One task of the teacher in any Christian Science Sunday School is to demonstrate in his class the true concept of children. He needs to see and help bring to light the innocent, pure, perfect offspring of God, the "children" defined by Mrs. Eddy in the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 582) as "the spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love."
The class may appear to include "sensual and mortal beliefs; counterfeits of creation, whose better originals are God's thoughts, not in embryo, but in maturity; material suppositions of life, substance, and intelligence, opposed to the Science of being"—which is of course the second part of Mrs. Eddy's definition. Successful teaching is based upon and never deviates from the spiritual truth that the pupils are now and forever God's "thoughts and representatives," who know and love the truth of their being. But it includes alert and thorough attention to and handling of the various phases of the belief that the children are "sensual and mortal beliefs."
One teacher of long experience and considerable success tells us that he prepares for Sunday School by striving to see clearly the spiritual nature of his pupils and of himself. He recognizes the claims that animal magnetism would make concerning them at this time and refutes them. He does not allow himself to believe, for instance, that a child is an easy victim to alluring evil. He denies the claim that there is a mature mind and a childish mind, which by some means must be brought to understand each other. Instead he declares and knows that divine Mind, God, is the Mind of all. He insists that there is no power opposed to divine intelligence, nothing to keep his pupils from being receptive to divine ideas, interested in them, excited by them, and loving to use them. Through this prayerful work he has surmounted problems of nonattendance, inattention, the supposed inability of youth to understand adults, and vice versa.
