Article December 29, 1917 Issue

Sunday School Teaching

DAISY CYNTHIA WOOD

To exemplify in thought, word, and deed the highest sense of perfection attainable to the human understanding, and to strive to bring to fulfillment such promise in the pupils, is the mission of the Christian Science Sunday school teacher. "Be ye therefore perfect" should be the illumined motto ever before the teacher's thought. No insincerity, no careless exposition of Principle, no slovenly statements of truth are permissible. No personal control, partiality, or self-affrandizement can obtain, else the teaching would be "as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

The child-thought expects practice and example to follow precept. Its pure faith has not acquired the more mature and needful tempering of charity and forgiveness for human shortcomings. The receptive thought of the child receives mental impressions more readily than it does word pictures. If, then, the thought of a teacher is impure, unloving, selfish, or self-willed, the child-thought will feel that something is wrong, and the result will be apparently unexplainable restlessness, lack of interest, willful perversity. No practitioner can heal a disease which he holds as real in his own thought; neither can a pure, happy expression of goodness and spirituality be brought out in the pupils if the teacher's own thought is not pure. Only as thought is lifted above materiality, freed from all sensuality and hate, can the teacher hope or expect to lead the pupils' thought to the joy of obedience to divine Love.

Could anyone conceive of a child being contrary, stubborn, or self-willed in the presence of Jesus? No! Why? Because Jesus' whole thought was that of tender motherlove, so perfect in its infinite compassion that not only could it still the stormy sea, but it could imbue, transfuse, and transform every receptive thought, stilling the tempests of mortal mind with the calm conscousness of peace, telling of the ever present Christ.

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