Article May 1, 1943 Issue

Sunday School Notes and Comments

Mrs. Eddy says in "No and Yes" (p. 39), "True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection." This is just what teacher and pupil in a Christian Science Sunday School are endeavoring to do, "learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection."

Irregularity in attendance had appeared as a problem in one class, and gave the teacher some concern. Out of a class of five there were only two or three each Sunday, and always a different two or three. This thought was found to be most effective: The need was for the realization that every child of God is ever in his right place. It became clear to the teacher that if a child's place was in the Sunday school, there could be no counterattraction to keep him away. Mrs. Eddy says in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 102), "There is but one real attraction, that of Spirit." Therefore, the same divine Love, Spirit, which was attracting and bringing the teacher to her right place was also bringing the pupils to their right place in the class. The understanding that a desire to learn more about Love was the real incentive in the Sunday school for both teacher and pupil, freed her from a false sense of responsibility.

In correcting the negative beliefs of irregularity and disorder, it is wise to consider the opposite positive qualities, regularity and order. The value of regularity is made clear by Mrs. Eddy in her book "Retrospection and Introspection," where she says on page 87: "Experience has taught me that the rules of Christian Science can be far more thoroughly and readily acquired by regularly settled and systematic workers, than by unsettled and spasmodic efforts. Genuine Christian Scientists are, or should be, the most systematic and law–abiding people on earth, because their religion demands implicit adherence to fixed rules, in the orderly demonstration thereof."

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