The many articles regarding the Sunday school, which appear from time to time in The Christian Science Journal and Sentinel, have been so helpful to me that I am impelled to share some of my joyful experiences in this work with others. When asked to teach a class it seemed it would have been more proper to ask me to take a chair in the class itself. My appointment came at a time when I was employed in a busy railroad office and the hours were long and the work hard. This seemed to be a very good excuse to plead exemption from teaching in the Sunday school. I felt I needed one day of rest, and this argument, coupled with the knowledge that I had had no experience in such work, very nearly robbed me of the many joys that have been mine since accepting the appointment so graciously tendered a few years ago.
I was assigned to a class of boys and girls who were beginning to study the "next lessons," which consist of "such questions and answers as are adapted to a juvenile class" (Manual, Art. XX, Sect. 3). Every spare moment was given to the study of the Bible Lessons and every article that I could find regarding Sunday school work, printed in the Christian Science periodicals, was perused. I questioned every one I could and listened eagerly to other people's experiences in Sunday school work, and the desire was ever with me that I might be a successful teacher.
All went well enough until one Sunday it was very apparent that both "animosity" and "mere personal attachment" were impelling the "motives or acts" of the members of my class (Manual, Art. VIII, Sect. 1). A relative of one of the pupils spoke kindly and said their little girl liked to go to the Sunday school because she liked the teacher's smile, while a minute later I was informed that one girl did not like to go to Sunday school any more because the teacher was too strict and the only reason she came at all was because she wanted to be with her chum who was in the same class. Recalling other and similar remarks it became clear to me on my walk home from the Sunday school that somewhere I had "omitted the weightier matters of the law."
