THE loving charge of Christ Jesus, the Way-shower, "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," is the incentive of every Christian Sunday school. In an article written some years ago upon the subject of Sunday schools the following passage appears: "Great events were happening in the world in 1780, not the least being the formation of the first Sunday school by Robert Parkes in Gloucester, England." It would thus appear that mankind had at that late period awakened to the fact of the need that the little ones should have definite teaching about the things of God, though one is surprised that this awakening had taken nearly eighteen hundred years for its consummation.
A century later, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, inaugurated the Christian Science Sunday School, where children may learn how to make the teachings of our Master practical. A pupil who has been attending this Sunday school for even a short time will have learned that to heal the sick, as enjoined by our Master, is the duty and privilege of everyone who names the name of the Christ. As our Leader has so beautifully expressed it in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 37), "It is possible,—yea, it is the duty and privilege of every child, man, and woman,—to follow in some degree the example of the Master by the demonstration of Truth and Life, of health and holiness."
With loving foresight Mrs. Eddy makes adequate provision in the Church Manual for the instruction to be given to the children. The directions are so simple that no misconception need creep in to interfere with the orderly unfoldment of the teaching; and one recognizes with deep and heartfelt gratitude, as one studies these directions, how wonderfully Mrs. Eddy emulates the simplicity of the Way-shower in every detail of the provision she makes in the Church Manual for this as for every other activity in the Christian Science movement.
