Article March 13, 1926 Issue

On Guarding Our Children

MARGARET A. L. NOWELL

That our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, recognized the great importance, both to our Cause and to the human race, of cherishing and guarding the pure consciousness of the child is amply evidenced by her references to this subject. On page 261 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" she writes: "Too much cannot be done towards guarding and guiding well the germinating and inclining thought of childhood. To mould aright the first impressions of innocence, aids in perpetuating purity and in unfolding the immortal model, man in His [God's] image and likeness." Thus she indicates the sacred charge devolving upon those whose privilege it is to be the guardians on earth of the precious children; and especially does this apply to parents, upon whom chiefly falls the task of maintaining the mental environment in which the children may unfold into happy usefulness.

To Christian Scientists this opportunity to preserve untarnished those childlike qualities which indeed bring a foretaste of heaven to earth, is of special import. To them, through our Leader's consecrated life-work, have been given the means to overcome the false beliefs which claim to beset the pathway for innocent little feet and to dim that purity of thought to which our Master referred when he said, "I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."

To accomplish this service to our Cause and humanity will necessitate the utmost consecration of our thinking to God, good; for only thus shall we be able to teach the children that first and most important of lessons, obedience not to a person but to eternal right. Often in our early efforts as Christian Scientists we may be so absorbed by the new vision of God as the all-loving Father-Mother that we err in our attempts to interpret this in a practical way in the guidance of our children, and mistake human indulgence for the exercise of divine Love. This error works a great injustice to the child who is not taught to recognize in practice that while God is indeed Love He is also divine Principle, and that His creation is governed according to immutable law.

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