Editorial May 13, 1911 Issue

A SOLEMN OBLIGATION

Annie M. Knott

It is required of the teachers in our Christian Science Sunday Schools to teach all the pupils under their care the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer with its spiritual interpretation as found in Science and Health (p. 16), and the beatitudes from the sermon on the mount. This instruction is not merely theoretical, it aims to bring out in the children a loving obedience to God's law, that they may thus be fitted for the duties of citizenship as well as for those which make the home both happy and sacred. It should not be forgotten, however, that even more solemn obligations rest upon the parents than upon the teachers, and these obligations cannot be evaded without the most disastrous results in the future lives of the children. Following close upon the giving of the Decalogue is this command respecting the divine statutes: "Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house,.... thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes."

When we come to the teachings of Christ Jesus, we find the most stringent demand for obedience to the divine law as given by Moses and the prophets, but the Master went farther than they had done in his insistence that obedience must extend to every thought before one could rightly be called a citizen of God's kingdom. He did not hesitate when the need so required to tear away the veil which sought to cover moral deformity, that he might expose and rebuke it for those who had not learned to love God's law enough to abhor the evil which it condemns. It is here that in instructing their children parents need to pattern more closely after our great Exemplar, which may mean the taking up of serpents,—the subtle sins which would hide from the light of Truth; but the one who understands Christian Science is surely well prepared for this holy task in knowing that "evil is not power" (Science and Health, p. 192). The Christian Science parent or guardian must not forget that "ever since the foundation of the world ... evil has tried to slay the Lamb" (Ibid., p. 568), and that upon each one rests the responsibility of proving evil powerless.

St. Paul said to the Ephesians that it was "a shame even to speak" of evil things, nevertheless he did this himself when it was necessary to uncover error for its destruction. To young and old alike St. John says, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world;" and he specifies its illusive lusts that are not of the Father but belong to the unreal world of material belief, which offers fleeting pleasure and gives ofttimes long-lasting pain. Above all its shadows, however, there shines high and fair the rainbow of promise, inscribed with these glorious words, "Whosoever abideth in him [the Christ] sinneth not."

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