Article March 11, 1916 Issue

Sunday School Work

FRANCES MACK MANN

The result of effective, scientific teaching in the Sunday school is apparent when the pupil begins to know and overcome his imperfections in thought and act. But how is the teacher to find out that the truth taught Sunday after Sunday is achieving this desired work, that this alternative is being woven into the warp and woof of the child's life? In answer it may be said that he can discern the changed thought of the pupil in the same manner he would discern a change in his own thought. At times the teacher may see that vanity, egotism, disorder, disobedience to authority, irrelevant remarks, irreverence, whispering in class or during church services, inattention to lessons, and kindred manifestations of evil, are preventing the child from gaining what he should from the instruction given. Then is the time for mental and spiritual alertness, that the root of these errors may be uncovered and destroyed.

On page 226 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy writes, "Beloved students, in this you learn to hallow His name, even as you value His all-power, all-presence, all-Science, and depend on Him for your existence." Self-knowledge and reverence for God are necessary for scientific progress. It is as essential for the child to know himself as for the adult. The wise saying of Solomon, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it," is especially applicable to the work of the Christian Science Sunday school. There is no doubt in the mind of one who has applied the Principle successfully that "the way" is clearly taught in the Bible as understood in Christian Science, also that the child cannot for any length of time depart from this way if in the Sunday school he has learned by actual experience that the teaching in the class helps him in his home, in school, and at play, as these constitute for the time his world. The years will then steadily increase his love for Science.

When the love of God as it has been manifested to this age in Christian Science is of paramount importance in the home, the study of the Sunday school lesson will be considered an essential part of the child's education. It is as needful each morning that he have his spiritual food as that he have his material food. There are few circumstances more injurious to a pupil's character than to have a lesson assigned him in the Sunday school and then be allowed to prepare only half of it, or not to study it at all. A slothful habit of thought and a "don't care" spirit augurs poorly for success in any undertaking in after life. Laggards at school are apt never to catch up, to be always behind others. "What is worth doing at all is worth doing well," and Scientists have before them a marked example of the beneficial effects of exactness and efficiency in the life-work of Mrs. Eddy.

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