On this program Joseph A. Crum of Staunton, Virginia, told of his own experience. The program was as follows:

Speaker: Wouldn't it be a wonderful blessing to everyone—to children, to society, and to those of us who are parents—if the anxieties and uncertainties about the welfare of children could be eliminated! There certainly are no easy solutions to the problem. But it is now being more generally recognized that early spiritual training is a most important step toward this goal. Our guest today—Mr. Joseph A. Crum of Staunton, Virginia—had an experience as a child that illustrates this point. Here he is to tell us about it.

Mr. Crum: When I was just a boy I went to live with my aunt and uncle. They were most kind and loving people, and my aunt helped me continue the study of Christian Science, which I had begun at home. Early in my last year of grade school I returned from my paper route one evening quite evidently ill. I couldn't go to school the next day; in fact, I couldn't even get out of bed. There were no Christian Scientists in the town, and at my request my aunt and uncle called a Christian Science practitioner, who had been a good friend to me for several years. She came to see me, traveling the distance on an electric car and walking another mile after reaching our town. Following this visit, she began to pray for me systematically, according to the teachings of Christian Science. But at first I got no better; in fact, things got worse.

As my condition became more disturbing, my aunt and uncle wanted to call the family doctor. I talked the matter over with the practitioner, and we decided that inasmuch as I was living in their home, and they felt responsible for me, I should defer to their wishes.

The doctor pronounced the case as some sort of infection localized in the right hip and asked to call in a specialist, which was done. The best bone specialist in Chicago came to see me and opened the infected area. Although I was confined to bed, no medical treatment was given, and I was not hospitalized. Dire predictions were made, however, that I would most surely use a cane the rest of my life and probably crutches. The specialist pronounced the illness as osteomyelitis. We determined to rely wholeheartedly on Christian Science for healing. The practitioner and I continued our prayer and study more diligently. During all this time the practitioner had continued her work and her visits, never neglecting me for a minute.

No doubt you can guess the result. By spring I was able to get around on crutches. During the summer I tutored to make up my eighth grade work, and this in itself showed a tremendous improvement in my condition. In the fall I entered high school. At this time I had just a faint limp and used no crutches or cane. The local doctor asked to take an X ray, and we granted the request. The picture showed a perfect healing of the bone structure, and both he and the specialist expressed the opinion that this had been a miraculous healing. They gave Christian Science the credit. The following year I played high school football. Since then there has never been the slightest trace of trouble. For me, Christian Science has been more than a religion in the usual sense. It has been a way of life, and the way to health and freedom.

Speaker: Thank you, Mr. Crum. Your experience points up so clearly how desirable it is that children learn at an early age the importance of a spiritual understanding of God in their lives.

Friends, it's widely discussed today that the most valuable contribution parents can make to their children's welfare is to give them a sense of security and love. And when you really think about it, in what better, more reliable, way could children obtain these essentials than by gaining an understanding that God is Love and tenderly enfolds His children now and all the time? What could be of greater value to a child, or more reassuring to a parent, than the actual realization that regardless of how urgent the need may be, God is forever at hand to guide, protect, sustain, and heal?

Now I think it's evident that our guest very early in life gained that kind of trust in God, divine Love. His understanding of God made it perfectly natural for him to rely on God for healing when he was in great need. If more young people and more adults were aware that the solution to their problems lies in gaining a demonstrable understanding of God, how much less anguish there would be in the world, and how much less misbehavior.

But how can we start children on the right track—teach them a natural love for God, for good? Friends, doesn't the wise counsel in Proverbs in the Bible give us the answer, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it"? I'd like to read you something interesting on this very point from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 62), "The entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law, with which the child can meet and master the belief in so-called physical laws, a belief which breeds disease."

I thought you might be interested to know that, in keeping with this goal of spiritual education, the very first lessons taught in the Christian Science Sunday School are the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. These teachings, spiritually understood, provide the foundation for practical reliance on God, reliance taught and demonstrated by the Master, Christ Jesus.

You see, from the Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount the child gains a sense of God's all-power and goodness. He learns the importance of conforming his thought and actions to the standard he is being taught. In Christian Science, children learn that God is not far off, but that He is their tender, loving Father-Mother; that man is, in reality, the spiritual image and likeness of God. They learn that God, the infinite Giver, is forever imparting good to His creation. And so it is natural for them to look to God for true intelligence, for example, because they learn that God is divine Mind. They acknowledge Him as the unfailing source of health and strength, because they are taught that He is infinite Life.

From this standpoint, the child learns step by step to recognize discord of any kind, whether it's sickness, or injury, or evil temptation, as a false picture of God's creation, something to be resisted and corrected through prayer, or spiritual understanding. Such constant effort to be receptive to the good which God gives, establishes a sense of God's nearness, of His ever-present guidance and care. This is the source of true security for a child, as well as for his parents.

In closing may I emphasize that what I have said here does not invite irresponsibility on the part of parents, or a lack of respect for parents on the part of children. On the contrary, in the degree that God is acknowledged by parent and child as supreme, as the only real lawmaker, there is a basis for a happy, constructive relationship in the home, in the neighborhood, in the school, that is a permanent blessing for all concerned.

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 318 from the Christian Science Hymnal (Suffer the children to come to me).