Youth is pre-eminently the period of growth and development. It requires mental fare that will build. Therefore we need not wonder that some young people refuse to be interested in those forms of religion which seem to offer only vague promises of future benefit while stressing present disciplines and limitations. They ask, as do many of their elders, and rightly, for present evidence and proof of the validity of religious promises. Mere dogma or prescription or ritual does not feed. Christian Science strips away these husks of religion and offers the rich kernel of living truth which is equally available and practical for the child, the youth, and the more mature person.

What is this truth? It is the demonstrable fact that God is the only Life, Mind, power, intelligence, substance; that God is infinite, supremely and exclusively good; that God is not a far-away abstraction, but the living, omnipresent reality, and that man is the idea, the perfect image and likeness, the beloved child, of the infinite, loving Father-Mother, who created and sustains all that is real with unerring wisdom and bounty.

But, says the student, in this world you cannot get something for nothing. What do I have to pay for this truth? Maybe the cost is too high. A young college student voiced these questions recently in a somewhat oblique way. She had been brought up in a Christian Science atmostphere but had never grasped the essentials of its teachings to the point of effective and consistent demonstration. The reason for this came out clearly when she declared, "I am afraid to accept Science or work at it seriously, for fear I should have to give up some things I like very much."

This frank avowal at once raised several important questions. Is Christian Science narrow? Is it a gospel of negation and denial? Does it cut off its followers from legitimate joys and satisfactions dear to all, including young people?

Certainly Christian Science does not limit or cramp. It is the gospel of freedom from limitations. It reveals God as infinite and man as God's infinite idea, enjoying boundless joy and freedom. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, constantly reminds us of the affluence of our heavenly Father-Mother; and she states in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 60), "Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind." God, being divine Love, meets our every human need. Note the word "human," for Science teaches that God's love reaches and touches each one right where he is. And it shows, likewise, how joyous gratitude opens the petals of human consciousness to this irradiation.

Christian Science is not a joyless religion. It points the way to true joy and happiness. But is it narrow? Any Science must be narrow in the sense of being exact. Experiments in the physical sciences follow rigidly prescribed procedures based upon precisely defined concepts, rules, and laws. Athletics exact discipline and training. Such history-making explorations as the Byrd expeditions have required attention to minutest details and obedience to a precise order. No great achievement was ever recorded without adherence to rules. No record was ever broken without practice and self-discipline. Inspiration comes to the thought prepared to receive it. So in Christian Science, one must not only work but strive for inspiration, open one's thought to the truth, practice and apply it resolutely and consistently. As our Leader points out (Science and Health, p. 457), "Christian Science is not an exception to the general rule, that there is no excellence without labor in a direct line."

Moreover, to succeed in any line of endeavor one must be wholehearted. Like the scholar, the athlete, the inventor, who devote themselves to the task, the Christian Scientist must often close the door to those things which in themselves may be innocent diversions, but which, when excessively indulged, nevertheless encroach on one's time and would turn one aside from the main road to the goal and into tortuous ous byways. In this sense Christian Science is "narrow" and requires its followers to keep to the undeviating path of right conduct. But this does not sanction asceticism any more than it does sensualism, for materialism may be manifested in ascetic self-denial as well as in self-indulgence. To deny oneself while constantly yearning for what is denied is scant gain.

The phrase "loss is gain" in our Leader's hymn (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 389) may sound like a hard saying. But have we stopped to cast up a balance sheet of the gains and losses in the way of life opened up by Christian Science? Let us see. We give up—lose—sickness, accident, worry, uncertainty about examinations, about finances, about finding a job. We gain peace, health, protection, poise, and enhanced mental capacity. We give up our belief in materiality, with its poverty and limitations; we gain freedom, purity, dominion, spiritual power. We do not have to give up youth, for the real man is perennially fresh, vigorous, beautiful, never losing his eternal birthright of perfection. We do not have to give up joy or wholesome recreation. Our Leader repeatedly emphasizes the spiritual nature of real joy and pictures the freedom of reality in the words, "Mind's infinite ideas run and disport themselves" (Science and Health, p. 514). In that picture there is certainly no loss of energy, spontaneity, or capacity to enjoy. We do not have to give up professional or business careers, but gain the means whereby to glorify them, ennoble them, and invest them with new significance. We do not have to give up love, tenderness, or human affections, for we gain an ever-expanding circle of love, lovableness, loveliness, which is the inspiration of the Father who is "altogether lovely," the omnipresent God, who is Love.

In the call to give up refers to false appetites, unworthy or sensual practices, in Christian Science it is common experience that these fall away almost unnoticed, when the individual's consciousness is filled with right desires and earnest longing for good. Thus they leave no vacuum nor unhappy aftermath.

The Christian Scientist gladly loses a narrow sense of nationalism and gains a horizon which includes all mankind within its sweep as he learns that there is but one Mind, in whom we all "live, and move, and have our being."

In short, the student of this Science loses nothing real, but gains a whole universe of reality, permanent, beautiful, satisfying. He loses shadows and acquires substance. He gives up slavery and gains dominion. He loses gradually but surely any belief that he lives or dies in or through matter, and gains what Paul refers to as "the glorious liberty of the children of God."

Do you know what Luther said? "Suffer and be still and tell no man thy sorrow; trust in God—His help will not fail thee." This is what Scripture calls keeping silence before God. To talk much of one's sorrows makes one weak, but to tell one's sorrows to Him who heareth in secret makes one strong and calm.—Tholuck.