A CHALLENGE TO YOUTH

No one understood better the problems of youth, or offered young people more genuine encouragement, than did Mary Baker Eddy. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she writes on page 236 , "While age is halting between two opinions or battling with false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards Truth."

One false belief, or habit, which challenges alike both young and old is the use of tobacco. The young metaphysician is not overwhelmed by the smoking habit. That many of his non–Scientist friends or acquaintances have succumbed to it makes it no less easy for him to see the unreality of its claim to power. He dares to be different when it is a question of being on God's side. He handles the desire to smoke as he would any other suggestion of mortal mind, by denying the error and declaring the truth. He replaces the claim that tobacco satisfies with the understanding that satisfaction is to be found only in God, Soul, where man abides, and that man's senses are spiritual and pure. This Soul–satisfaction is not fleeting or momentary, but it is permanent and complete and is forever reflected by man.

The student knows, too, that true stimulation originates in Spirit, not in material sense. The consciousness of man's oneness with Mind, the source of all courage, intelligence, and spontaneity, is the only stimulation one needs. With one sweeping stroke Mrs. Eddy disposes of the so–called attractiveness of tobacco. She says (Science and Health, p. 407 ), "Puffing the obnoxious fumes of tobacco, or chewing a leaf naturally attractive to no creature except a loathsome worm, is at least disgusting." The student of Science gains release from the claim that the use of tobacco is habit–forming by realizing that man has, through reflection, dominion over every false belief; that he lives under divine control, under the law of Love, which confers immunity from the bondage of material sense. Through demonstrating these truths the young Scientist proves that the use of tobacco is not in keeping with the teachings of Christian Science.

One young woman overcame the smoking habit by replacing the craving for nicotine, a false desire, with a right desire. She was living away from the city where she had attended Sunday School and had no friends who were Christian Scientists. She had fallen in with a group of young people who, she thought, were sophisticated and mature. Soon she was joining in their activities and ways, including smoking. Instead of applying her understanding of the truth to the problem and gaining her freedom, she made no effort even to attend church or Sunday School, listening instead to mortal mind's suggestion that she was no longer "good enough" to be known as a Christian Scientist.

At the end of about two years a new acquaintance invited her to a Christian Science lecture. She accepted the invitation and during the lecture was aroused to the realization of her true selfhood as the pure and undefiled image of God. She saw that man, God's likeness, could never be deluded by any false attraction or mesmeric suggestion of the carnal mind. In God, Soul, originate man's thoughts, purposes, and desires. The sophistication which she had sought through worldly ways she recognized as only a sham of the true wisdom, which is gained through the study and application of Christian Science. In Science she found the calm, poise, and true buoyancy of spirituality which alone attract and beautify. She understood how impossible it would be for God to have any wayward sons or daughters whose steps had strayed from Him, since His children can never be outside the love of Love or abide elsewhere than in their Father's house, the consciousness of His ever–presence. Man's desire is to glorify his Maker.

The following Sunday this young woman found her way to the nearest Christian Science church and left that service with a sincere desire to become a church member. As the Revelator envisoned the heavenly city as one into which nothing "that defileth, ... worketh abomination, or maketh a lie" could enter, so she knew that nothing could enter the Church, "the structure of Truth and Love" (Science and Health, p. 583 ), that could defile or debase. Only the noblest purposes, the purest desires, could enter that spiritual structure—or gain membership in its human counterpart, a Church of Christ, Scientist. Arriving home, she discovered that she was entirely free from the desire for cigarettes. Since she was past twenty and no longer eligible for Sunday School, she began to attend church services regularly and after a few months was admitted into membership in a branch church and in The Mother Church. Friendships made among the ranks of Christian Scientists in the years that have followed have proved lasting and satisfying.

No doubt this one instance of overcoming the smoking habit through love of Church and obedience to our Leader's high requirements for its members has been repeated many times over. What is possible to one is possible to all. "God is no respecter of persons," Peter declared (Acts 10:34 ). The young Scientist is accepting the challenge to "come out from among them, and be ... separate." Armed as he is with the fundamentals of Christian Science learned in the Sunday School, he stands firm with Principle, God. And with what glorious results!