Article June 4, 1921 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Hanford Henderson, Frank Crane, Edward T. Devine

["Play"—The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, U.S.A., April 13, 1921]

One of the great blessings, as well as safeguards, that can come to the adult human being is to regain the mental attitude of play. It is wholly a condition of consciousness and has nothing whatever to do with what is commonly known as recreation, entertainment, or amusement. It is unworldliness, the unworldliness to which Christ Jesus referred when he said, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

To the extent that an individual becomes absorbed in worldliness he loses the ability to play, and it is just this unworldliness, this childlike attitude of thought, which Christian Science is restoring to countless men and women. Many who have thought that the sweet, unburdened consciousness of childhood was gone forever have found that as they learned the truth about God, the tender Father-Mother, and their relationship to Him, the joyousness and freedom of childhood is being restored to them. The harsh, calculating sense of things begins to drop away as one realizes that God encircles each and every child with His love. The struggle for "What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" yields to a quiet sense of trustful dependence upon the Father's care. It makes all the difference in the world whether a man eats bread in the sweat of his brow, the belief that substance exists in matter and that therefore he must struggle and strive in order to get his share of it, or whether he eats it through the understanding that, as Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says on page 507 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the Christian Science textbook, "Spirit duly feeds and clothes every object, as it appears in the line of spiritual creation, thus tenderly expressing the fatherhood and motherhood of God." It is the apprehension of this fact which turns work into play. A man no longer works for so many dollars and cents, but because he rejoices that he is able to have his part in the activity of his day and is able to render some service to his fellow man.

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