How can we make our own individual study of the weekly Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly the most anticipated and rewarding experience of our day? The writer once asked such a question of herself. As a newly appointed Sunday School teacher she felt challenged anew to glean the most significant harvest possible from her study of the lesson. She recognized that the level of inspiration attained in her own study during the week had an unquestioned relationship to that attained by her class in their Sunday morning discussion of the lesson. Only as the lesson became vitally practical to her in terms of her own living was she adequately prepared to help the pupils discover its usefulness to them.
Since asking herself the above question, the writer has gained steadily in her appreciation of the practical import of every one of our Lesson-Sermons, largely as a result of further insight into what is meant by the word "study." This insight was to have considerable influence on the attitude with which she approached her study of the lesson. The word "study" had always meant to her just what the dictionary indicates: "application of the mind to books, arts, or any subject, for acquiring knowledge." But the study of the Christian Science Lesson-Sermon, she began to observe, required more especially the sort of application which is described by the words "apply thine heart" (Prov. 2).
The heart is commonly connected with the human emotions, but it can refer as well to one's hopes, desires, expectancies, and confidence. Both the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings give the heart an important role to play in this effort of ours to draw close to the truth. "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God," said Christ Jesus in the Beatitudes (Matt. 5).
