A tennis professional was teaching his pupil, a businessman, the basics of serving. "Be like a child," the teacher urged. "And you know the qualities of a child. They're teachableness, receptivity, willingness to change and to follow directions, aren't they?"'

Then he asked his pupil: "What are the qualities of an adult? Aren't they often rigidity of attitudes? Doesn't the adult hang on to old ways? And as a result doesn't he sometimes defeat himself? Now, to get that serve right," he advised, "you must be willing to leave the old way you've served for years and try the new way, even if it seems strange at first."

The tennis lesson went deep into the businessman's thought. He worked with considerable success to have a fresh outlook, to be childlike, and to change his old service to one with better accuracy, greater freedom, more elasticity.

This man was also an earnest, seasoned student of Christian Science. For some time, however, his daily study of Christian Science had seemed stale and uninspiring, he read the familiar words faithfully, but they seemed to have little life. He felt he was in a squirrel cage, running a treadmill and making no progress. He was dogged by arguments of advancing age, apathy, and a pyramiding of heaviness that seemed to clog his progress Spiritward. Sometimes he thought he had had more inspiration in his study twenty years earlier than now.

And yet he was familiar with this statement by Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health: "Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power," ^{Science and Health, p. 233} and he accepted the truth of her promise in the same paragraph of the textbook, "This is an element of progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil." The promise must be true, he knew, because God is good, our tender Father-Mother, who decrees only eternal good for His Children.

He knew that the spiritual fact of creation stated in the opening chapter of the Bible is basic to Christian Science: that God, Spirit, made man in His own image and likeness, wholly good. He knew that the correlative to this truth is also basic: that mortal, material man, subject to sin, disease, and death, is only the false belief, the lie, about the true, God-created manhood of each one of us.

Clearly, therefore, because God's man is spiritual, immortal, and eternally good, the rigidities of old age, fear, loss of freshness and energy, are only lies about our true selfhood. And progress toward the realization of our true, fetterless selfhood is a law to be fulfilled step by step.

Here are some of the specific steps the businessman employed for the renewal of his study and his expectancy of good. He spent a few moments when he awoke each morning, listening, childlike, for angel thoughts from God. He disciplined his thought to expect the good in human experience and to consider enthusiastically the day ahead, delighting to do God's will.

He began to sing as he drove the freeways each day, instead of allowing fatigue and irritation to occupy thought. As he studied the Bible and the Christian Science textbook daily, he tried, childlike, to read as though he had never seen the words before. He looked for new meaning, fresh ideas. And he found them in the eternal truths of those two books. He also used the Concordances to study references in these books and in other works by Mrs. Eddy on joy, trust, and similar words.

The dullness and heaviness faded away. Vigor and joy replaced them in his thought. With new childlike humility he found opportunity to share this new inspiration in church work and other ways. His sense of obedience to God and his love for mankind were improving.

Someone has said that old age is a collection of unsolved problems. Even some doctors have affirmed that time alone cannot cause people to grow old since the whole physical body tends to be renewed continually. Thoughts of heaviness, rigidity, and fear make us old, not a law of God, not even—men are beginning to realize—a law of matter.

How much more in Christian Science have we a right to claim that advancing years need never drag us down to the ugliness and emptiness of old age! As we are disciplined and faithful in our application of the fundamentals of Christian Science, we must expect to overcome these lies about immortal man, our true selfhood.

The Bible says of a man, "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." ^{Prov. 23:7} If we are willing to watch our thinking, we can replace world beliefs of slowing down by understanding our eternal rights to elasticity, enthusiasm, childlike humility before God, teachableness, and inspiration. Then we can expect to be living examples of perpetual joy and dominion and youthfulness. And we will thus express God more fully and be more useful to mankind.

There is a counterfact for every counterfeit, a truth that every lie falsifies. What is the counterfact of staleness, of age? It is child-likeness. And childlikeness includes trust and faith, hope and expectancy. Yes and eagerness to learn, elasticity, suppleness, energy, and joy—even the qualities the businessman worked with to improve his tennis service. These qualities are forever present and ageless. They belong to every man as God's perfect likeness forever. They are never lost.

Brit how are we to claim these qualities and experience newness and freshness in daily life? Mrs. Eddy says: "Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear,—this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony. The purification of sense and self is a proof of progress." ^{Science and Health, pp. 323, 324}

We find in Christian Science that cynicism and discouragement are forever overcome by the willingness to turn away from these old beliefs of the carnal mind and to accept daily, hourly, the newness, the freshness of childlike qualities.

This healing discipline requires us to deny mentally and at once the casual remarks of neighbors and friends about advancing years: "Oh. I'm too old for that"; "My, how he's aged"; "I used to enjoy that, but not any more." These statements we can quickly deny. They represent restrictive, fettering beliefs that would subtly drag us down to acceptance of apathy and age.

Fresh angel thoughts are given to us constantly from God. But childlike acceptance of them is needed, as well as willingness to be finished with beliefs of dullness and deadness. How sad to lose the child's sense of awe at the wonders of God's universe! How sad to resign the expectancy of good, the freshness of youth! But we need not. So, let us not.

What good reason we have in Christian Science to maintain our sense of joy and delight through advancing maturity! The understanding that God, Spirit, is good and is All, and that man is indeed His image and likeness—the "good news" of the Gospels—this is cause for daily rejoicing. The persistent affirmation of man's forever reflection of God's goodness, accompanied by the denial of mortality, enables us to demonstrate step by step our native energy and dominion. The understanding of this reflection reveals the healing power of the Christ.

Each of us is able to break the fetters of apathy and age with a steady claim to childlikeness, to the expression of expectancy and joy. We can glimpse the eternal springtime of God's creation. Inspiration can be our continuing companion in our daily study of Christian Science. We can prove that progress is the forever law of God for everyone.