STUDENT AND SCIENTIST

[Of Special Interest to Young People]

JEAN AMELIA DIEKOFF

The impetus to all education is a desire to know what is true —a searching for the fundamental laws of being. Through education we seek deliverance from the darkness of ignorance and false belief. We seek the revealing light of truth.

The Christian Scientist who attends a college or university should be grateful that he has already caught a glimpse of Truth through Christian Science. The very fact that he is able to be at college may be the result of prayerful work regarding his proper place. In any case, he faces the demands of the college years equipped with an understanding of God which cannot fail him. He accepts unequivocally the statement made by our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 224), "No power can withstand divine Love."

Temptations sometimes challenge the young student to prove the truths of Christian Science—to show that they are indeed adequate to meet every need and solve every problem. With each victory over sickness or error comes the renewed conviction that in Science we have the pearl of great price and that it is worth everything to us.

One of the subtle arguments which sometimes appear bids us be satisfied with ourselves as passive Christian Scientists. It tells us to put Christian Science on the shelf and to label it "For use in case of sickness." This is part of the lie which says it is all right to be a Christian Scientist if one doesn't carry it too far. Another argument says that we are justified in neglecting the activities of the Church of Christ, Scientist, and the Christian Science college organization if we adhere to Principle in our hearts.

These arguments are all fallacious and must be recognized as such. Science makes no compromises with error. Principle, Love, demands complete fidelity. Moses saw this and asked (Deut. 10:12), "What doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul ...?"

Daily study of the Lesson-Sermons in the Christian Science Quarterly is one way of serving God. No matter what the topic of the lesson may be, its study imparts inspiration to lift our thought above the material sense of existence. Each lesson reveals the Christ, Truth, which heals, comforts, and directs us in the way that we should go. Understanding God as Mind reveals such wisdom as the human mind alone cannot attain. By claiming our true identity with this divine Mind as its idea, we find that we know everything we need to know at the very instant we need to know it.

The Church of Christ, Scientist, and the Christian Science college organizations stand for protection, healing, and strength. We can lose nothing by joining in their activities; we have everything to gain by it. Learning more of God, Spirit, naturally interests us, for it means learning more of ourselves as the image and likeness of God. It means learning of God, who is the only Life—active, free, happy; the only Truth, absolute and unchanging; the only Love, impartial, all-encompassing.

Our participation in activities of the Christian Science movement does not limit us. For the understanding which we gain of God through such participation enables us in everything we do to express more freedom, more joy, more dominion. Through our understanding of the impersonal and ever-operative laws of Principle, Love, we can perceive the needs of others and help to supply those needs. Living the truth makes us more perceptive as students, more just as administrators, more trustworthy as friends, and more useful as citizens of the college community. Mrs. Eddy speaks of the influence of the Christ on Jesus' life, saying (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 166), "It made him an honest man, a good carpenter, and a good man, before it could make him the glorified."

As students of Christian Science, we have the unequaled opportunity of helping ourselves and others to experience the freedom of right thinking and living, based on an understanding of God and of man in His likeness. We are followers of the Christ, or Truth, which always heals us and illumines our consciousness with its radiance. How important it is, then, to "hold that fast" (Rev. 3:11) which we have, that no man take our crown.

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