Article May 20, 1961 Issue

First Lessons Help the Children to Help Themselves

[Submitted in part by a Sunday School teacher in Germany]

"The entire education of children should be such as to form habits of obedience to the moral and spiritual law, with which the child can meet and master the belief in so-called physical laws, a belief which breeds disease." This statement of our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, from the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 62), might truly be applied to the spiritual instruction given the pupils in the Christian Science Sunday School.

Mrs. Eddy provides in the Manual of The Mother Church, Article XX, Section 3, that the first lessons for the children shall include the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer with its spiritual interpretation, and the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:3-12). Because she selected these Bible passages as the foundation of all Sunday School teaching, their value cannot be overemphasized.

It is of paramount importance to awaken the pupil's spiritual sense while teaching these first lessons. Our Leader writes in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 6): "A child can measurably understand Christian Science, for, through his simple faith and purity, he takes in its spiritual sense that puzzles the man. The child not only accepts Christian Science more readily than the adult, but he practises it."

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