Article November 19, 1960 Issue

Childlike Qualities

[Excerpts from a Workshop Meeting]

In a message to church members (see Miscellaneous Writings, p. 110) our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, points to qualities which the world very much needs, qualities which are divinely natural to the child and which should be preserved throughout our experience. "beloved children," she writes, "the world has need of you,—and more as children than as men and women: it needs your innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontaminated lives." Then she tells how these virtues may be preserved. She says, "You need also to watch, and pray that you preserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not through contact with the world." And finally she closes her ringing message with a challenging thought about ambition. "What grander ambition is there," she appeals, "than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to know that your example, more than words, makes morals for mankind!" May we not conclude that the well-taught child in Sunday School is making morals for mankind?

It would be well if every boy and girl in our Sunday Schools were to memorize this brief but rousing message from our great Leader. Think what it means to the child to be assured that the world needs him. This assurance can change the child's entire outlook on life. Especially in the case of the diffident child, the child struggling with a sense of inferiority or a sense of limitation or lack of opportunities. This assurance becomes a very definite call to the child, a call that fills him with conviction, courage, resolve, and expectation and tells him that he has a real purpose for being.

Let us consider what it means to the child to know that he actually has something right now that the world needs. This is not something that he must acquire through toil and struggle, but something to be preserved through watching and praying. Its value is above rubies. Innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, and purity are divinely natural to the child. Our Sunday School teaches him to claim these qualities. And when he is assured that the world has need of them, he will value them. Then he can appreciate our Leader's admonition to watch and pray that they be not lost through contact with the world.

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