Article January 29, 1944 Issue

"You possess sovereign power"

LEAFY M. LAYFIELD

The youth of today is fast claiming its birthright of freedom and dominion. However, in equal volume do we hear the call of distress occasioned by the problem of child delinquency, which seems to be sweeping our land. If we are to have a postwar world where the reign of peace is to be the objective, then much instruction is needed along the line of obedience to law, order, and justice. It is highly important that young people be familiar with discipline and self-control, in order that their lives may be a blessing, rather than a challenge, to the home, the school, the church, and the state. The Christian Science Sunday School offers a real opportunity for correct teaching along this line.

Discipline may be thought of as the endeavor to hold to right thinking and right acting under temptation and under stress of adverse circumstances. The value of discipline and control was recently proved by one of our present-day navigators when he was stranded for twenty-one days afloat on a raft in the Pacific before being rescued. He is quoted as saying that courage was not enough— that discipline was greater, that it directed and controlled courage, and that it carried a man on, long after courage had run its course. Is this not true, since discipline ever turns us to the One we are to obey? It brings us right to God, from whom we gain courage, strength, hope, faith. To obey God is essential. "Divine Mind rightly demands man's entire obedience, affection, and strength," says our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 183); and she states on page 106, "Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love."

The Sunday school pupil has the opportunity of learning that discipline is really a fourfold procedure: respect for God, attention to God, receptivity to God's will, carrying out God's orders. It also means active obedience to the full measure of capability; active individualization of spiritual strength and of all Godlike qualities, of which man is the embodiment.

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"His earthly all"
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