For those who teach or contemplate teaching in the Christian Science Sunday School, some statements by Mary Baker Eddy on page 454 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," will serve as a source of increasing guidance and helpfulness in this work. One of the sentences reads, "Love for God and man is the true incentive in both healing and teaching."
When we think of our Sunday School work as the evidence, expression, and fulfillment of our love for God and man, it can only be a lovely experience for both teacher and pupils. Our love for man expressed through Sunday School activity is the natural effect of our love for God. It is natural to love God, for does not John tell us in the Bible (I John 4:19), "We love him, because he first loved us"? This love for God, manifested in the teaching work, is evidence of our gratitude for God's great blessings revealed through the discovery of Christian Science.
Sunday School teaching beheld as an activity which is a reflection of Love uplifts the purposes and aims of the work. As we establish on a spiritual foundation the incentive or motive for teaching, we can expect to see the fulfillment of another statement made by Mrs. Eddy on the page in Science and Health previously referred to: "Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action." Thus teaching becomes inspired. No longer is it carried out in forms such as merely reading the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly during the class period, or by parroted, memorized lessons, without any new insight into their meanings and application. In accordance with the Rules provided by Mrs. Eddy in the Manual of The Mother Church (Art. XX, Sect. 3), lessons unfold through questions and answers given by teachers and pupils.
