There is great challenge in preparing pupils for the time when they will be leaving Sunday School at age twenty.
Many thoughts come to the teacher. For example: "Has the teaching given the pupils real preparation for this forward step?" Sometimes there is, on the teacher's part, a concern that what they have learned will not continue to benefit the departing pupils. This is the time to rely fully on divine Truth, the source of the teaching. The truth that has come from God cannot suddenly be cut off or rendered inadequate —any more than God Himself can be obliterated.
When the teacher prays, "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord," Ps. 19:14; his thought is turned to the direction and inspiration of the divine Mind, God. When the weekly Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly is thoroughly researched by the teacher and the class, the needs of the class emerge. Then inspired thoughts come to the pupils and the teacher. Everyone shares and grows. The teacher can have confidence that the good work done in the class will continue to bless everyone.
A teacher heard a college student say, during class discussion, "Whenever I have a problem to work out, it always comes back to my true identity." He was referring to his spiritual, real being as God's idea. She felt sure that his feet were firmly planted on the rock, Christ, and that he recognized the truth of perfect God and perfect man as the basis of demonstration in Christian Science.
The urge to anxiously orient the work of the class to meet the needs of those soon to be leaving can, if one is not careful, become a matter of mere human will and outlining. But knowing the infinitude of God's love and care, knowing that divine Mind sustains its ideas now and forever, removes the temptation to feel that the young people are leaving guidance behind. If the guidance has been primarily personal, this might be true. But our inspired trust in Truth assures us that instead of leaving God's guidance behind, the pupils are stepping out into the safety of a larger understanding of inexhaustible good. They will be able to apply what they've learned.
Sometimes questionings present themselves to the teacher: "Will this pupil really go forward in Christian Science? If he has not already joined a branch church and The Mother Church, will he? Does he realize his place in spreading the truth for the healing of all mankind?" If he has been taught correctly and has learned to love God and rely on Him for his daily support and happiness, there need be no fear, and the teacher can refuse to entertain doubts.
I have been able to support with confidence the departure of pupils by knowing their oneness with their Father-Mother God and refusing to think of them as mortals. Instead, I have been able to see clearly that God is with them always, because they are His perfect expression.
In one instance a woman who had been a pupil in Sunday School thirty years before called from another city and came to see me. She was going through a difficult time. During the two hours we talked, her words "I remembered that I had learned in Sunday School . . ." were often repeated. What she had learned had been like a light to keep her on the path to Truth and healing; these ideas had never left her. It was encouraging to see the light of Truth begin to take over again, supplying her need.
Those of us who wish we might have had the privilege of attending a Christian Science Sunday School can use the lessons we've learned as adults to support, with prayer, love, and service, that activity which was so important to Mrs. Eddy. Whether in the beginning class or in the growing stages of human experience when the pupil steps out to use his own understanding, the teacher's love and wise foresight can support his every forward step. The final sessions can be a time of hope and confidence for teacher and pupil. The good they have shared can be the basis for a continuing friendship that will support the recognition of infinite good and universal Love.
So, we can view these final sessions not as a last step but as the first step into greater usefulness and fulfillment. There is higher spiritual education still to come by means of individual study and demonstration and class instruction in Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy envisioned the power of the Christ in action in the thought and lives of the spiritually childlike when she addressed her Church: "Beloved children, the world has need of you,—and more as children than as men and women: it needs your innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontaminated lives. You need also to watch, and pray that you preserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not through contact with the world. What grander ambition is there than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to know that your example, more than words, makes morals for mankind!" Miscellaneous Writings, p. 110.
