Article December 22, 1917 Issue

Christian Science in the Home

MRS. BLYTHE KYSOR

The value of Christian Science literature is that it spiritualizes and instructs its readers in a way no other literature could possibly do. The depth, vivacity, and charm of Mrs. Eddy's writings sets a high standard for Christian Scientists, both at home and abroad. In the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 582) Mrs. Eddy thus begins her definition of children: "The spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love." Children, then, spiritually understood, are not limited in intelligence, wisdom, obedience. Instead of worrying over the children and fearing for them, parents would be better employed in seeking to know them as God's ideas, manifesting divine qualities, cared for by divine wisdom. If the Father provides for His creation, as we are told, will He not feed and clothe the children? Most assuredly, if we eliminate from our own thought the pernicious beliefs about children and parenthood which, though ages old, are not true.

One of these beliefs is that children have inherited tendencies and qualities from their ancestors which must be overcome. If we want to help them, it would seem the better way to prove the unreality of various inherited manifestations and to know that the priority of mortal beliefs makes them neither real nor true. If they are no part of the real creation, they are not true now, and never were true; therefore they can have no real manifestation. Backwardness, forwardness, naughtiness, and laziness in children are only arguments of the serpent, or evil. They are no part of God's creation; therefore they should be denied and cast out.

Children have a right to be freed from the fears and anxieties which are so often felt and voiced for them, and parents too have a right to be freed from these anxieties, for they are not legitimate. Indeed, these fears may be a form of error which tends to paralyze proper and useful activity along broader lines. An experienced educator states that "the constant presence of a nurse after a certain age is bad for the child, and the constant direction to do this or that stultifies it." It is emphasized in the book here quoted that independence of character and personal resourcefulness are what is needed in the social world, hence the individual should be freed from despotism and tyranny, be he child or adult.

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