Sunday School Notes and Comments

A teacher in one of the more advanced classes of the Sunday school discovered that many of the older pupils knew little about the important facts of our Leader's life: as, for instance, when she discovered Christian Science, under what circumstances, and when she gave the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," to the world; and the teacher was sometimes asked by a pupil why Mary Baker Eddy is called the Founder as well as the Discoverer of Christian Science.

In seeking guidance that she might be explicitly obedient to the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy regarding teaching in the Sunday school, she studied and found applicable this direction (Art. XX, Sect. 3): "The instruction given by the children's teacher must not deviate from the absolute Christian Science contained in their textbook."

Since then, she occasionally makes it a point to ask the pupils in her class when Mrs. Eddy discovered Christian Science (see Science and Health, p. 107), to speak of her prayerful three years' searching of the Scriptures (ibid., p. 109) and of the year 1875, when the first edition of the textbook was published, and to call attention to Matthew 9, the chapter which Mrs. Eddy was reading when she first glimpsed the Christ-method of healing, as exemplified by the master Christian.

She shows the pupils how to distinguish between Discoverer and Founder, and asks them to enumerate the various activities of The Mother Church which she established, and the great work which entitled her to be called Founder.

It has been proved to the writer, by the gratitude of the pupils, that this procedure gives them not only a positive, informed conviction of our Leader's great discovery, but an added appreciation of her devotion and consecration to the Cause of Christian Science, which she founded to bless a world hungering for spiritual truth.

My attendance at the Christian Science Sunday School from the earliest years is undoubtedly one of the chief reasons underlying my present activity as a practitioner of this all-satisfying religion. I should like to relate for others' consideration the several qualities which stand out to me as most beneficial in regard to this teaching.

The Sunday school was a haven for me. Usually shy, I felt at ease in the presence of teachers who recognized me as a child of God. My best teachers were those who faced me in a "man to man" fashion, not treating me as an infant, but as a fellow being, with something to give and something to receive. This kind of teacher was always ready to recognize and praise my expression of some truth which he or she had not seen so clearly. In this humble state of mind, teachers such as these were, according to my experience as a student, better able to impart unseen truths to me and have them faithfully received by me.

The work in the Christian Science Sunday School is many-sided, and the need to be met and mastered for the youngest entrants is the claim of separation. One of these little ones may be leaving his mother for the first time, and to the timid or sensitive it may seem a big event, fraught with apprehension.

The youngest children gain confidence in the love they find expressed around them, and soon begin to feel happy, safe, and at home.

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Editorial

The Activity of Truth

June 1, 1940

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