Article November 22, 1913 Issue

Teaching the Children

A. B. FICHTER

The experiences in Sunday school work in all the churches of Christ, Scientist, prove conclusively the far-sightedness of our Leader, who in Science and Health (p. 237) removes all barriers to the instruction of children in "the Truth-cure," so long as this instruction is in harmony with the teaching of the Founder of Christianity, who declared that the childlike spirit alone can enter the kingdom of heaven. She also provides (Manual, Art. XX, Sect. 3) that this instruction "must not deviate from the absolute Christian Science contained in their text-book."

When we stop to think of the tremendous hold which our own early teaching has had on our thought, how it seems to have kept us from letting go of the past, in other words, made us reluctant to see the old landmarks disappear, we begin to realize that all our prejudices are largely the result of this early association and instruction. We also see the wisdom and far-reaching effect of an early implanting of the true understanding of God, and of using and guiding the child's instincts in the right way, so that permanent concepts may be right concepts. What a lasting benefit to a child to begin with a scientific basis rather than with those vague impressions made upon the awakening thought-processes which beget the sense of a corporeal God, sometimes accompanied with the awe of an unseen presence, amounting to apprehension of a possible chastisement that begets intense fear.

The strength with which these impressions seem entrenched in the memory, can be measured when we observe how little they yield to subsequent experiences or instruction. Except in a few rare cases, the child's sense of God does not seem to become any more defined or reasonable with advancing development, and many Christians have come to a place in their growth where they have the feeling that their God has been taken away because this web of undefined impressions, apprehensions, and hopes regarding an invisible, inscrutable presence beyond human ken, has been swept aside by advancing intelligence.

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