HELPING OUR YOUNG PEOPLE TO PROGRESS September 24, 1960 Issue

[This is the first of three addresses and a panel discussion given at the meeting in the Extension of The Mother Church on June 8, 1960. Another address will appear next week.]

Helping Our Young People to Progress

By Erwin D. Canham,—of Boston, Massachusetts

The largest generation of young people, numerically speaking, in the history of the world is now moving into maturity. The growth in population began at the end of the Second World War, and it continues apace. The first wave of these young people is now in its mid-teens. They present the world —and Christian Scientists, with our special mission to redeem human thinking of all belief in the reality of matter—with a tremendous challenge and an unprecedentedly fruitful opportunity.

Surely one of the first and perhaps the greatest of the challenges which we Christian Scientists face with young people is to help them find their way into the land of Christian Science. The mere fact that their parents are Christian Scientists is far from a guarantee that the young folk will follow the same path. But there is a great deal that parents, friends, and Sunday School teachers can do to help.

One thing they can do is to aid young people to prove for themselves that Christian Science heals. At first such healings are not difficult. It is relatively easy and beautiful to lead the young child in the paths of Christian Science. As Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 236), "Children are more tractable than adults, and learn more readily to love the simple verities that will make them happy and good." The challenge comes later when the maturing young person runs head-on into the assertions of false education, of social environment, of medicine and materialism in the saddle. Frequently the young person who has known and proved Christian Science healing as a child finds his understanding and confidence submerged by the world's tides, and then the healings do not come so easily.

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