Article April 19, 1919 Issue

On page 9 of "Pulpit and Press" Mrs. Eddy, in speaking...

The Christian Science Monitor

On page 9 of "Pulpit and Press" Mrs. Eddy, in speaking of the work done by the children for the building of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, says, "Ah, children, you are the bulwarks of freedom, the cement of society, the hope of our race!" This is, if one pauses to analyze it, a very remarkable statement.

That children are the cement of society is fairly easy to see. It is the love of children, the common interest in their future, the desire for their welfare, which constitutes home to multitudes of people, which makes family ties, which holds thought steady, like the needle to the pole, by a thousand endeared associations of tenderness and joy. That is quite familiar ground; but that children are the bulwarks of freedom is not so obvious. A clue, perhaps, may be found in Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science, where Mrs. Eddy says on page 236: "Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While age is halting between two opinions or battling with false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards Truth."

History, taken broadly, is the record of humanity's perpetual struggle toward freedom, against the apparently ineradicable reactionary tendencies of the older generation, the generation, that is, which has become intrenched, both generally and particularly, in its own conventions, habits, and privileges, and which hates being disturbed. It is a commonplace to say that history is made by individuals, not by masses, for what are masses and the conflicts which move them but the aggregate of individual experiences? We can argue, then, from the particular to the general, and recognize that if in family life progress and expansion and new ideas are kept in constant activity by the developing energies of the children, who rightly decline to be "cabined, cribbed, confined," by convention, and who always are out for adventure of mind or body, it is equally true of the race. For what is freedom but the desire and the opportunity to expand, to experiment, to experience?

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

On page 9 of "Pulpit and Press" Mrs. Eddy, in speaking...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access