Article December 30, 1939 Issue

Progress through Correction

CAROBETH LAIRD

It is generally recognized that children require correction. Parents, from their standpoint of superior knowledge and experience, endeavor to correct and educate their children so that they may develop in accordance with accepted standards of conduct. Only foolish, indifferent, or unloving parents would make no effort to free their children from the bondage of ignorance and disobedience. If parents are wise and gentle, the process of discipline or correction need not be painful. Humility, obedience, and affection are natural to the child's thought. Pride, willfulness, resistance to correction are overcome through love, and the innate desire to know truly and to act rightly encourages progress for both parent and child.

It is believed that when one reaches maturity his character, disposition, and habits of thought, which have been formed for better or for worse, assume a degree of inflexibility. But when the individual seriously undertakes the study of Christian Science, he discovers that he must be spiritually reborn; that he must begin, as a babe in Christ, to learn spiritual facts and spiritually correct modes of conduct. Our Master, Christ Jesus, said, "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Does this not mean that we must become humble, trustful, obedient, teachable, and amenable to correction?

Christian Science rends the veil of material sense and reveals the true nature and perfection of God, as the one Mind, one Spirit, one Life, Truth, and Love, and of man as His image and likeness. With awe we glimpse the vision of perfect Father and perfect son. But the very light of Truth which discloses the perfection of the real man in the divine likeness exposes also the imperfection of the false, finite, mistaken sense of man, which we call the human person. Then comes the painstaking and oftentimes arduous task of self-correction, which is a step-by-step laying off of the false and putting on of the true, a progressive awakening from the delusions of material sense.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"Trustingly continue to know"