Article October 15, 1955 Issue

Loving the Pupil as Jesus Loved

[From a teacher in a branch church Sunday School]

To understand the spiritual definition of "children," given by Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," which reads (p. 582), "The spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love," is to know a child's true identity. To see a child in any other way is to acknowledge the counterfeit creation, which Mrs. Eddy defines in part (ibid., p. 583) as "sensual and mortal beliefs."

This was made very clear to me through an experience which occurred during my first few months of teaching in a Christian Science Sunday School. I was confronted with a situation in the class which seemed to be almost an open defiance of Truth. A very inharmonious relationship had developed among the pupils and was manifesting itself in utter disregard for all that the Christian Science Sunday School stands for. Willfulness, discourtesy, inattentiveness, and indifference presented themselves as stumbling blocks to the unfoldment of Truth.

Daily and humbly I prayed to be shown the way to correct in my thinking any erroneous concept that might tend to prevent the healing. I studied prayerfully the above-mentioned definition of children and the passage in "Unity of Good" where Mrs. Eddy says (p. 23), "The divine children are born of law and order, and Truth knows only such." Some improvement followed, but the situation was not completely healed. I was still unable to impersonalize the error, which by this time had become very real to me in the person of one of the pupils.

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