Article July 5, 1930 Issue

School Days

M. ETHEL WHITCOMB

A merry group of little folks went hopping, skipping, and chattering past my window on their way to school. In my heart I seemed to skip with them as I thought, How happy are school days! "But these are my school days, too," I suddenly exclaimed; "I ought to be as free and joyous as these children as I go to my daily lessons." For is it not plain that men, women, and children all attend the same great school of Life? All have the same schoolmaster, Christ; all have to learn the same sacred lessons of obedience to divine Principle, God, for all must sometime rise to the realization of perfection. "Earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost." As these words of Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 486) came to me with new significance, a sense of spontaneous joy filled me, and I thought, For what, then, are we all preparing? What but to solve, with scientific exactness, the great problem of spiritual living; to "put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness," as Scripture commands.

This school-day inspiration that broke upon my thought brought a sense of sparkling newness to endeavor. As I opened my eyes the next morning, my first thought was, Off to school! A happy, vigorous freshness made me eager to lose no opportunity to learn more fully how to see and to be the man of Love-likeness, like Love in motive and expression. I went to school to everything. The bird on upward flight seemed to bid me rise on triumphant wings of inspiration. The tiny snowdrop pushing its upward way heroically through icy ground whispered to me that at the call of Love's sunlight I too should lift my head above the coldness of human experiences. The baby, laughing in joy over a sunbeam that kissed his cheek, seemed to rebuke me for passing by so many tiny things of good without a smile of gladness.

Because the child must learn to express true manhood, and the adult to express childlikeness, they can mentally clasp hands and be off to school together. It does us good, at times, to make a mental list of some of the character lessons that we must study in this school, in order more fully to express the qualities of the perfect man. Before Love's image can appear we must learn to be thoughtful of others, courageous in standing for the right, appreciative of every bit of good expressed by those about us, grateful for their every kindness. And then the glorious overcoming lessons: the overcoming of the habit of unkind criticism of others by the habit of constructive helpfulness; the overcoming of small aims with big purposes; the overcoming of the will of self with the will of God! Every daily experience is our school-room! Let us select the part of our duty that is the least attractive to us, and, looking upon it as a real school lesson, we shall begin to learn from God at once how to do this work in a higher spirit; not with the monotony of something done many times, but with the free step of one hastening, as for the first time, to something he counts a joyous privilege. Unless this attitude is pursued, one will stay in the same grade of thinking in Life's school, fretting because of the lack of progress for which he himself is responsible. I once asked a girl of fifteen, "What do you consider the purpose of your life?" Spontaneously she replied, "To do the thing I ought to do before the thing I want to do, and to want to do the thing I ought to do." Eager to do the thing she ought to do! This girl must have gained double promotion in the school of Life. How many people stay unprogressively in the same mental room because they have not learned to do the thing they ought to do before the thing they wish to do; have not learned to love to do the thing they ought to do, and to go to their duty, wherever it may be, with hearts that rejoice for opportunities to master difficulties and to rise victoriously above the claims of stupefying selfishness!

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