Article September 13, 1930 Issue

The Sunlight of Love in the Sunday School

ANNA S. RAYNOLDS

OUR dear Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 247), "The little that I have accomplished has all been done through love,—self-forgetful, patient, unfaltering tenderness." This is indeed the love which springs from the understanding that God is Love. There is no greater joy on earth than thus to love; and this spiritual love is available to all, because God is omnipresent.

Through the teachings of Christian Science we learn that every idea of God's creating reflects only the qualities which are pure, lovely, and lovable, and this all-powerful and supreme love should hold sway in the Sunday school. Love alone truly inspires, and inspiration is inseparable from joy. By understanding everyone is able to express man's God-given heritage, and to radiate love and its gladness.

The writer recently heard of an uplifting experience of a teacher in a Christian Science Sunday School. In great humility this teacher began the work of instructing several little girls six years of age. After a few Sundays she realized, to use her own words, the meagerness of her understanding, her lack of inspiration, and the barrenness of her own heart. With true consecration and earnestness of purpose she turned to the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and with the Concordance began to study all that our Leader tells us of Love and Love's reflection. She continued this study for three months, and was deeply grateful to find that her life was gradually being transformed. Unlovely traits of character were dropping away; she was becoming more childlike in her faith and love, and more courageous and joyous than ever before. She no longer approached her group of little girls with timidity or apprehension, and Sunday morning became the happiest time of all the week. Old things were passing away in her experience, and all things were becoming joyously new. She was proving, as someone has said, that self-surrender is the way to glad service and self-denial the road to song, and she was experiencing the glowing hours which come to those who are stepping heavenward. The effect of this beautiful experience was manifested in many ways among the wee girls of her class.

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