Article January 6, 1912 Issue

SCRIPTURE IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL

C. F. L. HOFFINGER.

We sometimes hear it said that our Sunday school children lack a consecutive knowledge of the Bible. It was this assertion that impelled the writer to read prayerfully page 62 of the Manual, whereon is defined the necessary work for the pupils in the Christian Science Sunday school. This led him to see that the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the sermon on the mount, studied in the light of Christian Science, and followed by the study of the Lesson-Sermon, is a preparation which fits the children of the Sunday school, as well as the teachers, to read the Bible intelligently.

The Bible is not one book, it is a collection of many books. It contains the history of a nation and its literature. It is the production of many writers, widely differing from each other because of different environment and training. The religion of the Bible in its successive stages of unfoldment up to Jesus the Christ, is not a mere system of ideas, like the philosophy of Plato or Aristotle, but is based upon spiritual experience, and unlike human philosophy, it is practical and authoritative, hence inspired, for to speak with authority is to be inspired.

To be thoroughly familiar with its order of arrangement, and to have a correct knowledge of its contents, is undoubtedly necessary for both teacher and pupil, in order that our text-book may be intelligently applied to its study. The more important study, however, namely, the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the sermon on the mount, should never be lost sight of, and should certainly precede all other work in the Sunday school. This is just as much a necessity in the classes composed of older children as it is in the juvenile classes, because this study will scientifically instruct both teacher and pupil, making them better able to understand the Lesson-Sermons, as well as to study the Bible, and less likely to misinterpret the experiences and lives of some of its characters which seem so material, than they would be did they study the Bible without the spiritual interpretation as given by Christian Science.

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