Article January 6, 1940 Issue

Sunday School Notes and Comments

After teaching, for some time, a class of girls from sixteen to twenty years old, I found that although they had learned the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes in their earlier years of attendance in the Sunday school, they had practically forgotten them. I realized that if I were to review these "first lessons" (Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy, Art. XX, Sect. 3), I must bring to them newness and freshness of spirit, not merely insisting on the perfect memorizing of the letter.

With the aid of the Concordances I began to refresh my own thought on these lessons. I found that Mrs. Eddy has referred ten times to the Ten Commandments and over thirty times to the First Commandment. In some instances she refers to what the Hebrew Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount have done and will do for mankind as they are understood and lived. (See "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" 174:17; and "Miscellaneous Writings" 21:1, 65:21, 66:31–17 by Mary Baker Eddy.)

References were given to the pupils to look up at home, which included citations from the Bible and from Science and Health, together with Mrs. Eddy's other writings. The week after they had been given the references on the First Commandment, they were overjoyed to find that these references gave Scriptural authority for the synonyms used by Mrs. Eddy "to express the nature, essence, and wholeness of Deity" (Science and Health 465:13).

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

For over twenty-five years it has been my great privilege...