On page 9 of "Pulpit and Press" Mrs. Eddy, in speaking of the work done by the children for the building of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, says, "Ah, children, you are the bulwarks of freedom, the cement of society, the hope of our race!" This is, if one pauses to analyze it, a very remarkable statement.

That children are the cement of society is fairly easy to see. It is the love of children, the common interest in their future, the desire for their welfare, which constitutes home to multitudes of people, which makes family ties, which holds thought steady, like the needle to the pole, by a thousand endeared associations of tenderness and joy. That is quite familiar ground; but that children are the bulwarks of freedom is not so obvious. A clue, perhaps, may be found in Science and Health, the textbook of Christian Science, where Mrs. Eddy says on page 236: "Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right. While age is halting between two opinions or battling with false beliefs, youth makes easy and rapid strides towards Truth."

History, taken broadly, is the record of humanity's perpetual struggle toward freedom, against the apparently ineradicable reactionary tendencies of the older generation, the generation, that is, which has become intrenched, both generally and particularly, in its own conventions, habits, and privileges, and which hates being disturbed. It is a commonplace to say that history is made by individuals, not by masses, for what are masses and the conflicts which move them but the aggregate of individual experiences? We can argue, then, from the particular to the general, and recognize that if in family life progress and expansion and new ideas are kept in constant activity by the developing energies of the children, who rightly decline to be "cabined, cribbed, confined," by convention, and who always are out for adventure of mind or body, it is equally true of the race. For what is freedom but the desire and the opportunity to expand, to experiment, to experience?

But it is when we touch the final phrase of the definition of children given above, that they are "the hope of our race," that we become aware that we are dealing with something tremendous. In the passage partly quoted above (Pulpit and Press, p. 8) Mrs. Eddy says, "The children are destined to witness results which will eclipse Oriental dreams." To argue again from the particular to the general, every one, as he gets older, finds that instinctively his hopes for the future, speaking of course from the human standpoint, center on his children. He desires that they shall "begin where he leaves off," to use a common phrase; he thinks that they are bound to do great things, that they will have opportunities he missed, and so on. And so with nations. Every nation to-day is assured that the next generation will enter upon a heritage of peace and abundance and properity which shall never again be disturbed by the horrors of war, and that the aspirations of to-day will be the accomplished facts for their children. This is undoubtedly the unconscious, though possibly unexpressed, conviction of the majority of people who have not the understanding given by Christian Science that "now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation," as the apostle said. Granted, then, that this is so, and that this really is the great hope which is springing up in the human breast, how shall we insure that it blossoms into hope fulfilled and does not relapse into hope deferred? Surely a very clear way is that the children shall be so educated as to see, and see rightly, what is before them.

In spite of all the new lamps which are being substituted for old ones in the educational world, and in spite of many excellent reforms which have relegated old methods to the scrap, heap, it is permissible to wonder if the hope of the race is not in some directions being blighted by an education in false knowledge, which instead of lifting the child thought into the freedom and serenity which comes from an understanding of and obedience to Principle, is calculated to weigh it down under a burden of fear, and render it prone to take on any and every suggestion of disease or sin which may be claiming recognition in the general atmosphere of human thought. Whenever the proposed compulsory physical examination and instruction of children by a paternal government is advocated, the writer recalls the effect made on a sensitive, imaginative child by injudicious conversation about, and consideration of, disease, the sleepless nights of sheer terror, the days when both work and play were overshadowed by a nameless dread, a poison never wholly eliminated until many years later, when Christian Science came to the rescue.

It is essential to true education that children should, from their earliest years, be taught obedience to Principle and not merely to person; that they should imbibe the influences of health and not the suggestions of disease, of what is true and not of what is false. Their books should be good both as literature and as influence,—not trash; and their initiative should be fully developed, both in work and in play. It has been found that Christian Science teaches even the smallest child to think, to enjoy learning, to control itself and its impulses, and to be most reasonable. Under such influences the hope of the race will indeed be such that "the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose."

The following lines to be found on page 400 of "Miscellaneous Writings," express Mrs. Eddy's tender feeling for the children of the present and of the future:—