THROUGHOUT the centuries teachers, poets, and writers in general have extolled mother love, but Christian Science defines God as Father-Mother, thus bringing to mankind the true understanding of mother love. The motherly qualities are vital to good Sunday School teaching. The fact that they originate in God, divine Love, makes them available to all who seek to demonstrate them.
Mother love sees in the budding thought the full flower, tends it carefully, nourishes it sufficiently, and brings it to glad fruition through the unfoldment of God's allness. How graciously Christ Jesus manifested the motherly qualities that should characterize the Sunday School teacher! When the disciples tried to keep parents from bringing their little ones to Jesus to be blessed or healed, Jesus protested by saying (Mark 10: 14), "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God."
What warmth of love Jesus expressed, giving us the example for all time! Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 236), "Jesus loved little children because of their freedom from wrong and their receptiveness of right." Parents and Sunday School teachers should also perceive children as Jesus did in order to bring out their inherent goodness, harmony, and beauty of character.
Our Sunday School children should feel the warmth of consistent mother love, expressed in the tenderness of an understanding heart. Whatever difficulties a teacher may seem to have, or whatever difficulties a pupil may seemingly express, will slip away into their native nothingness as a result of the confidence and freedom that the motherly qualities inspire. These qualities must be brought forth through Christlike, unselfed love, which takes no offense and makes nothing of error, because error is nothing.
Children look up to their Sunday School teachers and love them for what they express of the divine. If a teacher is giving the child a simple understanding of God's omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence and if through the teacher's joyous and confident expression of Love the pupil expresses the joy inspired by spiritual teaching, the teacher's material personality has not imparted this understanding and joy.
Personal sense would have us believe that good is a personal possession, that some possess it and some do not. Such a suggestion, persisted in, would rob little children—and their teachers who believe it—of the good each one truly reflects as an idea of the one Mind, God, divine Love. Spiritual understanding, developed through the consistent study of Christian Science, reveals the infinitude of good and demonstrates individually that all good is the reflection of God and that all ideas of God express it.
Teaching the Scriptures is a vital part of Sunday School teaching in all age groups. It coincides with the first tenet, to which all church members subscribe (Science and Health, p. 497), "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life." If we are not ardent students of the Scriptures, how can we then impart to the children what we do not have ourselves?
Both teachers and pupils need to study the experiences of Bible characters. These experiences led to the voicing of the Word, from which comes the unfoldment of Truth to the waking consciousness. Such study gives the background needed for inspired spiritual interpretation. Sunday School teaching should make the Bible characters seem alive to the children. They should be more real and dynamic to them than the characters on television shows.
Take the experience of Paul, for instance. What could inspire one more with unselfed love than the thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians? And each of Paul's letters—to the Romans, the Ephesians, the Galatians, and to others—carries inspired messages that have blessed generations since they were uttered. But do they not take on a deeper meaning when something is known of Paul himself, of his experiences and persecutions, and of his victory over them?
Paul's spiritual growth can be charted in his writings. In Romans (7:14—25) we find Paul's struggle with the carnal mind, the same struggle we all have, the same struggle our teen-agers have. How wonderful to be able to point out to them that Paul first saw the sin of which he needed to be healed and then worked out his own healing! He said, "The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do." Dear, faithful Paul, wavering between good and evil, as if he really did not know which was which!
But we know that God guided him into his true heritage of good, for a few years later he reported (Phil. 4:13), "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Here we see him victorious, his uncertainty completely gone. We find him the master of whatever came into his experience. Thus the background material of the triumphant Bible characters can help the children to strengthen their own proofs of God's care.
Sunday School teaching is not complete unless the children of all classes are imbued with a steadfast and deep sense of gratitude and love for Mrs. Eddy. When being told of the experience of Samuel, the little children—and even those of wider experience—will be thrilled to learn that our dear Leader also heard the voice of God calling to her when she was but a little child.
As they grow older and are capable of accepting more of the scientific interpretation of the Scriptures, the pupils should learn the definitions of words found in the Glossary of Science and Health; their gratitude should be openly expressed for our Leader's spiritual insight which enabled her to give such a clear interpretation of God, man, Christ, Jesus, Church, angels, children, and so on. The understanding of these definitions will enable the pupils to find deeper meanings in the Bible Lessons, outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly, and to gain better expressions of these meanings in their experience.
The older pupils should be shown how and why Mrs. Eddy is the revelator of Truth to this age. Their reverence for her as their Leader, and as the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, should be established early, for through her inspired writings they can understand and demonstrate man's unity with his Father-Mother God.
It is a sacred privilege and joy to work with the Sunday School children. Let us watch that we meet them where they are and lift them to a spiritual realm through gentle persuasion, divinely directed. Young people of today are more and more meeting open attacks of sensualism and materiality. They need our loving understanding and patience to help them to master these attacks; they need our tenderness, which makes them feel they can come to their Sunday School teachers at any time, with any problem, and find an understanding heart. Our Leader writes in "Pulpit and Press" (p. 9), "Ah, children, you are the bulwarks of freedom, the cement of society, the hope of our race!" Let us accept lovingly our Leader's concept of our Sunday School pupils and so love them.
