[This is the fourth of five addresses given at the meeting in the Extension of The Mother Church on June 10, 1959. The last address will appear next week.]

Through teaching in a Christian Science Sunday School, we are helping to build our church, for we are dealing with those who must have an important part in fulfilling the prophecies of Christian Science.

Our Sunday School should be constantly supplying the church with new members, and the church, of which the Sunday School is an integral part and from which it cannot be separated, mothers and protects it. Sunday School pupils should be encouraged to attend church services when this does not conflict with attendance at Sunday School and also to attend our lectures.

All pupils may not become church members before or at the time they leave Sunday School; still a foundation has been laid in the child's thought upon which to build and shape his career. It has been proved times without number that should some temporarily stray, the truth which has been implanted in thought eventually calls them back to the fold.

In the Sunday School with which I am associated, we do not confine to the junior classes the precious first lessons laid down in the Manual of The Mother Church by our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy (see Art. XX, Sect. 3), but make them the first lessons in all classes, from the very little ones to the seniors. Says Mrs. Eddy in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 303), "If ever I wear out from serving students, it shall be in the effort to help them to obey the Ten Commandments and imbibe the spirit of Christ's Beatitudes." Much more than learning to repeat these vital truths needs to be taught in the Christian Science Sunday School. These truths are continually unfolding new aspects.

Mrs. Eddy has made clear in the Church Manual the great importance of our study of the Bible Lessons, outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly. We cannot stress to the pupils too fervently the necessity of this study. We should help them to understand that what they are doing individually is helping the whole world, as well as helping themselves and supporting their church. Church members should recognize and value the spiritual work and prayers of these children and young people.

How important it is that the Sunday School teachers, especially those in the very young classes, have a realization that man is not embryonic, that he is without birth or death, and that they be so imbued with the Christ that these little ones will progressively express their true identity. The Church Manual sets no minimum age at which a child may enter Sunday School.

Mrs. Eddy states in "Unity of Good" (p. 61), "To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless human babe; but to immortal and spiritual vision he was one with the Father, even the eternal idea of God, that was—and is —neither young nor old, neither dead nor risen." The necessity of the Sunday School teacher's spiritualizing his thought through study and prayer before the Sunday School session need scarcely be stressed.

Children often see beyond their elders in the inspired Word. Christ Jesus said (Matt. 18:10), "Their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven."

A little girl of six was accustomed to hear the Lesson-Sermon read to her each day. One day when she appeared to have a cold, her mother remarked to her, "You know you are God's idea."

"Yes," she replied, and recognizing that an idea cannot be separated from Mind, which conceives it, she was healed.

A little boy of six, brought home suffering from the effects of an accident, at once asked for the Lesson-Sermon to be read to him, although he had already heard the whole lesson read that morning. At the conclusion of the lesson the incident had completely left his thought, and he went out to play, quite well.

Children brought up to love the Lesson-Sermons continue to use them when older. A girl of ten, accustomed to read the whole lesson daily, went on a visit to a friend whose people were not Scientists. When asked in Sunday School if she had been able to read the lesson when away, she replied, "Oh, yes, I simply couldn't do without it."

It appeared she had found a quiet place to read on a window seat in the dining room and had pulled the curtain around her. This love of and dependence on the Lesson-Sermon will surely lead the children, when older, into active church membership.

We have just completed a new wing of classrooms for our Sunday School in Belfast. The children have taken a great interest in this building and have contributed most generously from their pocket money. If they were over ten, Sunday School pupils were allowed to attend the inspirational meetings held in connection with this building. There they learned something of church building from the spiritual point of view. We have found that the inclusion of the Sunday School pupils in such meetings has given them a love and enthusiasm for the upbuilding of the church and has encouraged them to become church members.

Someone has asked me what it is that makes young people stay on in Sunday School until they are twenty and become active church members when they leave. I only know one answer. Put the best workers to teach in the Sunday School—those who are healing themselves and others, who love the Cause, and who reverence and love our Leader; in a word, those who are inspired with the spirit of Love and can inspire their pupils.

If our children are to become good church members, the foundation laid by their Sunday School training must be the best that their church can give them. In this respect parents have an important part to play through example: in church attendance, in putting the things of God first, and in their encouragement of the daily reading of the Lesson-Sermon.

Here let me give an illustration from a senior class. Two brothers who had been Sunday School pupils from babyhood and who were at this time pupils in the Sunday School and university students held the positions of captain and vice captain of the college Rugby team. They were asked in Sunday School if there was much drinking among members of the team. They said there used to be, but they had done their work about it and never went into a bar with those who wanted to drink; but they did not condemn them, nor were they self-righteous about it. The other boys on the team, one by one, took courage and did not go in to drink after a match, and eventually the whole team stopped the practice.

These two boys were faithful students of the Lesson-Sermon and joined the church on reaching the age of twenty. Now members of a branch church in Canada, they are active workers, as indeed are many of our ex-Sunday School pupils in different fields, as well as at home.

One thing is of great importance if we wish to safeguard our young people from drifting from Science in this chemicalizing world; namely, to make clear to the older pupils the necessity of recognizing aggressive mental suggestion. Let us show them how evil suggestions would make them apathetic or would try to deter them from reading the Lesson-Sermon and would produce an unnatural reluctance towards joining The Mother Church and a branch church.

In the Church Manual, under the heading "Alertness to Duty," we are told (Art. VIII, Sect. 6), "It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to defend himself daily against aggressive mental suggestion, and not be made to forget nor to neglect his duty to God, to his Leader, and to mankind." A child of twelve may join The Mother Church; so Mrs. Eddy must have recognized that a child of that age is capable of understanding and obeying this By-Law.

When a pupil leaves Sunday School, his thought should be imbued with the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the Lord's Prayer. He should also realize the necessity of defense against aggressive mental suggestion, the importance of the daily study of the Lesson-Sermon, and a love and appreciation of the life of our beloved Leader. Such a boy or girl will naturally become a church member and worker in our beloved Cause.

To help make this ideal possible, those of us who are Sunday School teachers will find inspiration in the following poem quoted by Mrs. Eddy in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 338):