Article August 14, 1915 Issue

The Lesson-Sermon

KATE HOLT

For some years past it has been a daily practice with a certain mother and daughter for the former to read aloud to the latter while she had her breakfast and dressed for business, the books being confined to admitted classics. Recently the selection was from Herbert Spencer on self-dependence, from "Essays, Moral, Political, and Esthetic," in which occurred the following: "The teacher of the old school who showed his pupil the way out of every difficulty did not perceive that he was generating an attitude of mind greatly militating against success in life. The modern instructor, however, who induces his pupil to solve his difficulties himself, believes that in so doing he is preparing him to meet the difficulties which, when he goes into the world, there will be no one to help him through."

On reading this passage an overwhelming sense of gratitude was felt for our Leader's wisdom in preparing the Lesson-Sermons. It would have been a small matter to have had the Scriptural references with their correlative passages from our text-book printed in the Sentinel each week, and this would have made the reading and study of the Lesson very easy indeed. Such an arrangement would render the constant use of the Bible entirely unnecessary. Each of the six sections of the Lesson brings out a distinctive thought, and these too could have been given; but it was not so ordered by our Leader. Wisdom guided her in this as certainly as in the writing of her great book.

The number of people to whom the Bible was almost a sealed book before Christian Science came to them, is past reckoning. The daily study of our Lesson-Sermon is certainly a liberal education, and the endeavor to grasp the leading thought of each section is of great and lasting benefit to every student. Many testimonies are given by Christian Scientists as to improved memory, and the daily study and effort to assimilate the truth has proved to thousands that "no faculty of Mind is lost" (Science and Health, p. 407). When the writer was just beginning to study this way of salvation, a friend who was older in Science remarked that she often found her remedy in the Lesson. Soon afterward, while sitting at the breakfast table, a clamoring pain was most insistent, and struck with such force that it was impossible to rise from the table to call a practitioner. Suddenly the Lesson remedy occurred to thought, and an effort was made to recall something from it; but nothing came except the title, "God the Preserver of Man." Grasping this single thought and holding to it, the demonstration was made, the pain disappeared, and the usual duties of the morning were resumed.

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