Editorial August 28, 1920 Issue

The Health of Children

Gustavus S. Paine

The entire influence of Christian Science in any community is constructive. When a student of Christian Science opposes the attempts of various well-meaning people to extend the medical examination of school children, that one does so knowing the thorough effectiveness of spiritual Principle. The whole desire of such a one is to remain free to use this Principle, which is sure in its operation for children as well as for adults. Instead of neglecting in any way the health of children, such a parent is understanding what true health is and scientifically demonstrating it. Those who wish to depend wholly upon this understanding are entitled to be free from the dominating imposition of medical theories upon themselves or their children whether in connection with the schools or otherwise. The great mass of people, moreover, who as yet may seem indifferent to either medical methods or those of Christian Science, should be free to choose for themselves, without any restrictions requiring or even suggesting general medical conformity. It is no more logical to compel medical examinations with all the advice that accompanies them than it would be to enforce Christian Science treatment on all the people. The student of Christian Science has the right to continue unhampered the proving of the operation of divine Principle as preserving the health of men, women, and children, and to bring his method to the attention of all those who may interest themselves in it.

The correct reasoning of Christian Science on the whole subject needs constantly to be reiterated. An enormous amount of propaganda in favor of medical supervision of all children is being circulated in books, magazines, and newspapers. Textbooks of all sorts, including those merely intended to teach foreigners the English language, have their chapters urging the adoption of numerous medical theories. The use of attractive phrases, or shibboleths, in a widespread campaign of advertising is being advocated in the hope that thus it may be insistently suggested to the multitudes that they should willingly submit to and aid in the general program for medical domination. Those responsible for this propaganda have seemed, in many cases, utterly to ignore the fact that a large part of the public does not approve of the methods of serotherapy. This use of suggestion to influence people generally can rightly be counteracted only by activity in accord with divine Principle. To depend on Principle is to know how to replace suggestion with truly intelligent reasoning. Each one must, moreover, prove his faith by his works.

Christian Science is indeed effective for the proper protection of the health of the children, just as it is in every other phase of experience. "Health is," as Mrs. Eddy says in "Rudimental Divine Science" (p. 11), "the absolute consciousness of harmony." Nothing less than that could possibly be real health for either child or adult. Mrs. Eddy's whole sentence is, "Health is the consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else." The true consciousness of vigor is, of course, entirely spiritual. A parent who turns unreservedly to this one consciousness and understands the spiritual activity which the divine consciousness eternally knows and which constitutes health finds thus and proves the actual health of the true child as divine intelligence manifest. In other words, the one humanly called a parent must know that divine intelligence governs child perfectly and insures the harmonious activity which is health. The child should be naturally encouraged to reason for itself that the divine Mind takes complete care of its idea, which is the reality of child. In this way the health of the child is scientifically protected from any suggestions of an opposite.

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