Article February 16, 1946 Issue

Sunday School Observations

Teaching the Primary Classes

Questions occasionally arise regarding the teaching of the primary classes in the Sunday school, where children as young as two and three years of age are enrolled. A question sometimes asked is. "Can a two or three-year-old child understand spiritual truth?"

A child is never too young to be impressed with spiritual truth. The devout Hannah must have recognized this, for she so educated the infant Samuel that at the age of three he was ready to be left at the temple in Shiloh, there to be taught by the high priest Eli. Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, pointed to the receptivity of the budding thought when she wrote in the Christian Science textbook. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 61), "The offspring of heavenly-minded parents inherit more intellect, better balanced minds, and sounder constitutions."

Our Leader, who was the greatest educator since the time of Christ Jesus, provided under divine guidance that "the first lessons of the children should be the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20: 3—17), the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6:9—13), and its Spiritual Interpretation by Mary Baker Eddy, Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:3— 12)" (Church Manual. Art. XX. Sect. 3). The glorious truths of these lessons, in their simpler meanings, are presented and illustrated by the teachers not by the use of pictures, colored crayons, drawings, or kindergarten devices of any kind, but by simple Bible narratives and easily understood statements of truth, which the children learn to love from the Scriptures and our textbook.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

During the period of nineteen...