Article November 15, 1930 Issue

The Master Teacher

WINIFRED B. HAND

THOSE to whom is given the sacred privilege of teaching in a Christian Science Sunday School may well turn for direction to Jesus, the master Teacher. In the Master's guidance of his students the teacher will find the highest standard for his own work regarding the care of his pupils. A thoughtful consideration of Jesus' life reveals that he, the greatest of all teachers, not only imparted an understanding of God and man to those students whom the Father had given him, but that he also constantly taught them by precept and example.

The seventeenth chapter of John conveys a sacred and touching sense of Jesus' life as a teacher; and it would seem that his relationship to those whom the Father had given him was the perfect model for the relationship of the Sunday school teacher to the children intrusted to his care. Jesus was the master Teacher, for he completed his work of teaching. In his earnest prayer, recorded in John 17, he said in part: "I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. ... I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee." Jesus endeavored to make plain to the understanding of the men whom God gave him "out of the world" the name, nature, and character of God. He not only saw himself as the divine idea of God, but knew that this divine idea of God was the teacher. Furthermore, he was able to make his students see this, for he declared, "Thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word." Because Jesus manifested God's nature to his students and taught them to recognize His divine ideas, they were able to understand that the works which the Master did were of God.

In this same prayer Jesus relates how he mastered the work which was given him to do. He says, "While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled." These statements give the underlying requisites for teaching. First, he who is appointed to this high calling must keep in the Father's name those whom the Father has given him; that is, he must see his pupils in the name, character, or likeness of the Father; secondly, he must in his own thinking keep and maintain them in their perfect relationship to the Father; thirdly, he must see that only the offspring of the evil one, the adversary, is lost. Knowing that evil's claim to reality has no abiding place, the teacher will overthrow the Herod thought which claims that it can destroy the spiritual idea which Christian Science is bringing to the consciousness of the Sunday school pupils.

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