There has probably never been so much time, thought, and money devoted to education as there is today. There has been a wide extension of educational benefits, and improved methods of teaching have been adopted in many lands. The increase in material knowledge in recent years has been remarkable. A child in the lower grades of school today knows more of the world in which he lives than many ancient scholars knew. But with all this advance in material knowledge, it is sometimes questioned whether the spiritual education of mankind has kept pace with its material progress.
Like many other spiritual thinkers of her time, Mary Baker Eddy considered the education of children of the greatest importance. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she writes (p. 62), "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 spiritual ideal for child training should be the basis for all teaching that considers the highest welfare of the child. Consistent with this idea, Mrs. Eddy provided a By-Law in the Manual of The Mother Church on Sunday School teaching, whereby the children are to be taught the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and its spiritual interpretation by Mrs. Eddy, and the Beatitudes as their first lessons. These great spiritual revelations, in the light of divine Science, constitute the moral and spiritual law as applied to human life and conduct.
When Moses, the great Lawgiver, revealed the Ten Commandments to the children of Israel, he further instructed them as to their duty to their children when he said (Deut. 6:7), "Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." Few children of today would take naturally to such a method of religious instruction. But the spirit of this utterance is understood and obeyed when a standard is set up in the home for right thinking and acting and when children are taught to observe it in their daily life.
