"HOW IS GOD'S CHILD TODAY?"

MAXINE LE PELLEY

A little girl was invited by a neighbor to visit a Christian Science Sunday School one summer while the one she had been attending was closed. Very soon she owned a copy of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Through this book and a copy of the Bible, together with the loving guidance of the Sunday School teacher, she began to learn something about herself that she had never known before. She learned that in reality she was God's perfect child, made in His image and likeness, as the first chapter of Genesis states. Moreover, she was taught that this image and likeness is not material but spiritual, for the definition of God in the textbook is as follows (p. 465): "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." Since God is all good and perfect, His reflection, or child, must be good and perfect. This impressed the child so vividly that she was often heard declaring aloud at home, "I am God's perfect child."

An uncle who knew nothing about Christian Science thought this statement of his niece's very amusing. Whenever they met he would ask, "How is God's child today?" Very soon, however, the family noticed that a condition of deafness which the little girl had manifested had disappeared. The doctors had pronounced this condition incurable, even recommending that she be sent to a school to learn lip reading. But she was healed permanently.

A few years later the uncle was also healed instantaneously by reading the Christian Science textbook, which his wife had brought home from the library. While she was preparing his dinner, which was limited to the strictest kind of diet, he picked up Science and Health and began reading. In a little while he called to his wife and told her that he was going to eat whatever she did. "According to this book," he said, "I can eat anything and it won't harm me." He never again suffered from stomach trouble and became an active student of Christian Science. It seemed to change his whole nature, one very noticeable change being his healing of profanity.

"How is God's child today?" is a good question to ask ourselves. Is God's child sick, sinful, deformed, afraid, poverty-stricken, dying? He cannot be, since he reflects God, who is Spirit, pure Love, all substance, and infinite Life. The Bible tells us that everything God made is very good.

Does it benefit us to acknowledge that God is Spirit and that, even though to the physical senses it would seem otherwise, in our true being we are His children—spiritual, perfect, and immortal? It does. When we identify ourselves as children of God, the divine Father-Mother, and let go of the false beliefs that we are material, capable of being sick, sinful, or afraid, no one can tell the blessings that will flow into our experience. Mrs. Eddy writes in her textbook (p. 491), "It is only by acknowledging the supremacy of Spirit, which annuls the claims of matter, that mortals can lay off mortality and find the indissoluble spiritual link which establishes man forever in the divine likeness, inseparable from his creator."

We should never underestimate the importance of keeping our thought childlike. Jesus put great value on childlikeness and taught his disciples (Matt. 18:3), "Exceptye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." In our study of Christian Science we learn to cultivate the qualities of child-like humility, trust, and purity. Sometimes a student of Christian Science with long experience in healing work may have a problem which does not yield. Perhaps even a false sense of pride or embarrassment that he should have a problem at all creeps in. Such thoughts as these can be readily recognized as suggestions of the serpent, or mortal mind. They are not thoughts from God. Therefore they are unreal and powerless.

When supposititious mortal mind would have us believe that we are originators of good and exist apart from Him, we can remember Jesus' words (Matt. 19:17), "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." As we lose sight of a false sense of ourselves as material persons and lay hold on our immortal status and identity as God's children, or perfect ideas, our spiritual sense is awakened and we become conscious in some degree of the love which "the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God" (I John 3:1). Then we know that God's child forever manifests His perfection, joy, and abundance.

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