Article August 13, 1949 Issue

"THE FIRST LESSONS"

BETTY JANE DRISCOLL

One Sunday a young woman who had a class of the tiniest tots in a Christian Science Sunday School came home quite discouraged. Discipline and order had been difficult to maintain, and she felt that her teaching was not successful. She expressed her discouragement to her brother, who was still in Sunday School himself. His firm advice to her was as follows: "Talk to them. Reason with them. They are intelligent. They can understand."

With this counsel in thought the teacher turned to Mary Baker Eddy's definition of "children" as found in the Glossary of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and earnestly pondered it. The definition reads (pp. 582, 583): "Children. The spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love. Sensual and mortal beliefs; counterfeits of creation, whose better originals are God's thoughts, not in embryo, but in maturity; material suppositions of life, substance, and intelligence, opposed to the Science of being."

These words especially stood out: "God's thoughts, not in embryo, but in maturity." The teacher suddenly saw that she had been believing she was working with little minds in little bodies, and the material senses gave the evidence which corresponded to her belief. This limited concept manifested itself in disobedience and lack of discipline. Starting with the premise that God's children are mature ideas and understand Truth, she began to pray for wisdom to make the teaching more interesting to her class.

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