Article September 21, 1946 Issue

Sunday School

The "first lessons"

In the Manual of The Mother Church, Article XX, Section 3, under the caption "Subject for Lessons," our Leader defines specifically the "first lessons" and the "next lessons." "The first lessons of the children," according to the Manual, "should be the Ten Commandments (Ex. 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)." These lessons are basic. They underlie all the teachings of Christian Science and therefore are as indispensable to the Christian Scientist as is the multiplication table to the mathematician.

Sometimes Sunday School teachers are concerned because pupils having learned the "first lessons" do not always remember them. And it is well to consider why it is that these important lessons are sometimes forgotten. The teacher might ask himself, Why does the child remember the multiplication table, which he learns in his early study of arithmetic? Is it not because he is given examples to show how the multiplication table is to be used, so that he may apply it to the problems that are given him? So in teaching the "first lessons," the child should be given many Bible stories as examples to show how the particular law presented in each commandment and each beatitude operates in human affairs. Then he learns to apply the divine law to his own human problems in such a way that it becomes the basis of his thinking, never to be forgotten.

Not only stories of Bible characters, but also parables, Psalms, prophecies, and other portions of Scripture may be presented in teaching the divine Principle of the "first lessons" as elucidated by the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. In this way the children are taught the Scriptures as the Manual requires (Art. XX, Sect. 2) and at the same time the teacher is complying with that provision of Section 3, "Subject for Lessons," which requires that "the instruction given by the children's teachers must not deviate from the absolute Christian Science contained in their textbook."

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