Article January 29, 1921 Issue

Mother

ALEXANDER F. PRIMROSE

"What would be the best profession for my son, where he would be least likely to come up against the dangers every young fellow meets when he goes out into the world?" This is the question all parents ask when considering their children's future, and it is just because they wish to protect them against the experiences they have had to go through themselves. But how are they to keep them uncontaminated from the world? Children will grow up and, sooner or later, must go out into the world alone. The easy way is, of course, to say and do nothing and simply mark time, while the old excuse is trotted out that it will be time enough when the children are older. It is perhaps natural that parents should hope to be always able to keep their children under their own supervision, but it is a dangerous practice. Every one knows the old saying, "A son of the manse," while many a man looks back on his younger days and thinks how different things might have been if only he had been told something of what was in front of him. If only he had been forewarned and so forearmed, and if there had only been some older person of whom he could have made a confidant. But people are often too afraid to speak, and children too shy to ask questions. Now what seems to shackle human beings as they grow up is the feeling that they are governed by an influence or power which they are unable to resist. It seems to prevent them from doing what they know to be right and makes them say and do things which only bring in their train intense remorse. Is not this what made Paul cry out, "For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. ... O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" But if it could only be realized that every one is faced with the same problem, would there not be less hesitation to bear one another's burdens?

On board ship one day, a group of officers were sitting round the mess table discussing this very question of the choice of a profession. The striking thing about the gathering was the great variety of experience these men had had. Some were army and naval officers, with a wide knowledge of foreign lands, while several others represented civil professions. Between them most cities and parts of the globe had been visited and most of the world's highways and byways explored. One after another gave his opinion. Life in garrison towns and naval ports was compared with that in the large city and the country home. In the end the feeling was that there was little to pick and choose between them. This was no new discovery. These men, sitting round the mess table, did, however, come to a rather striking conclusion. One thing they unanimously decided did matter, and that was whether a boy had "a good mother."

But, it may be asked, what about the youngster who has no parents and no one to turn to? Is he to learn only through the school of hard experience and take his chance of going through the fire and coming out without a smell of burning? The answer is, No. There is a way of escape which Christian Science points out. The discovery of Christian Science came to Mrs. Eddy in the hour of great need when she was suffering from the results of an injury which had been pronounced incurable. In describing her healing, she tells how she called for her Bible and opened it at the following verse: "And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee." What Mrs. Eddy evidently saw was that this sick man had been healed through understanding that man is the reflection of God and that consequently man could never for a single moment be a sick and sinning mortal. It was Jesus' clear apprehension of this relationship between God and His idea, and of the fact that God as divine Principle, Love, created nothing which is not spiritual, harmonious, immutable, and eternal, that revealed to him the great truth that the emanation of infinite Life, Truth, and Love could not be this ailing mortal lying before him on a bed. The illusion was seen to be an illusion, and the man arose healed and departed to his house.

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