In the autumn when the public schools are beginning their sessions, it is well for parents, teachers, and pupils alike to answer for themselves anew the question as to what schooling is, It is not merely the learning of what are called facts. It is not, on the other hand, simply training in how to do things. It is not even just a study of the way in which seeming human knowledge is used in daily living. If education were nothing more than the sort of formality that has been developed by mortal teachers throughout the centuries, it would indeed be limited and of little value. Reasoning in accord with Principle is the truth of education, which is much broader than any academic system. What is essential is the unfoldment of divine Life itself as activity in conscious order. This is the ideal expression of infinite Mind, of which any mortal form of drill is, at the best, a very unsatisfactory counterfeit.

Since this is so, one may naturally ask why any kind of human instruction is ever worth while. Why should one go to school at all, or try to learn theories that are changing every instant? The answer is, that for such a makeshift sense of discipline there must be the true idea. The work of each one, in school or out, is to discern and prove the true idea in place of the supposed opposite. That is, each one should take both scholastic lessons and seeming daily experience as opportunity for knowing Truth and practicing in accord with it. Schools will improved in proportion as their false theories give way to the demonstration of infinite Principle. Each one who turns his whole attention to Principle aids in this improvement even while he is proving his own education. No present sense of things can be effectively done away with until it is actually displaced by the divine ideal. Going to school, sending one's child to school, or teaching school, must always be, then, when rightly considered real opportunity for expressing infinite Truth.

This schooling is never limited, of course, to human methods. All genuine doing, all conscious manifestation of divine intelligence, is education, since it can exist only as the unfoldment of Principle. Such activity is the constant realization of Immanuel, or "God with us," taking the place of suppositional ignorance and inaction. In other words, the continual finding of the omnipresent Christ, as the all-sufficient interpreter of omnipresent God, immortal Mind, is eternal schooling. The true idea, manifesting the one Mind, incessantly displaces false beliefs. This is progressive Salvation. To turn one's attention wholly thus to divine Principle and its idea is to depend upon God and the Christ, Father and Son, demonstrable cause and effect, as the sole instructive power. The unfoldment of the one infinite Mind and its one infinite manifestation is the only real learning. Sooner or later all engaged in education of any sort must recognize their responsibility for the knowing and proving of this truth. On page 18 of "No and Yes" Mrs. Eddy declares, "If the schoolmaster is not Christ, the school gets things wrong, and knows it not; but the teacher is morally responsible."

Repeating this statement in a somewhat different form, Mrs. Eddy says on page 365 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "The school whose schoolmaster is not Christ, gets things wrong, and is ignorant thereof," a sentence which she precedes with the declaration, "Human theories weighed in the balances of God are found wanting; and their highest endeavors are to Science what a child's love of pictures is to art." The student of Christian Science is indeed glad that his genuine education is continuous as Principle scientifically expressed. Daily such a one, through earnest individual effort in the practice of Christian Science, rejoices in broadening ability, unfolding appreciation of good, actual achievement. The effective effort is not, of course, any mere trying to do something; it is the manifestation of the divine power, the energetic display of intelligence, that is as much more than human striving as success is more than futile attempt. Any so-called endeavor which fails is sheer ignorance to be scientifically corrected by the understanding of omnipresent Mind. Divinely scientific understanding is, thus, "God with us" to save from any suppositional ignorance, through the demonstration of the true man's unlimited ability. With the declaration of this understanding as present, there is no room nor time for getting things wrong, for ignorance, or for futile struggling with mere theories of any sort. On the contrary, to affirm the omnipresence of unfolding Principle is to find that the Christ does indeed furnish the true idea in place of any seeming. Thus only does one demonstrate ever broadening ability in the expression of divine intelligence.

On page 183 of "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says: "Man is God's image and likeness; whatever is possible to God, is possible to man as God's reflection. Through the transparency of Science we learn this, and receive it: learn that man can fulfil the Scriptures in every instance; that if he open his mouth it shall be filled—not by reason of the schools, or learning, but by the natural ability, that reflection already has bestowed on him, to give utterance to Truth." In no way does Christian Science teach that education is not necessary; but Christian Science is showing to the world a broader ideal of education than any human theory has conceived of. Mrs. Eddy herself exemplified throughout her experience, and especially in her writings, this boundless education which comes from Principle.

Since the divine Mind and what the divine Mind knows must be the only consideration for true schooling, the advantages of education are equally for all, no matter what one's human training may have seemed to be. It is never too late to know God as the source of all wisdom. Any human sense of years or lack of years has nothing to do with spiritual unfoldment going on throughout eternity. Now is exactly the right time for the happy replacement of both ignorance and so-called false knowledge with the wisdom which is inherent in omnipresent Mind. There is no reason for either self-reproach or condemnation of other because of seemingly hampering conditions of a mortal past which really, in the realm of the divinely eternal now, never existed. Knowing that divine Love is absolutely conscious of spiritual unfoldment as the reality of man, one necessarily rejoices in infinite revelation daily.

Gustavus S. Paine.