

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