LIBRARY
OF THE
University of California.
Class
Sunday-School Problems
A Book of Practical Plans for Sun-
day-School Teachers and Officers
By AMOS R. WELLS
Author of** Sunday- School Success, ' " Three Tears with
the Children" ** Studies in the Art of Illustration,
etc.
W. A. WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON AND CHICAGO
RAL
Copyright, 1905,
By W. A. Wilde Company,
All rights reserved.
Sunday-School Problems.
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London.
S Vis* o
W 4-
PREFACE
If you are looking in this book for a systematic treat-
ment of the subject, for big words and philosophical
analyses, I am afraid you will be disappointed.
But if you want to know what practical Sunday-school
workers have found helpful in solving the principal
problems of their work, I hope you will be aided by
these pages.
This book is a record of my thoughts and observations
on the Sunday school during the past seven years. Its
various chapters have already enjoyed, separately, a
wide reading. They have appeared in The New Cen-
taury Teacher^ The Sunday-School Times, The Pilgrim
cher (Congregational), The Baptist Teacher, Tlie
Westminster Teacher (Presbyterian), the publications of
the British Sunday-School Onion, and addresses before
various Sunday-school conventions, the American Bible
League, and the Religious Education Association.
Whatever may be said of those that discuss the Sun-
d.i y school from the outside, I am sure that the actual
teachers of the Sunday school are interested far less in
theories and criticisms and profound disquisitions on
"the Sunday-school movement," than in the very humble
4 PREFACE
but infinitely important question, how to get Bible wis-
dom into Tom Jones and Susie Brown. This book says
nothing, I believe, about " the Sunday-school movement."
It is just about Tom and Susie.
Amos R. Wells.
Boston.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. HOW TO GET HOME STUDY 7
II. THE LAST FIVE MINUTES 16
III. WHAT TO DO WITH BACKWARD SCHOLARS . ■ . 22
IV. WHAT TO DO WHEN THE LESSON HOUR IS CUT
SHORT 27
V. THE GOOD OF GOALS 34
VI. WHAT TO DO W HII THE DISORDERLY SCHOLAR, 43
VII. is mi; GOLDEN tex I 'WORTH WHILE? ... 52
VIII. tin: teacher's MANNER 57
IX. A GOOD SUNDAY-SCHOOL PATCH 63
X. WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ATTENDANCE WANES, 68
\i. THE HOY OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL 79
\n. THOSE notices 86
XIII. Ill I : SWING OF THE SCHOOL 93
XIV. THi: PEDAGOGIC VALUE OF FUN 97
XV. L TEACHES BY POST 108
XVI. THE SUPERINTENDENT'S BLACKBOARD ... 116
XVII. THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AS AN AVOCATION . . 124
XVIII. HOW TO BUILD UP THE ADULT BIBLE CLASS, 132
\ IX. WH VT TO DO Willi HIE HARDER LESSONS . . 141
XX. THE BIBLE IN THE GLASS 150
\\l. PATRIOTISM IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL ... 158
xxil. "SUNDAY-SCHOOLY" 164
5
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIII. CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY
SCHOOL 173
XXIV. CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES 198
XXV. THE LESSON PERSPECTIVE 207
XXVI. THE SUPERINTENDENT THAT NEEDS A
MUZZLE 213
XXVII. "PEARLS BEFOUL swim;" 218
XXVIII. THE CLASS NUCLEUS 222
XXIX. WHAT TO DO WITH " THE HIGHER CRIT-
ICISM" 225
XXX. THAT EASILY POSSIBLE TEACH ERS' MEETING, 238
XXXI. THE RIGHT BAIT 247
XXXII. HOW TO USE DECISION DAY 250
XXXIII. BIBLE-MARKING IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL . 25(1
XXXIV. HOW TO INSPIRE LOVE FOR THE BIBLE . . 261
XXXV. PENCIL AM) PAPER 268
XXXVI. WORKING WITH THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SO-
CIETY 27;}
XXXVII. WHY no WE TEACH IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL! 277
XXXVIII. HOW TO TELL A BIBLE STORY 284
INDEX 295
SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
CHAPTER I
HOW TO GET HOME STUDY
What complaint is most frequently heard from the
Sunday-school teacher ? Undoubtedly this : " I can't get
my scholars to study at home." And that is a pretty
serious complaint, if the teacher desires to teach, and
not merely to lecture; to educate, not harangue. Of
course, much good may be done the scholars, and the school
is well worth while, though Bibles are never opened at
home, and ail the class learns about the lesson is what
their teacher tells them ; but Sunday-school efficiency is
doubled or quadrupled if home study prepares a founda-
tion on which the teacher can build.
Creating an Appetite.— Nor is the object of home study
merely to gain information ; that is where many teachers
fail in their efforts to obtain it. One important function
of home work is to create a zest, an appetite, for the
work of the school. No teacher will persuade his
scholars to study the lesson by scolding them. In some
way, home study must be made attractive. The element
of play must enter it. We have none of the imperative
motives which the secular schools can bring to bear upon
their students, but must make up the lack by ingenuity
and skill.
7
8 SUNDAY SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Plan for It. — It is essential, then, that the Sunday-
school teacher plan carefully for the home study of his
scholars, as carefully as for his own work in the class.
Every week he should present some device, not al-
ways, though often, a different one. Beginning with
slight, easy tasks, let him go on to more difficult work;
but from the start — and here is where many teachers
fail — it must be something quite definite, and something
that is evidently worth while, no mere answering of a
set of leading questions.
Follow It Up.— Any attempt to bring about home
study will be useless unless it is followed up, regularly
and persistently. Call for the results of it the first thing,
at the beginning of every lesson. While home study is
becoming a habit, it would be worth while to give each
scholar a postal card, on which, the middle of the week,
he will send the teacher a report of his work. A record
of the scholars' faithfulness in this regard should be kept
explicitly. Indeed, it will help greatly if this matter is
recognized each Sunday in the secretary's report to the
school, so that the scholars may know how many have
studied at home the past week, and for what average and
aggregate time, and what improvement is being made.
At the end of the year, if such home work as I shall sug-
gest is carried out, the school will have ample material
for a notable exhibit, interesting to the entire church,
and a fine advertisement for Bible-study.
Helps. — It is useless to require home study until the
scholars have Bibles ; and almost useless unless the Bibles
are of clear, large type. If they are the Revision, the
scholars' pathway will be wonderfully smoothed. But
HOW TO GET HOME STUDY 9
they will also need the helps that come with a teacher's
Bible, especially the atlas, the references, and the index.
As to the concordance, that feature in a teacher's Bible
is so condensed as to be more of an aggravation than an
aid. By all means, every scholar that can afford a full
concordance and a Bible dictionary should be induced to
purchase them. For the others, a little class library may
be kept in the most easily accessible place, and there
should be found not only the books already mentioned,
but good commentaries on the portion of Scripture the
school is studying.
Does any one demur at the cost of this ? Remember,
the books will answer for years, and it is as foolish to at-
torn pt Biblical studies without text-books as to send your
children to the secular schools without grammar, arith-
metic, and geography.
Instruction in the use of these helps must be given.
Few scholars know how to use the concordance or Bible
index, or on what map of the atlas to look for a certain
place, or even how to get the most out of their regular
lesson helps. An entire session of the school might prof-
itably be spent by the teacher in giving this necessary
instruction and drill.
Plain Directions. — It is hardly possible to be too ex-
plicit in giving directions for home study. Fix a reg-
ular time for this work, so that each of the class may
know that, when he sits down for his daily ten or fifteen
minutes with the lesson, all the other members of the
class, so far as possible, are at the same task. And give
the scholars written programmes for their study, as : —
1. Intervening events and lesson proper (Bible.)
10 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PK01JLEMS
2. Place (atlas).
3. Time (lesson help).
4. Persons (Bible dictionary).
5. Events (commentary).
0. Teachings (lesson helps, etc.).
7. Scripture light (Bible index).
One of these points may be taken up on each of the
seven days of the week, and the lesson may be studied
in this order in the class. Such a programme, however,
soon grows monotonous, and the scholars will become
able to do this fundamental work more rapidly, leaving
time, at home and in class, for more attractive advanced
work such as I shall indicate.
If possible, interest the parents in this home study.
Nothing will better promote the success of your class.
In any event, it is an admirable plan for you, once each
week, to* study the lesson with one of your scholars, tak-
ing them in turn. Not only will you thus give them the
most needed intellectual help, but you will get closer to
their spiritual needs than in any other way. In addition,
it will be a delightful stimulus if the scholars themselves
meet occasionally at one of their homes, for an evening of
study together.
Specimen Studies. — The nature of the special home
studies, which are to add zest to your routine work, de-
pends, of course, on what part of the Bible you are study-
ing. If, for example, you are entering upon the life of
Saul, set your class to preparing historical charts, show-
ing the Hebrew kings in order, at distances proportioned
to the lengths of their reigns. If you are beginning the
life of Christ, interest your scholars in constructing
HOW TO GET HOME STUDY 11
charts which will show in order all the recorded events
of his life.
If the lessons lie in the Psalms, get the class to go
through the entire book, prefixing a title to each Psalm,
or classifying the Psalms under a few suitable heads,
such as " Psalms of Praise." The lesson may be one of
the miracles. Then have the scholars make a list of the
Bible miracles that are akin to it, such as all miracles
of healing. A parable may be the lesson theme. In
that case the class may be set to writing paraphrases;
or, if any are capable of the feat, they may be asked to
tell the story in original verse.
A quarter's lessons lie in Genesis. Ask the scholars to
read the entire book, finding a keyword for each chap-
ter. A lesson from Proverbs may contain a maxim re-
garding money. Induce the scholars to collect the rest
of the proverbs that discuss the use of wealth. The
choice of the twelve disciples is the theme. Obtain, from
this home study, lists of events and savings which will
exhibit all that the New Testament tells us concerning
each disciple.
Give your work an air of completeness, of finality.
For instance, with the first temperance lesson of the
year let each scholar get (or make) a blank book, in
which he will copy, during the four temperance lessons
of the year, all that the Bible says on this theme. Or,
you are beginning the lessons in the life of Samuel. Get-
ting other blank books, the scholars will proceed to com-
pile, as they go on, their own biographies of the great
judge, gathering up whatever the Bible or the lesson
helps Bay about him. In the same way the class will
12 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
make their own lives of Paul, putting in an account of
each Epistle at the time when it was written. Some
lessons taken from the minor prophets will give rise to
another little book, one page being devoted to each
of the twelve, the Bible dictionaries being ransacked for
all known facts of their lives. At another time, as you
draw near to the end of a series of Old Testament studies,
the order may be: Prepare a list of all the principal
characters of the Old Testament, in their chronological
order.- In such ways the scholars will be made to feel
that they are actually achieving something, completing
something.
One of the most profitable lines of home study is the
correlation of the Bible, illustrating Scripture with
Scripture, making the scholars familiar with the Bible
as a whole and not merely with the fragments on their
lesson leaves. Thus a lesson from a Bible address, such
as that of Moses in Deuteronomy or that of Paul on
Mars Hill, will suggest a study of all the orations of the
Bible; and this study will extend over several Sabbaths,
to be followed, at intervals, by similar studies of Bible
poems, Bible letters, and the like. Similarly, the lesson
on Elijah's ravens will bring about a search for Bible
birds; and other lessons will lead you to study Bible
fishes, trees, mountains, children, mothers, brothers,
rivers, and like topics almost without end. With older
scholars the object of exploration may be more ethical,
and they may be asked to illustrate the main teaching of
the next lesson, for instance, by three passages from
other parts of the Bible. Or, for work with a still wider
range, ask the scholars to bring in next Sunday, each of
HOW TO GET HOME STUDY 13
them, a set of ten references obtained from reference
Bibles and appropriate to the various sections of the
lesson, the class to select, by vote, the references that
seem on the whole to be the best. By such contrivances
as these, frequently varied, you may attach your week's
lesson to the rest of the Bible, and make your scholars
feel that the entire sixty-six books are one Book.
As the teacher earnestly plans for home study, a great
number of devices will occur to his mind. One of the
best of these is Bible marking. Some simple system of
indicating the subjects of verses, such as by significant
letters in the margin,— P for prayer, S for sin, SI for
salvation, — prove sufficient to interest your scholars in
hunting up correlated texts, and making their Bibles
books that can be used.
Occasionally let the teacher prepare a set of questions
on the lesson, a set quite full and difficult. Using some
manifolding device, prepare a copy for each scholar, as a
guide and stimulus to homo study. Occasionally, too,
Mid perbaps better, get the scholars themselves to pre-
pare at home sets of questions on the coming lesson,
sending them to you by Friday, that you may use the
questions on the coming Sunday.
Sometimes, at the beginning of the year, perhaps, let
the teacher give each member of his class a blank book,
saying, "This is your Duty Book. I want you to write
out in it, each week, in the course of your home study, a
statement of the duty or duties the lesson inculcates,
l.ring these books to the class, so that we may compare
notes."
Many classes will be interested in making their own
14 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Bible commentaries. For this purpose they will need a
lot of blank paper of uniform size. Cutting out the
lesson text from their lesson leaves or quarterlies, they
will paste it on one of these sheets, writing beneath
whatever explanation is needed, prefixing verse numbers
to each point taken up. They will be interested in this
work in proportion as they are faithful to it, and see it
growing till it promises to cover the whole Bible.
If you have many lessons from a single book, as from
one of the Gospels, get each scholar to print the name of
the book on a blank book, and write inside a running
analysis of the chapters. Be sure to have in each book
a title page and a preface, the latter to contain an ac-
count of the author and the circumstances under which
the book was written.
Sometimes ask the class to bring, written out, analyses
of the current lesson made under the following heads :
Time; Place; Connection; Chief person ; Subordinate
persons: Chief event; Subordinate event; Chief teach-
ing; Subordinate teaching. Use this order in the class
discussion.
Often let a review be part of the home study. To
insure this you might ask the class, for instance, to write
out, and hand or send to you during the week, a full
statement of the teachings of the lesson just studied.
I do not think that acrostics are generally practically
helpful, though if the scJioI<irs themselves pr<j>'ii> them
they will promote home study. I do believe, however, in
the preparation of diagrams showing the succession of
historical events, reigns of kings, and the like, and espe-
cially do I believe in home-made maps; for example, a
HOW TO GET HOME STUDY 15
map showing Christ's journeys, a different color for each
journey, the events being indicated by numbers with
marginal explanations ; or a similar map for Paul's jour-
neys, or one for the various travels and events of Moses'
life, or one for the various exiles.
Quite a different line of work, promotive of home
study, is the search for illustrations of the lesson truths.
It may be a temperance lesson ; send the class to study
the newspapers for illustrations. At other times urge
them to bring you illustrations from biography, history,
tin.* annuls of missions.
Bible scrap-books will prove useful in stimulating
home study. They will be receptacles for maps and
diagrams, for all pictures illustrating the Bible, and for
photographs of famous paintings of Biblical subjects.
If there is a place for such a collection it is astonishing
how rapidly it will grow, and interest in it will grow
with equal rapidity.
I have named a variety of methods for promoting
home stmlv, and yet I have only begun ; for, like any
other line of endeavor, skill in this work and abundance*
of plans are the fruit of sincere attempts and persistency.
We can obtain home study if we want it, and if we will
add to our desires a measure of ingenuity, energy, and
perseverance.
CHAPTER II
THE LAST FIVE MINUTES
In many Sunday schools it is the custom to ring a sig-
nal bell five minutes before the close of the teaching.
Whether he like it or not, that bell marks a crisis in the
teacher's work. The test of his teaching has come. Now
or never he must manage those finishing touches which
in the case of his pedagogic effort, as of a statue or a
poem, ally it to the endless years, or, failing, send it to
the refuse heap of all poor work.
How Not to Do It. — Those precious five minutes must
never be spent on Sunday-school mechanics, — collecting
the pennies, making announcements, distributing the li-
brary books or papers. These should all have been cleared
out of the way.
Nor should this climactic time be spent upon any minor
detail of the lesson. No matter what interesting fact
you leave out, no matter what bright anecdote or telling
point you omit, go at once to the main teaching of the
lesson, and during those five minutes drive it home.
Yet you will not succeed if you allow an uneasy sense
of hurry to dissipate your attention and that of your
scholars. They must not be made to feel, " Only five
minutes more ! " but, " Now for the best ! " If anything,
proceed more deliberately than before, since a sense of
leisure is necessary for the wisest teaching and the surest
learning.
16
THE LAST FIVE MINUTES 17
Especially, have a carefully matured plan for those last
five minutes. If the half-hour's teaching has given you
a sudden inspiration for your close, and you are certain
it is worth following, follow it ; but such inspirations are
far more likely to come if you are prepared against their
not coming. For instance, just when that warning bell
rings, some anecdote appropriate to the lesson will catch
the attention of your scholars and withdraw it from the
thought of time ; but you must have it ready in reserve,
as a part of your lesson plan.
Not with Homilies. — The most common use of the last
five minutes is in exhortation. That is almost always a
mistake. Restless with the half-hour's steady thought,
the class will not be appreciative of sermonettes. It is
necessary, if you would hold their attention, to give them
something to do. If you can set them to work, and
make their own activity of hand and mind draw to-
gether the lesson thoughts into some rememberable whole,
you will have set a worthy and workmanlike seal on your
teaching. It seemed to me that I could not furnish more
tical help in this chapter than by suggesting perhaps
a dozen ways of doing this.
1. Give each member of the class a slip of paper, and
ask them to sum up the teaching of the lesson in a single
word— or in two words, three, or ten, as seems best.
After all are done, each will read his summary, and you
will state which seems the best, and why.
2. Place on the blackboard — and always a large block
of paper will answer, if you have no blackboard — some
symbol of the lesson. It may be a diagram, a simple
picture, a mere acrostic. Explain it briefly ; then hand
18 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
out pencils and paper and have the symbol copied, and
the copies taken home as souvenirs of the lesson. If the
paper you give out for this purpose is heavy, and neatly
cut into some pretty shape, it will be more likely to be kept.
3. Distribute among the scholars brief quotations from
well-known writers bearing on the great truth of the les-
son. These will be read aloud one by one,' and you will
comment, very briefly, on each.
4. Get the class to question you on the events of the
lesson, and urge them to press in the queries as rapidly
as possible, while you make your answers brisk and brief.
At the close, you yourself will ask the one important
question, forcing home the lesson truth upon their con-
sciences.
5. Show the class some beautiful picture previously
concealed, such a picture as llolman Hunt's" The Shadow
of the Cross." Get them to tell you what idea is brought
out by the artist.
6. A very impressive method of closing is to give each
scholar a personal note, fitting the lesson to his special
need. Have these notes read in silence, and then ask
that all heads be bowed while you offer a short closing
prayer.
7. Every teacher should have his own collection of
poems, especially chosen for their helpfulness in illustrat-
ing Scripture themes. Choosing from this collection the
one best adapted to impress the lesson of the hour, place
it in large script before the class, or dictate it line by
line, while they copy it. Ask them to commit it to
memory at home, and be sure at the next meeting of the
class to have the poem recited.
THE LAST FIVE MINUTES 19
S. Prepare a set of questions covering the ground of
the lesson. Make them as crisp and interesting as possi-
ble. Write them in plain, large script on a big sheet of
paper, which you will hang before the class as soon as
the five-minute bell rings. Furnish the scholars with
pencils and paper, and bid them see who can answer cor-
rectly the most of the questions before the close of the
five minutes.
9. Print or write on a large sheet of paper some
beautiful hymn or some fine prose quotation suitable to
the lesson. Unroll it suddenly and place it before the
class. Say a word about the author, if you know any
fact of his life that adds force to the extract. Then get
the class to read the quotation in concert, softly, and
again and again, till the thought has thoroughly entered
their minds. Close with silent prayer, all heads bowed,
the petition being that God will make that truth a part
of their lives.
10. Having determined what central teaching you
wish to impress, examine carefully the past week of your
life, and see if you have not had some experience which
illustrates that truth. Study in the same way your
scholars' lives, so far as you know them or can imagine
them, and search out similarly illuminating experiences.
Recall the news of the week, with the purpose of dis-
covering some prominent event that brings out the main
teaching of the lesson. From one or more of these
sources you can doubtless glean an anecdote that will
rivet the attention of the class for these concluding five
minutes, and fasten the lesson truth in their minds better
than a half-hour's homily.
20 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
11. Teachers, especially of the younger classes, should
make collections of well-told stories that point useful
morals. They will serve as standing models for the
teacher's style, and also will help by direct use. ('hous-
ing one of these that is suitable, spend the last live
minutes in reading it before the class (or get one of the
class to read it), asking the scholars to listen intently
and write out their remembrance of the story as soon as
they get home. Give them stamped and directed envel-
opes in which to mail to you these stories during the
week, that you may examine them and read the best
before the class on the next Sabbath.
12. Appoint one member of the class to take your
place in front, and submit to be questioned on the lesson
by all the class. As soon as he misses a question, appoint
another to take his place, and so on. As the live min-
utes draw near their close, tell the class that you also
want to ask a question, the most important question of
all ; and then proceed briefly to bring out, by a single
heart-searching query, the truth you wish chiefly to
impress.
13. All of the foregoing plans elicit the interested
cooperation of the class; but you will gain and hold
their attention very effectively if you can persuade some
good speaker to "drop in" on the class just as the warn-
ing bell rings, and talk to your scholars for five minutes
on the topic which you have made your central theme.
The class will accept a homily from a fresh speaker when
the}' would not accept it from you.
It will be seen that, if you are to make such thorough
plans for these last five minutes, you must not be cheated
THE LAST FIVE MINUTES 21
of them. The superintendent must understand that for
no reason are they to be abbreviated. The warning bell
and the closing bell must come with most " dependable "
regularity.
The ideal use of these five minutes will do five things,
— one for each minute. 1. It will grip your scholars'
attention, and hold it in defiance of all distractions.
2. It will concisely review the lesson. 3. It will bring
it to a climax, a rememberable point. 4. It will apply
this central truth to the heart- life of the scholars. 5. It
will send them away stimulated, pleased, and wanting
to come again. Thus treated, the last five minutes will
be the eagerly anticipated crown of the entire session.
Indeed, I might fittingly compare these final five min-
utes to the arrow-head with its barbs, whereby the arrow
makes a permanent conquest. And if I have given too
complicated directions for fashioning the arrow-head, I
hasten to remind the teacher that only one method, or
even a part of one method, is to be applied at once, and
continued till it becomes easy and familiar. Your last
five minutes may not be pedagogically perfect; but if
you realize their importance and do your best, they will
grow constantly in attractiveness and force; and, any-
way, even a clumsy arrow-head is better than a headless
arrow.
CHAPTER III
WHAT TO DO WITH BACKWARD SCHOLARS
The backward scholar is the teacher's test. If the
teacher brings the backward scholar forward, he is the
teacher's triumph. " What thank have ye" if ye make
only bright scholars learn? "What do ye more than
others ? "
Sympathy. — I suppose the first requirement, if a teacher
would help a backward scholar, is that he be sympathetic.
You cannot greatly help any scholar, still less a dull one,
until you believe in him, and show him that you believe
in him. Remember Sir Walter Scott, and all the rest of
the long line of brilliant men and women who were
stupid children. Recognize diversities of gifts, and re-
member that not all children are cast in the same mold.
Courage will be half of progress for the backward
scholar, and your courage will be more than half of his.
Comradeship.— Though you are on terms of comrade-
ship with no others of your class, you must be on such
terms with the dull scholar. Your immediate pleasure
would lead you to have more to do with the more at-
tractive pupil, so that you will need to be on your guard
here. Your personal leadership must move the back-
ward scholar forward, and he will not follow your
leading unless he likes you.
And so it is a good plan to invite the less ready scholar
to your own house, to study the lesson with you ; or, go
22
WHAT TO DO WITH BACKWARD SCHOLARS 23
to his house for this partnership study. You can show
hi in how to study better in this way than any other, and
that is the first thing he has to learn. Besides, with
every such lesson you can »come into more intimate
acquaintance with him.
. Along this line, however, the aid of some one of his
own age will be wortli more than yours. Children quite
invariably learn more readily from one another than
from their elders — a principle too often left out of sight
in secular as well as religious instruction. And so, if
you can naturally bring it about, get the brighter scholars
to study the lessons with the duller ones. To show them
how, have at your home occasional jolly "study bees"
for the whole class, and then for some weeks set them to
studying two by two, the duller with the brighter so far
as you can arrange it, the younger with the older.
There is one great advantage in going to the back-
ward scholar's home to study with him, — you thus
become familiar with his home surroundings. Many a
poor scholar could be transformed into an excellent one
if you could obtain the cooperation of his parents. No
teacher can work very long in the homes of his scholars
without waxing zealous for a home department of the
Sunday school. Establish such a department, make a
special effort to obtain the membership of the duller
scholars' parents, persistently urge the study of the lesson
as a united family, and as by magic your stupid scholars
will be changed into earnest and effective pupils.
I have spoken about the need of sympathy with- the
backward scholar, such sympathy as this intimate knowl-
edge will beget. A backward scholar should never be
24 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
scolded, in the class or out of it. He should never bo
told that he is backward, lie should never be allowed
even himself to admit that his abilities are less than his
comrades'. Progress will be made through a feeling, not
of inferiority, but of power. If you want your scholars
to work you must till them, not with shame, but with
interest.
Begin with His Best Point. — Find out, therefore, what
the backward scholar can do most easily and well, and
develop that first. Get him to help you make ready for
teaching the lesson. He may be a good penman. Get
him to copy out the little question slips or outline slips
you hand each scholar as a guide to the next week's
study. He may be a fair reader. Find some interesting
paragraph or brief article or poem on the lesson, or some
phase of it, and have him read it before the class, pre-
viously reading it at home. He may enjoy drawing and
be measurably expert at it. Set him to preparing some
diagram or chart or map for you, or even, if he is suffi-
ciently skilful, get him to copy a picture of some Biblical
landscape. He may have many friends. Interest him
in the work of obtaining new scholars. He may be ready
of speech. Ask him to exhibit to the class a picture or a
series of pictures in some book, accompanying them with
running comments.
Set Him Definite Tasks. — Give him a single question to
study during the week and answer the next Sunday.
Assign to him a single verse of the lesson, and tell him
that you and the class will look to him, and to him alone,
for information on that verse. Give him a single anecdote
or other illustration of the lesson theme, and ask him to
WHAT TO DO WITH BACKWARD SCHOLARS 25
read it or tell it,' and apply it to the lesson. Have him
write out the lesson story in his own words, and read
this paraphrase as an introduction to the next Sunday's
study.
Form a definite aim in your own mind for the backward
scholar, some little goal in view, the actual attainment of
which will comfort you with assurance of progress.
Tli is goal may be his mastery of a simple outline of the
quarter's history, his grasp of a single great truth from
the quarter's lessons, his retention of the main facts of a
single life, or his ability to take part in a single phase of
the class work. Tell him what is your aim for him.
Devise some ledger or form of account by which he can
measure and record his growth from Sabbath to Sabbath.
In estimating him never judge him by others, but by
himself, bearing distinctly in mind his initial dulness,
and judging his advance from that.
Especially, praise the backward scholar just as soon as
you honestly can, and just as much and as frequently as
you honestly can. Praise is the sunshine to his growing.
Get others to praise him also. Show them the map he
has drawn, the chart he has made, the little essay he has
written ; and if he is not present, be sure to repeat to him
their commendation.
In all your class work with the backward scholar,
put yourself in his place. Try to imagine his mental
gm pings. For his sake be very clear, even on points
that seem to you to be self-evident. The fullest of ex-
planations and the most persistent of reviews will not be
an injury to the rest of the class. Many children seem
to know more than they actually, on thorough exam-
2<> SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
ination, do know ; and the presence of backward scholars
may thus become a blessing to the brightest students.
For this reason, especially, I would not transfer the
dull scholar to a lower class, however clear it is that an
error was made in placing him where he is. His Bible
study may be spoiled for life by the shame of such a
lowering in rank. Of course, I would not retain a back-
ward scholar where his presence would seriously retard
the progress of others, but, in our flexible Sunday-school
work, that need never be feared.
It may be an advantage, however, to try another teacher
with your backward scholar, and with that end in view
it would be well to effect an exchange of classes, some
Sunday, with some teacher quite different from yourself.
She may discover the secret of your failure, if you have
failed, and be able to suggest to you ways of developing
the child that you would never have thought of. In the
same spirit, the day-school teacher should be consulted,
and from his course with the backward scholar, and his
fuller knowledge, born of longer observation than your
poor hour a week can give you, he will be able very
certainly to aid you in your difficult task. Humility is
one of the true teacher's prime virtues, — the willingness
to learn from others.
Indeed, is any price, of lowliness, painstaking, or
patience, too great to pay for the awakening of an
immortal soul ? And when the end is gained, and the
backward scholar has become a good Bible student,
skilled in Christian truth and even able to lead others,
will any road seem too long that you have traveled to
reach that goal ?
CHAPTER IV
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE LESSON HOUR IS CUT SHORT
One of the great advantages the secular schools possess
over the Sunday schools is their uniform teaching periods.
The secular teacher knows what time he has to develop
the lesson. He is not likely to be interrupted, and he is
certain that his time will not be cut short. Indeed, he
would not tolerate other conditions.
How Our Teaching Time is Cut Short. — In Sunday
schools, on the contrary, there are a number of causes
that may lessen the time for teaching. If the school is
held after the morning services, whatever prolongs them
will delay its opening, and part of the time thus lost is
likely to be taken out of the teaching period. The
scholars may be slow in arriving, or even the superintend-
ent may be late. The opening exercises may be unduly
prolonged by many causes. There may be some visitor,
who is asked to " make a few remarks " to the school ;
and " a few " is woefully indefinite ! There may be new
music to practise for a special occasion, and this time is
unwisely taken for the purpose. Your school may be
blessed (?) with a talking superintendent, who confuses
the superintendent's desk with a pulpit, and must have
his little homily though the proper business of the school,
the Bible lesson, is crowded out into the cold. Or, you
may have the dilatory superintendent, or the fussy
superintendent, or the drawling superintendent, any one
27
28 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
of whom is good for ten minutes a Sunday stolen from
the lesson hour. Finally, a threatening storm, or various
other causes, may cut short the hour at the end.
There is no excuse for most of these abbreviations of
the teaching time, and in the majority of cases the teach-
ers should provide against the recurrence of the abuse by
protests at the teachers' meeting or in private. Gen-
erally, the singing or other opening exercises should be
cut short rather than the lesson. Very seldom is it wise
to ask any one to address the school, and never should
any one that is destitute of the grace of brevity be given
such an opportunity of disastrous dulness.
However, times will come when even the shrewdest
superintendent is obliged to cut short the lesson hour.
If he knows what is coming, he will give notice to the
teachers as long in advance as possible — on the previous
Sunday, or at the be^innin^ of the session. Sometimes
lie cannot do even this.
The problem, then, is a real perplexity. The difficulty
is one that spoils many lessons in many schools. No one
plan is adequate to meet it, but I must name many
points which the teacher should bear in mind in this
emergency.
A Short Plan.— Of course, if advance notice is given,
the teacher can form a short plan for his lesson. He can
lay out a set of clear-cut questions. He can go through
them briskly. He may surprise himself with time to go
through them again.
Usually, however, there is no such notice, but, to your
dismay, the superintendent comes around, as you are just
fairly started, and says, "Sorry, but we'll have to close
WHEN THE LESSON HOUR IS CUT SHORT 29
in ten minutes," and is off to the next class. Then
what's to be done?
Be Cheerful. — Well, meet the emergency with a smile.
It is a notable test of your pedagogical resources. If
you can come forth victorious from a suddenly shortened
lesson hour, you can conquer almost any other difficulty
of the teacher's art.
Do not allow a feeling of dismay and of uselessness to
possess you. Do not say to yourself, "Only ten
minutes!" Say rather to yourself, " Now for six hun-
dred precious seconds ! " Unless the scholars already
know it, do not admit them into the secret that the
teaching time has been abbreviated. Certainly do not
let them guess it from your manner. Do not appear
hurried, for that will spoil the effect of your work.
Many a soul has been won for Christ in ten minutes.
For all we know, it required no longer than that to win
each of the twelve apostles. Ten minutes — why, they are
■ .small eternity !
Your " At Least."— Just the same, in spite of philoso-
phy, it is far better to have your course of procedure
thoroughly mapped out beforehand. And so I think
that every lesson should be studied by the teacher with a
view both to a long plan and to a short plan. That is,
every preparation a teacher makes should have an " at
least " section. So much, at least, must be taught— these
few facts, this one truth.
A lesson that is thus planned in sections need not be
taught in a scrappy way. Indeed, it is much more
likely to be presented as a well-balanced whole. You
will have gained that sense of proportion which is so
30 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
large a part of wise teaching. You will have recognized
the essentials of the lesson, and placed them in their
rightful supremacy over the incidentals. For instance,
you will not be likely, in teaching about the woman who
touched the hem of Christ's garment, to spend half the
lesson time in discussing the fashion of Oriental robes.
Recognize Limitations. — It is a great thing for a
teacher to recognize limitations, and not try to do more
than under the circumstances oan be well done. Here
are scholars more or less ignorant and stupid. Here is a
lesson more or less beyond their comprehension. Here
are distractions around them. Here is a cramped recita-
tion period. It will save you a deal of discouragement
and will render your teaching far more effective if you
will plan your lesson simply, with only one or two clear-
cut, easily attained ends in view ; in other words, if you
will plan it for a possible cutting short of the lesson
hour.
Just Three Points. — And so I would have a regular
schedule, an " at least " schedule, for each lesson. Three
points. Three points only. First, just what happened.
Second, the effect of this happening on the principal
characters and on history. Third, what it all has to do
with our own lives. The routine work — taking the
collection, making the record of attendance, perhaps
even the distribution of the papers — I would have clone
at the very beginning of the lesson hour, and out of the
way. Then I would plunge at once, first into the review,
and then into the three fundamentals of the new les-
son, just as I have outlined them.
After these three points have been presented, and you
WHEN THE LESSON HOUR IS CUT SHORT 31
are sure the class have mastered them thoroughly, take
up the subordinate points, — the details of customs that
are not essential to an understanding of the main points,
the non-essential phrases and sentences in the text that
require explanation, and the minor applications to modern
life. This would be an anticlimax ? Yes, if you should
stop here; but a few minutes should always be left at
the end of the lesson, that you may bring up again the
central teaching, and send your scholars away with that
ringing in their heads.
Such experiences as this article refers to are likely to
make one understand the advantages of written questions.
I do not mean the printed questions on the lesson
leaves, though those are far better than they used to be ;
but I mean your very own questions, carefully thought
out, framed with brightness and variety, and precisely
adapted to the needs of your class. Though I should al-
ways write out such questions, for it is the best of prac-
tice, I should not ordinarily read them ; but if you have
in your pocket such a list of questions, how fine they will
be to fall back upon when the demand comes for a swift
close of the lesson ! Whip them out, introduce them
with eclat as a novel exercise, read them briskly, and
the class will be delighted with the change. Very likely
you will be able to go over the entire list a second
time before the superintendent summons the school to
close.
Come Quickly to the Point.— At any rate, whatever
method you adopt, get to the central point of the
lesson as soon as you can. (Not every teacher, alas !
knows what that central point is.) Whatever little
32 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
difficulties arise, whatever questions on non-essentials are
asked, postpone them to the end of the lesson or promise
to answer them after the session. Ask the hardest
questions of the brightest scholars. Expedite matters in
every way. Oil the wheels of the lesson.
But do not, for the sake of saving time, leave out the
little touches by which you hoped to get the lesson re-
membered. That striking illustration, that clear-cut dia-
gram, that illuminating picture, — be sure to get these in.
Don't leave the class with the skeleton of the lesson ;
clothe it with flesh and blood. Remember: there is ab-
solutely no use in teaching at all, except as your teaching
is remembered.
The Application to Life.— Therefore, be sure to make
the application. It is by the application that a lesson
goes, just as it is by the applied postage stamp that a let-
ter goes. It is never enough to get a lesson into the
head — that is what the secular schools do ; you must get
it into the heart, if yours is to be a Sunday school.
For there is no Bible lesson, no matter how hurried
and brief, but may save a soul. Plan every week for
that blessed end. Expect it every week. Remember
how that discouraged minister came to Spurgeon and
complained because after years of preaching he could
point to only three or four converts. " Why, man
alive ! " exclaimed the modern apostle, " you don't
expect to save a soul every time you preach, do you?"
"Why, no, of course not," answered the minister.
" That's why you don't," said Spurgeon.
So that, if you have the story of the brazen serpent to
teach, and less time than usual at your disposal, you will
WHEN THE LESSON HOUR IS CUT SHORT 33
of course be sure that your scholars have the outline of
the event, — where the Israelites were, whither they were
bound, what peril beset them, and how they were saved
from the peril; but you will not tarry long over the
route through the desert, or the exact kind of snakes that
bit the Israelites, for you will be eager to get to Christ,
who, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, has
been lifted up on the saving cross. You will give them
the drink of water, and then, if there is time, they may
examine the pattern of the glass.
Do Not Make a Ragged Stop.— That is one fault of
most abbreviated lessons. Round out your task in a
workmanlike manner. You may be discussing a trivial-
ity when the warning signal comes. Break off at once
and return to the great heart of the lesson. Let the last
words be of that resplendent truth.
But stop, anyway, when the rest of the school stops.
No truth you may be teaching is so valuable as the ex-
ample of prompt obedience.
And then, when you reach home, think it all over, see
just how you did it, and meditate how you may do it
better when next such an emergency arises. This retro-
spect and examination are well bestowed upon every
lesson, but they are doubly necessary and valuable when
the lesson hour has been cut short.
CHAPTER V
THE GOOD OF GOALS
When I went to college the military drill of the
students was conducted at one time by an irascible Ger-
man drill sergeant. He had no mercy, either on our
aching muscles or on our addled wits. He delighted in
tricks to trap the unwary. Well do I remember how he
would have us load our muskets, and then in measured,
sonorous tones would give the command :
" .Make ready — take aim "
Then he would pause. In the pause some heedless and
impatient gun would be sure to go olf. Outwardly dis-
gusted, but inwardly, I have no doubt, chuckling glee-
fully, our sergeant would growl:
" Vy don't you vinish aiming?"
Aimless Work. — That is a capital question for the
Sunday-school teacher to ask himself, often and emphat-
ically. So much of our Sunday-school work is aimless.
We fire loud-voiced rounds, but the bullets have no
billets. This chapter is to urge the establishment of goals,
and to indicate what some of those goals should be.
Every walker knows how much farther he can go, and
how much more easily, when he is walking somewhither
than when he is strolling aimlessly. Any worker knows
how gloriously his labor is promoted by a division into
stints. A chapter a day, for the writer, and the book
gets done. A seam a day for the busy housewife, and
34
THE GOOD OF GOALS 35
the dress gets readily made. One point a decade for the
statesman, and his nation advances to an empire. Divi-
sion of labor among workmen has accomplished miracles
of progress, but equally important is division of a task
for a single laborer.
The Satisfaction of Accomplishment.— And not only is
more work done when stints are measured off and goals
set up, but the work is done with more zest. We are not
stupefied by the leagues ahead, but the end of our pres-
ent journey is only a few rods distant. The mountain
has reduced itself to shovelfuls, the impossible has be-
come feasible. We leap and dance, for our work has be-
come play.
And after we have reached the goal, though we know
another goal is before us, what a pleasant sense of
achievement! Though what we have done is little, it is
done, it is behind us, it is not to be done over again. If
"nothing succeeds like success," it is also true that no
spur to fresh endeavor is equal to past accomplish-
ment.
One reason why so little homo study is done in prepa-
ration for Sunday-school lessons is because teachers so
seldom give their scholars definite objects for study. The
pupils are set down in a labyrinth, and no clew is
•d in their hands. They are willing, most of them ;
but even where there is a will there is not always a way,
or, at least, a visible one.
Say to your class : " Next Sunday I want each of you
to bring me a list of the twelve leading events in the life
of Elisha, and put them as nearly as you can in chrono-
logical order." Tell them where to read in Kings and
36 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PKOBLKMS
Chronicles, and you will have the best lesson on Elisha
you ever heard recited.
Say to your class : " Next Sunday we have the par-
able of the prodigal son. I want each of you to read it
carefully, and write out and bring in a statement of the
different lessons you think it teaches." Let them mark
the parable in their Bibles, to make sure they can find it.
Give them each a sheet of paper — a small sheet of paper
— on which the teachings of the parable are to be writ-
ten. You will be measurably sure of some thought on
that lesson, and of a good recitation.
Say to your class: "It's a temperance lesson next
Sunday. I think that, with a little study, you can bring
in complete lists of the Bible passages that teach temper-
ance." Show them how to use concordance and Bible
index, and tell them how fine it will be to finish one
Bible subject, actually to master it. You will touch
high-water mark in that temperance lesson.
Thus for each lesson you will set up a different goal, a
goal related to the very heart of the lesson, something
definite to be aimed at in the studying, and a clearly
marked road thither. There is no other way to get home
study than this ; there is no other way to get clear, brisk
recitations.
A Goal for Each Quarter.— At the beginning of every
quarter, as at the beginning of every week, a goal should
be set up. It will link all the lessons together with a
purposeful enthusiasm. It will make a rememberable
whole of what would otherwise be thirteen haphazard
pieces.
Let it be a feasible goal, not so easy as to require no
THE GOOD OF GOALS 37
effort, nor so difficult as to stupefy effort. It must be
ahead of the scholar, or it is no goal ; it must not be out
of reach, or again it is no goal.
For example, if you are studying the life of Christ, fix
as a goal the ability to name all the recorded events in
that life in chronological order. Few in the school, —
young or old — can now do this. Perhaps none. But the
task is well within the reach of all but the youngest.
Or, if all the quarter's lessons lie within one book of
the Bible, establish the purpose to give each chapter
of the book a title appropriate to the contents, and com-
mit these names to memory, with frequent drills in find-
ing, by the use of that key, any subject that is treated in
the book.
Or, if the lessons deal with the kings of Israel and
Judali, draw two parallel lines, and set up as your goal
that the class shall become able to mark off upon those
lines, in order, the reigns of the kings of the two king-
doms, giving each its appropriate length and marking
upon each the principal events in the history.
If you are studying the Acts or the Epistles, aim in
the same way to make an outline of events, inserting
each Epistle in its proper place in Paul's life.
The goal you set up will depend, of course, on the age
and ability of your class, whether it shall be near or far
away, and reached by an uphill road or a level. This,
however, will be true of all classes : that the quarter's
goal must be simple, definite, reachable, and touching all
the lessons at their central points.
So far as possible, let the quarter's goals of all the
classes be the same. Teachers and scholars can then
38 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
compare notes and spur one another on. School tests of
progress are possible, and pleasant emulation that is out
of the question where the goals are heterogeneous.
Definite Goals. — There is danger that in fixing on your
goal you will not make it clear to your own mind, and
therefore you cannot hope to make it clear to the minds
of the children. Write down in black and white what
the goal shall be. Write it out for your class as well as
for yourself. Go to the goal yourself, before you an-
nounce it, and examine every foot of the way thither,
just as a surveyor makes wljat he calls a "preliminary
reconnoissance " with pacing and pocket compass be-
fore he goes over the ground with chain and theodo-
lite.
Graphic Presentations. — This definiteness which is the
great gain of goals is distinctly enhanced b} T some graphic
presentation of the object in view. For example, if you
want the scholars to learn the events of Elijah's life, have
them make outline maps of Palestine, extended from
Zarephath to Sinai, and place figures 1, 2, 3, etc., at the
points that are the scenes of the successive events. Fre-
quent reviews, both with and without the maps, will fix
them in the memory.
Do not be afraid of tests, nor even of written examina-
tions If the scholars have actually made definite prog-
ress, they will be proudly eager to prove their gains-
Sunday schools will not balk at written examinations
when their work ceases to be chaotic and becomes syste-
matic.
Do not mistake a goal that you set up for yourself,
and think it is necessarily therefore your scholars' goal.
THE GOOD OF GOALS 39
Do not rest till they have adopted it with their interest
and desire.
Yes, even after this has happened, the teacher must
hold hifl class to I heir aim. Determinations easily flag.
There are many other goals to confuse, outside the Sun-
day school. The teacher must often be his scholars' per-
sistence. Do not allow the goal to fail out of sight a
single Sunday. Speak of it often. Advertise it ingeni-
ously. Insist upon it.
Especially, put into this goal-pursuit the zest of a game.
Sometimes you can wisely introduce friendly contests,
half the class against the other half. Sometimes you
can wisely offer a suitable reward, one that can be gained
by all who attain a certain standard of excellence. But
whatever spur you use, manifestly enjoy the work your-
self, and your scholars are quite certain to enjoy it with
you.
Cheer the young workers by noting the progress they
make all along the way. Interest their parents in the
endeavor the children are making, and get their help to-
ward the goal. And when the end is reached, arrange
some jubilee to signalize the achievement. Perhaps it
will be formal exercises on review day, with essays, and
with specially invited guests. Perhaps, if the goal has
meant the construction of maps or diagrams or the like,
it will be an exhibition of these where all the church may
see. The superintendent will announce to the school
what has been accomplished. The pastor may even re-
joice over it in his sermon.
Cumulative Goals.— The goals of successive quarters,
thus bravely won, should, if possible, themselves be
40 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
linked together. To this end a long look ahead must be
taken, over the lessons of an entire year. Select such
goals that the work may be cumulative. Fix on a suc-
cession of goals of cognate interest — historical, biograph-
ical, doctrinal — and thus bind the year's study into a unit.
This is not always possible ; but it is a fine thing where
it is possible.
Goals for the School.— Thus far the scholars in their
classes. But all I have said about the value of definite
goals and the wise way of seeking them, applies equally
well to the school as a whole. Whatever you wish the
school to achieve, superintendent, break it up into small,
precise tasks, and set them before the school as special
aims for accomplishment within given times.
These goals will be as diverse as the needs of the
schools. Perhaps it will be an endeavor to persuade all
to bring their Bibles to school. At the opening of every
session, then, have all the Bibles in the school held up,
while the class treasurers count them, and report their
number when the collection is reported. Announce the
number at the close of the school, with earnest comment
on the increase or decrease. Keep a blackboard notice
before the school, with figures on the point for a number
of Sundays. Stick to your aim till you are sure that all
the scholars have formed the habit of bringing their
Bibles ; then celebrate your triumph, and set up a new
goal.
That new goal may be a one hundred per cent, en-
largement of your school. Note the preciseness ; not an
enlargement, but a one-hundred-per-cent. enlargement, or
whatever detinite increase seems feasible. Place a va-
THE GOOD OF GOALS 41
cant chair by the side of each scholar, and let it remain
there until the scholar fills it with a recruit. Report
every Sunday the number of chairs filled for the first
time, and the number that remain to be filled. Draw on
the blackboard one hundred squares, and till them up
with white or red as each chair is tilled. And finally,
when all are occupied, hold a jubilee ! .
Perhaps your goal is promptness. You may give each
scholar a number, and number a series of badges arranged
on a board with hooks, that is placed at the entrance.
As each scholar enters he takes the badge bearing his
number, and pins it on. But the badges are removed as
soon as the school is opened, so that late coiners wear
no badge and are counted by the secretary. The badges
are collected in baskets as the scholars pass out. This is
continued till the happy month when, through all its
weeks, every scholar has worn the badge. Then you
celebrate your victory, and set up another goal.
There are many more goals for which the entire school
may strive, — that all may sing, that the contributions
may reach a certain average, that the library books may
be read to a certain extent, that a certain proportion of
scholars may be reported as having studied the lesson at
home at least an hour each v eek, that perfect order shall
immediately follow the superintendent's lifting of his
hand at the opening of the school, — ah, there are so
many ways in which our schools may be improved, so
many goals yet to reach !
Goals for Teachers and Officers.— Nor are these goals,
so useful for the scholars, one whit less valuable for
officers and teachers. That we will maintain a teachers,
42 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
meeting this year, and always be present when possible
— what a goal is that, crowned with what regal possi-
bilities ! That we will have regular cabinet meetings —
meetings of pastor, superintendent, and officers — another
magnificent goal. That every teacher will try to win
for Christ this year every scholar of his class — the best
goal of all.
And, finally, there are certain goals of the inner life
that must be set up in the heart of each man or woman
who is seeking Sunday school success. The goal of a
perfect motive — that I will come to do this thing, not
from a sense of duty nor with any selfish or half-selfish
aim, but solely because I love Christ and love his chil-
dren. The goal of preparation — that I will spend half
an hour a day on my lesson. The goal of personality—
that I will become a friend, an intimate, of each of my
scholars. The goal of a wider vision — that I will attend
so many Sunday-school conventions this year, read such
and such books and teachers' helps. The goal of peda-
gogy — that I will overcome this defect of manner, win
this grace or skill of the perfect teacher. Yes, yes; how
goal adds itself to goal, a new one blessedly rising to
view just as we reach the cynosure of past endeavor!
For it is the rule of the Christian life — this rule of goals.
It governs all progress along all lines of Christian effort.
Every goal is a golden milestone along the road to the
New Jerusalem. Therefore, " forgetting the things that
are behind, and reaching forward to the things that are
before, let us press toward each goal, for the prize of the
high calling of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
CHAPTER VI
WHAT TO DO WITH THE DISORDERLY SCHOLAR
If the teacher has disorderly scholars in his class, the
lesson is constantly perched on an active volcano. At
any moment there may be an explosion, and the lesson
will be torn to fragments or buried in debris. There is
BO assurance of either pleasure or profit in a class that is
subject to disorder. Yes, and if there is disorder in your
cl;t>s, there is not much hope for the class next to you.
If order is heaven's first law (as it is), it is certainly the
first law of that heavenly tiling, the Sunday school.
Disorder is always a result, for which, somewhere,
there is a cause. Don't doctor symptoms. Discover
what is at the bottom of the disorder, and remedy that.
The disorder may be due only to the overflowing
vitality of the boys and girls. In that case, take a leaf
from the secular schools and try a bit of calisthenics just
before the lesson is taught.
It may be due to bad air. Open the windows.
It may all spring from some mischievous scholar.
Quell him or expel him.
It may be due (more than likely — saving your pres-
ence — it m doe) to unskilful teaching. Then learn your
trade.
The Start. — Certainly, with almost no exceptions, an
interested class is an orderly one. Much depends upon
the way you start out, and no part of the lesson deserves
43
44 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
such careful planning as the first three sentences. If
you begin in a hesitant, apologetic, faint-hearted way,
you have thrown up your case at the outset. If you
begin with some surprising statement, or some brisk
question, or with the holding up of some object or pic-
ture, you will hook the most lively attention before it
has time to wriggle out of the way.
Much depends also on how you continue, after you
have thus started out. Keep things moving. Moving
objects hold the eye, and a lesson that progresses swiftly
(if not too swiftly) holds the mind. By careful prepara-
tion come to be at home in the lesson, so that you can
range through it with easy freedom. Get a goal, and
leap toward it. Your class will run eagerly alongside.
Much depends also upon the expression of your face.
A bright, quick eye, a mouth all ready to smile, a face
mobile to every changing thought and responsive to
every thought of the scholars, will attract and hold your
class. A putty face, heavy and listless, will put them to
sleep — or to mischief.
And much depends upon the voice, — whether it is rasp-
ing or flabby, or, perchance, is loving, cheery, and vibrant.
On the whole, the right kind of voice is the teacher's
most important exterior assistant. Some teachers can
do more with a restless class by the one word " Now "
(and any other word will do), than many teachers by a
half hour's exhortation.
Hand-Work. — Whatever qualities the teacher may pos-
sess, however, she must count as her best ally in the
preservation of order the scholars' own hands. Provide
some work for them. Hand-work affords usually the
WHAT TO DO WITH THE DISORDERLY SCHOLAR 45
best avenue for instruction, as well as the best remedy
for disorder.
This hand-work will vary, of course, with the lesson.
Sometimes it will be the copying of an outline map or
the drawing of a map from memory. Sometimes it will
be a diagram that is copied, or a tabular outline of the
lesson. Sometimes the teacher will read slowly a list of
questions that call for very brief answers, and the class
will be busied writing the answers. Sometimes, if your
scholars are old enough, they may be set to copying
some outline picture of a simple object, such as an
Oriental lamp. Sometimes they may be persuaded to
write paraphrases of the lesson text, or statements of the
lesson teachings. One exercise of this kind, calling for
hand-work, I would introduce into every lesson, plan-
ning for it long ahead. It will prove a sovereign
remedy for disorder.
Work at Home.— Sometimes it will be necessary to do
personal work with some particularly irrepressible
scholar. You must get into helpful and close relations
with him. Go to his house. Invite him to tea at your
house. Try raspberry jam as a lubricant. Never
threaten him without carrying out your threat ; better,
never threaten him at all. Scolding disorder is like
spreading mustard on a burn. Devise some occupation
for the restless one. Many a shrewd teacher has taken
the worst boy in his class and made him class sergeant
to keep order; and he has kept it. Such a scholar, too,
is just the one to take up the class collection, keep the
class records, clean the blackboard (if you luckily— or en-
terprisingly — have one), and aid the teacher in drawing
40 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
maps and making diagrams for her teaching opera-
tions.
Getting Help. — Rarely, and yet sometimes, the teacher
will find it wise to get assistance in subduing the disor-
derly scholar. If the other scholars can be trusted,
quietly appeal to them to help maintain order and not to
join in any pranks that may be started. If the superin-
tendent is a wise man, call in his aid. Perhaps a few
sentences from him, with the boy apart, will end the
whole struggle. If the parents are wise (that is, if they
really look at their child with seeing eyes), tell them
frankly about his misdemeanors, and secretly conspire
with them to make him what he should be.
For elasses that are old enough to carry out the plan,
try throwing upon them the responsibility of self-govern-
ment. A class organization — constitution, president,
committees, and all the rest — has a beautifully steady-
ing influence. A committee on order, nominated and
elected by the scholars themselves, will by that very proc-
ess of election be rendered almost unnecessary. This
plan is in harmony witli the self-governing methods
that have been found so useful in various secular
schools.
Finally, but most important of all, try to cultivate in
your class a spirit of reverence for sacred places and holy
themes. 1 know of no better way of doing this
than by a brief prayer just before the lesson, all
heads being bowed while the teacher asks the divine
blessing upon the class and upon the truths that are to be
studied. Nor would it be at all out of place for the
teacher to pause, even in the middle of the lesson, at
WHAT TO DO WITH THE DISORDERLY SCHOLAR 47
some solemn and impressive point, and request the class
to bow their heads in silent prayer, asking God to im-
press the truth upon their minds and help them to carry
it out in their lives. If the tone of the class is such that
this moment of prayer would come naturally and easily,
there need be no fear of disorder.
The Superintendent's Responsibility. — Much of what I
have said will apply equally well to the order of the en-
tire school ; and yet of course this requires a little
different treatment from the class, and I must next ad-
dress the superintendent. We must remember that dis-
order breeds disorder. A school that is allowed to be dis-
orderly at the opening will be disorderly when it sepa-
rates into classes, and class disorder means a disorderly
close, when the school comes together again.
To get order in a school, one must begin before the
school begins. With delightful zeal, the children are
likely to be over-prompt. When the school, as in so
many places, is held just after the morning service, the
grown-ups are still in church, and those children that did
not go to church have the schoolroom to their riotous
selves. No matter where or when the school is held,
some older person should be in the schoolroom half an
hour before the opening. If I were the superintendent, I
should want to be there myself, ready for consultation
with any officer or teacher, and eager to take advantage
of any chance of becoming acquainted with the scholars.
If this at any time is difficult or inexpedient, I should ap-
point some one else to this service, or perhaps a succes-
sion of persons, each taking the task for a month. More-
ever, the trouble may be greatly diminished by urging
48 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
the children not to come so long beforehand, and the
parents not to send them over-soon.
Whoever superintends these early comers must have
something provided to occupy their time. Mere forcible
repression will only insure a postponement of disorder.
Perhaps the best aid is a book full of pictures, each of
which requires a little explanation. Or a collection of
photographs from Bible lands may be used with fine
effect.
The second necessity, if one would have an orderly
school, is that the school begin on time. I deprecate the
use of a call-bell. It should be enough simply for the
superintendent to step to the platform and raise his hand.
If teachers and scholars are taught to watch for the
signal and respond to it instantly with perfect order, the
drill and the weekly obedience will prove one of the
greatest gains that come from the entire work of the
school.
This initial quiet should have a well-understood pur-
pose. What better than prayer, silent prayer with bowed
heads for God's presence and blessing ? Print a brief
form for it, and hang it before the school for the use of
the younger scholars, and as a constant model for this
unvoiced petition. At the close of this moment of silent
prayer, without prelude except the sounding of the
chord, let the school sing softly some stanza of a familiar
hymn, which may be changed from month to month or
from quarter to quarter.
A regular and brisk order of service helps much to
make an orderly school. Pack it full of things for the
scholars to do. Leave little room for the superintendent,
WHAT TO DO WITH THE DISORDERLY SCHOLAR 49
secretary, or any other officer. The talking superintend-
ent is a recognized Sunday-school peril. Let him talk up
the school in private, and not talk it — down — in public.
In Mr. Wanaiuaker's great school the young folks are
kept constantly eager for their part. Now they must
say, " Good-morning, Mr. Wanamaker." Now they must
hold up their Bibles. Now they must sing. Now they
must read in concert. The opening exercises are an ani-
mated drill, and no one has time to grow fidgety.
It is very necessary, if an order of exercises is to be
carried out in an orderly way, that there should be
no gaps in it, no pauses while the superintendent is
finding his place in the Bible, or consulting with some
other officer, or while the secretary is feeling in his
pockets for some announcement he intends to read. Such
gaps are like holes in a fence, through which a whole
drove of mischiefs is likely to leap. If the superintend-
ent, with a strong voice, a decisive air, and thorough
preparation of all details, passes swiftly from point to
point of his programme, he will sweep the school along
with him in perfect and beautiful order.
Locate the Trouble.— In spite, however, of all these
precautions, some particularly unruly scholar or set of
scholars may persist in disturbing the school. The
trouble will radiate out, and first of all it will be neces-
sary to locate its source, and deal with that especial class
or scholar. Too often the mistake is made of scolding
the entire school for what is really the fault of a very
few, and the school speedily resents this injustice.
The first step is always for the superintendent to speak
to the teacher. It is his business to preserve order in his
50 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
own precinct ; never take his work out of his hands
till he has proved himself incompetent. Sometimes, in-
stead of speaking to the one teacher, it will be sufficient
to give an indirect hint through a general talk at the
teachers' meeting on the subject of disorder, and the
teachers' responsibility for it.
Failing the teachers' effective action, the next step is
for the superintendent to deal directly with the offending
scholars; never by a public reprimand, which is more
than likely to fix them in opposition to the rule of the
school, but by private exhortation.
If even this proves useless, the third step is a call upon
the parents, a frank statement of the condition of affairs,
the child himself being present, and a loving, manly ap-
peal for their assistance in the matter.
The last remedy, of course, is expulsion; and I am per-
suaded that, long before the need for that arises, the
other remedies 1 have named will prove efficacious.
Getting Authority.— The Sunday school may be made
as orderly as the secular schools. It will not be as easy,
because in the secular schools the teacher is backed up
by legal authority. But authority may be obtained for
the Sunday-school superintendent and teachers. It is to
be won from the parents. Get them to visit the school
often. Their presence will of itself transform many a
turbulent scholar. Better, enlist them among the regu-
lar members of the school. A disorderly scholar whose
parents are interested and regular participants in the
school work, is indeed a rare bird. As the parents come
in touch with the needs of the school and understand the
aims of the teachers, they will gradually become ready
WHAT TO DO WITH THE DISORDERLY SCHOLAR 51
and eager to back up the officers and teachers with what-
ever authority they need to reprove, correct, and disci-
pline. The parents will be added to the superintendent's
staff ; they will become his orderlies.
CHAPTER VII
IS THE GULDEN TEXT WORTH WHILE ?
Yes, if it is used ; no, if it isn't.
The golden text takes space in our lesson helps. It
costs time and thought to select it. It means trouble
and expense all along the line. I have a feeling that
comparatively few teachers use it, and that only a few
of those few use it in such a way that it amounts to any-
thing. Now, if it is worth while, let us change all this;
and if it isn't worth while, let us frankly abolish it.
It is worth while.
In the first place, it is worth while to commit it to
memory. I have just gone over the golden texts for the
present year. Four out of the fifty- two, though for
other reasons wisely chosen, are not sufficiently pointed
outside their immediate application, and not worth com-
mitting to memory ; they are merely fragments of narra-
tive. The remaining forty eight, however, are precisely
the kind of verses we wish to store up in our minds and
those of our children. There is far too little committing
to memory of Scripture nowadays, and this use alone of
the golden texts would warrant their selection.
Especially would it be well to fix upon the mind the
chapter and verse numbers. A little extra labor and
pains will effect this, and the value of a scripture quota-
tion is quite doubled if you can give its exact location.
Many of the golden texts are chosen from distant parts
52
IS THE GOLDEN TEXT WORTH WHILE? 53
of the Bible, and in considering them you have frequent
opportunities to show the unity of the Book, and exhibit
the beautiful interlocking of its parts.
Review Them. — This use of the golden texts necessi-
tates frequent reviews of them. The verses and their
locations will speedily slip from your scholars' minds
otherwise. A brisk review of the golden texts might be
made the opening exercise in your class, and it would
answer, in part at least, for that review of former les-
sons which is so necessary if you would gain permanent
results.
Indeed, the golden texts of the quarter make an ad-
mirable backbone for review day. Each text is usually
the key to its lesson. The selection is sometimes open
to criticism, but what isn't ? Certainly, though we might
be better pleased with the set of golden texts that you
and I might select, that satisfaction would not extend to
the Sunday-school world.
Use the texts, then, from week to week, keeping re-
view day in mind. When that day comes, a good mode
of utilizing them is to write them on cards, have the
scholars draw them, and then let each scholar tell what
he remembers about the lesson whose golden text he
holds. If you intend to use this plan, announce it at
the very beginning of the quarter, and urge your pupils,
through all the three months, to work for the success of
the little exercise.
Unless in some such way as this the use of the golden
text is planned for, you will probably not use it at all.
But include it in your lesson scheme, and devise unhack-
neyed ways of introducing it.
54 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
In the David and Jonathan lesson, for instance, you
have brought out the beautiful story, and you have con-
cluded by showing how much liner even the noblest
human friendship will be if it is knit together by Christ.
Then you close by calling for the golo/m text : " There
is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."
Or, the lesson is Paul's shipwreck, and you begin by
asking the class to repeat together the golden text :
"Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he
bringeth them out of their distresses." "Now that was
written," you will say, "a thousand years before the
event we are to study about to-day, but you will see how
perfectly it describes what happened to Paul."
Do not rest satisfied with one repetition of the text,
though, in concert. Call for it from different scholars,
liefer to it in many connections. Go back to it again
and again. Whenever the thought is in your judgment
the fundamental thought of the lesson, build up your
teaching around it.
Home-Made Cards. — One way to draw attention to the
golden text is to assign it each week to a different
scholar, making the assignment several weeks in advance,
and having each text printed by the scholar on a large
card, to be hung before the class during the recitation.
These cards may be printed in colors. It may even be
possible to get the scholars to decorate them with draw-
ings of flowers or of symbolic designs, or with pretty bits
of color or more appropriate pictures cut from periodicals
and pasted on. The children will enjoy doing this work,
and they will be quite as deeply interested also in the
efforts of the others.
IS THE GOLDEN TEXT WORTH WHILE? 55
This may be considered too elaborate a plan, but cer-
tainly the scholars may be persuaded to bring to the
class — all of them — the golden text written by them on
slips of paper. The teacher will examine them, and give
especial praise to the neatest and most accurate.
This suggests the use of golden text cards as rewards
for attendance, punctuality, and good lessons. If the
teacher cannot afford to buy the published colored cards,
she may make her own, and put into them a personality
that the published cards, admirable as they are, neces-
sarily lack. She may write them on prettily colored
paper, those for each lesson on a new color. She may
print them in fancy lettering. She may adorn them
with colored designs, and with painted flowers. Now
and then, she may write on the back a personal mes-
sage, sent right into the heart life of some particular
scholar.
To many of these plans, a golden-text book is an appro-
priate sequel. It consists of these cards, or slips of
paper, or whatever you use, pasted on larger leaves, and
finally bound together in neat little books. At the end
of the year your golden-text books should be placed on
exhibition, for all the school to enjoy, and imitate next
year.
In the Open Sessions.— And finally, how may we use
the golden text in the open sessions of the school ?
Whatever use is made of it should come at the close of
the lesson hour, so as not to interfere with the teachers'
plans. Some superintendents have it beautifully printed
upon the back of a blackboard, in ornamental lettering
made with colored chalk, Any class whose members
56 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
came to school able, every one of them, to write out the
golden text, may delegate one of their number to go for-
ward and turn this blackboard, exhibiting the design, at
the same time repeating the text, which the school will
immediately repeat in concert. Then the superintendent
may tell a brief (a very brief) story illuminating the
golden text, or he may have the school sing a gyolden-text
song, some hymn chosen because it treats the theme of
the text.
Perhaps I have indicated with sufficient fulness some
of the many ways in which the golden text may be used
to add variety and interest to our Sabbath-school lessons.
As you begin with the plans I have outlined, other plans
will constantly suggest themselves. By the end of the
year, through these wonderful condensations of truth,
you will have fixed fifty-two miniatures of Bible events
and lessons upon the gallery walls of your scholars'
minds. Fifty-two Bible sentences, each freighted with
the significance of a Bible incident or glorious passage —
surely this, if anything in the world, is worth while.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TEACHER'S MANNER
There is the what — but there is also the how. Most
teachers think of what they are to teach, but few think
of how they will teach it. The one is no less important
than the other.
Indeed, teaching has this in common with all the other
fine arts, that manner often overranks matter. The
painter's choice of a subject is less important than the
way he depicts it, so that men would rather possess a
broken pitcher delineated by Raphael than a " Coliseum
by Moonlight" after the manner of Sam Spatterpaint.
And surely when the theme is the loftiest of all possible
themes, as it is in our Sunday-school classes, there is
double urgency to present it in a manner as attractive
and as noble.
Children are Imitators. — Moreover, let those teachers
that are careless regarding their style of teaching con-
sider how certainly, if they are at all successful in win-
ning their scholars, the manners which they exhibit will
be reflected in those scholars' lives. Children are true
Chinese in their certainty of imitation. It is even start-
ling to note, in the scholars of a popular teacher, the
identical gestures, intonations, phrases, and mannerisms
used by their unconscious model. Listening the other
day to a series of recitations by the class of Mrs. F. E.
57
58 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Clark, that magnetic woman, the wife of the founder of
Christian Endeavor societies, I could shut my eyes and
scarcely persuade myself that it was not she herself who
was speaking.
Manners are the middlemen that carry the products of
your heart and brain to the hungry markets of your
scholars' lives. The old saying has it, " Manners makyth
men " ; that is, a man's fortune depends on his manners.
It might as truthfully be said, "Manners makyth — other
men." The teacher that is careless in regard to his man-
ner of teaching is like a farmer shoveling seed into the
soil, anyway, anywhere, and to any depth, provided the
seed gets in and gets covered up ; and the harvest is as
scanty in the one case as in the other.
Before I give my thought of what the teacher's man-
ner should be, let me say what it should not be. Five
negatives.
i. It Should not be Flabby. — If the teacher evidently
does " not care whether school keeps or not," one can
hardly expect the scholars to entertain eager opinions on
that subject. If the teacher appears bored, the class may
well yawn. No matter how cleverly tuned your violin,
you will draw no harmony from the instrument with a
loose-screwed bow.
2. It Should not be Apologetic.—" I haven't had time
to study the lesson," " I'm afraid you all know more
about the lesson than I do to-day," — such admissions are
weak, unnecessary, and harmful. Do not advertise your
delinquencies. Teach as well as you can, and apologize
by a well-prepared lesson next week.
3. It Should not be Fretted. — A worried countenance
THE TEACHER'S MANNER 59
and anxious manners are poor arguments for Christianity
and poor baits for your scholars' attention.
4. It Should not be Fussy. — Some teachers remind me
of those young mothers that frantically trot their babies
up and down to still their cries, adding all of their own
nervousness to the poor infant's abundant supply. Such
teachers fumble their books and lesson leaves incessantly,
fly from this scholar to that with snatches of restless in-
quiry, bustle around the school-room for dashes of con-
sultation with officers and teachers, and miss no oppor-
tunity to create confusion. Their classes will be pande-
moniums and their teaching will be hodge-podge.
5. It Should not be Jack-in-the-Box-y. — Some teachers
mistake jerkiness for energy, and explosiveness for point-
edness. They fire off their questions like rockets. They
dash off their explanations like a fire-engine in full career.
They fling out their fingers in excited gestures. This is
being animated, they think ; but it is only being nervous.
The teacher's manner should be very different from all
this. Perhaps its most important quality is confidence.
Napoleon won his battles largely because he was so sub-
limely sure that he would win them. A lion-tamer, or a
child-tamer, is obeyed because he expects to be obeyed.
If you can put into your pedagogic bearing the quiet as-
surance of coming success, that success is half yours at
the outset.
An accompaniment of this characteristic is frankness,
openness. A good teacher always looks his scholars
straight in the eye. He talks in a cordial, free way, as
if he were telling all his heart. He does not stammer,
shift, falter, or act like an embarrassed school-boy. He
60 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
puts his class at their ease by being himself at his ease.
He wins their confidences by giving his own. He is not
over-familiar, but he is a comrade. He is not trivial, but
he is cheery. He is not a teacher ; he is a friend.
And lastly, — for the chief excellencies of a teacher's
manner are three, — he will observe the often-heard in-
junction, and "look alive." Too many teachers look
dead. The level tones of their drowsy voices proceed
from bodies almost as immobile as statues. The true
teacher will " look alive " as to his hands, with an occa-
sional irresistible gesture. He will " look alive " as to
his face, for face gestures are the most expressive of all.
Chiefly, he will " look alive " as to his eyes, which will
kiudle with enthusiasm, melt with tenderness, and sparkle
with fun. Life springs only from life, and lively looks
are both the evidence of life in the speaker and the pro-
vocative of life in the listener.
How to Get the Right Manner.— Finally, having thus
sketched my thought of the teacher's manner, as it should
not be and as it should, let me suggest how the best man-
ner of teaching may be obtained.
In the first place, " know yourself.'' I would not have
you become self-conscious ; but manners are to be judged
by results, and if you are not getting the results of the
best manner, it is necessary to see whether you do not
lack the manner itself. For instance, if your class is
stupid, consider whether you are brisk. If the class is
restless, you may be nervous. If the class is careless, you
may not appear sufficiently in earnest. Manners are the
flowers of certain seeds. If you lack the flowers, plant
the seeds. If, on the other hand, you are obtaining
61
already the results of a good manner, take no more
thought about it.
If I were a proverb-monger, I might say, " Every man
his own manners," so essential is it that manners should
spring from the real character of a man. " I must be
myself," is generally the answer when defects of manner
are pointed out; to which the proper reply is, " Yes; but
you can change yourself."
One of the best ways to get a good manner is to bor-
row it from others. Such appropriation impoverishes
nobody. Visit the classes of successful teachers. Watch
those whom the children love. See what there is in their
characters that is lacking from yours. Then try to re-
produce it, within and without.
One Point of Manners at a Time. — If you conclude that
you are not vivacious enough, work for months at that
fault, until it is remedied. Growth is easy, where revo-
lution may be impossible.
No one can teach in the best way without good health.
A sound body goes far toward good cheer, and good
cheer goes far toward mental alertness and sanity. I
am quite sure, for example, that the efficiency of our
Sunday schools would be vastly increased if all the
teachers would take a brisk walk before entering on their
duties.
As to that confidence and zest in the work which is so
necessary for success, it rests at bottom on thorough
knowledge and full preparation. If you have a first-rate
plan for the lesson, you will be eager to present it, and
you will go before the class a master of the situation.
Enjoy your work, and you will look as if you enjoyed it.
1TY
62 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Be interested in the class, and your eyes cannot lack lus-
tre. Know the importance of your task, and your voice
cannot lack earnestness. Pray before you teach and as
you teach, and you cannot teach flippantly or heedlessly.
Fear God, and you will not fear your class, or be embar-
rassed before them. Become the kind of teacher you
wish to appear, and your manner outside the class will
not belie your manner before your scholars. In short,
the only secret of manners is being ; and if you get a soul
that is on fire for truth, if you become a lover of God
and of all God's children, if you fashion as a receptacle
for that love of truth, of man, and of God, the beautiful
casket of a well-trained mind in a vigorous body, — if you
do these things, your teaching will of necessity become
ardent, courageous, and winsome, and many will be the
jewels of your crown.
CHAPTEE IX
A GOOD SUNDAY-SCHOOL PATCH
The absence of a regular Sunday-school teacher makes
a sad rent, there is no doubt about it. However excel-
lent a substitute teacher may be, he is only a patch. It
isn't pleasant to be patched, nor is it pleasant to be a
patch ; but it can't be helped, and this chapter is to make
the best of it.
A Corps of Substitutes.— Of course, if yours is a model
Sunday school, you hare business-like arrangements for
this emergency. Your superintendent has enrolled a
regular corps of possible substitutes, men and women
who have agreed always to be ready to fill vacancies.
The assistant superintendents have lists of these. The
Sunday-school committee of the young people's society
sometimes has the whole matter in charge. Sometimes
this committee organizes a special class, whose members
study each Sunday the lesson of the next week, in order
to be ready for the substitute's post. The teachers
should be taught that it is their duty to notify the proper
official of their expected absence. All of these provi-
sions will be made in a model Sunday school.
But, alas ! few Sunday schools are models ; and even
in the model schools, the best laid plans find themselves
often defeated. Usually the substitute teacher is pressed
into the service, not as part of a well-thought-out system,
63
64: SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
but at desperate haphazard ; and the question is, what
shall he do ? I will try to answer that question.
In the first place, be jolly about it. I would enlarge
the proverb : Bis dat qui cito dat — et suaviter. You
may be certain that the absent teacher has no good ex-
cuse for absence, or that warning could have been given
in time for ample preparation on the substitute's part, or
that classes might just as well be put together (though
you acknowledge that this process generally spoils both
classes); and you may consider yourself a much-abused
mortal in being asked to teach that class. But postpone
such considerations. The superintendent probably isn't
to blame, and certainly the waiting children are not. Is
it your duty to teach that class ? If so, it is your duty
to accept the duty pleasantly, and remedy the faulty
conditions, if you can, afterward.
Let us suppose that your conscience is in good working
order, and that you consent to be a Sunday-school patch.
At once several essentials of a good patch present them-
selves for your imitation.
Imprimis, a Good Patch is Never Conspicuous. — Mod-
est} r is the first grace of a substitute teacher. Indeed,
the very word, "substitute," conveys a hint toward hu-
mility, since it comes from two Latin words signifying
to "stand under," to be subordinate. The substitute
teacher must not be a red patch on a gray garment. His
teaching must merge into the teaching that has gone be-
fore and is to follow after — that is, it must do this as
nearly as a different personality, working hastily and in
the dark, can do it. Not wholly in the dark, however.
You know the characteristics of the teacher whose place
A GOOD SUNDAY-SCHOOL PATCH 65
you are taking. Probably you know his methods. You
can ask the class at the outset whether any plan had been
set for the lesson. So far as you can, you will fit in •
will make a chameleon of yourself, and adapt your color
to your temporary abode.
Then, in the second place, to return to our comparison,
a patch must not draw. That was the point of the
Saviour's parable about unshrunken cloth in an old gar-
ment. You must not make it harder for the regular
worker, but easier. You must not criticise him, even by
the vaguest implication. Children are quick to see dis-
paragement. If he is a dull teacher and you are a bril-
liant one, it would be Christlike (is it too much to ask
from human nature ?) if you would moderate your bril-
liancy for the occasion. And if you can drop a word of
hearty praise for the absent teacher, it will wonderfully
smooth his pathway when he comes back.
For a final point of comparison, a good patch must not
be careless. No basting-stitches. No rough edges. No
evidences of haste. Do you remember Grizers works of
art? (I hope you have read Barrie !) Take her marvel-
ous patching as your Sunday-school model.
Really, there is no reason why a Christian, fairly well
equipped with Bible knowledge, should go before a class
of boys and girls with shamefaced apologies, and with
that trite phrase, " You must teach me to-day, chil-
dren," which means a discount of fifty per cent, in the
children's estimation. If you must be a patch, be a silk
one ; not even a patch need lack distinction.
You know you are likely to be summoned as a substi-
tute teacher. You have already held that honorable post
66 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
perhaps a dozen times. Why not plan for it ? This may
be your only chance at influencing those immortal souls.
It is worth more thought than you can give it during
your walk from your chair to theirs. Your only wise
course is to be ready with a few general schemes, which
will lit any lesson ; then you will have nothing to do but
carry out one of them.
Here are a few devices that will be found useful.
1. Get the class to read the lesson text, verse about ;
but before the reading ask one member of the class to
watch for references to persons, another to pick out allu-
sions to places, a third to make a mental list of events, a
fourth to decide what is the principal teaching of the
lesson, a fifth to do the same, a sixth to select the verse
best worth committing to memory. Then go over these
points, one at a time, using for your chief reference in each
case the scholar to whom that topic has been assigned,
but bringing in the rest of the class with a free conver-
sation. Finally, review, changing the assignments about.
2. Tear up a sheet of paper, making slips, on each of
which you will write the number of one of the verses of
the lesson. Have the class read the lesson text, and then
let the scholars draw these slips at random. Each scholar
is to be questioned on the verse whose number he draws,
and the rest of the scholars are warned to listen care-
fully, because, as they are told, after the lesson is once
discussed in this way, the slips are to be mixed up and
drawn again, and the same questions are to be asked
once more, a record being kept this time of the number
of questions each scholar answers correctly and the num-
ber he misses.
A GOOD SUNDAY-SCHOOL PATCH 67
3. Read the lesson text, verse about. Then the class
will question the teacher, each scholar asking questions
on only one verse. After all the verses are discussed,
the teacher takes his turn, and returns over the same
ground, catechizing the scholars.
The substitute teacher may safely launch out on any
of these plans, only seeing to it that he does not use
the same plan with the same class on two successive
occasions.
After his half-hour task is done, and the substitute
teacher has substituted to the best of his extemporaneous
ability, he may complete the graciousness of his patch
by going to the regular teacher, reporting the way he
taught the class and the points he tried to bring out,
telling what forward glance, if any, they have cast over
the coming lesson, and especially giving the teacher a
word of cheer for himself and a little compliment for
him to pass on to the class. That bit of conversation
will be the fastening of the thread which will keep the
patch from ripping out, and accredit you as a workman
that needeth not to be ashamed.
CHAPTER X
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ATTENDANCE WANES
Perhaps there never has been much of an attendance
to wane. In that ease, what I shall prescribe for a
waning attendance will lit just as well. But more often
it is necessary to propose remedies for a falling off in
Sunday-school interest, both of teachers and scholars,
with the resultant dropping down of attendance, while
the blues and the dismals settle upon offieers and classes.
Fortunate indeed is the school that knows nothing of
sueh times. What is to be done in those emergencies?
Well, in the first place, there may not be much reason
for discouragement. Know your field. You may be fill-
ing it better than you think. Families may have moved
away. The boys and girls may have gone off to school
or to business elsewhere. Young married couples may
be kept home by little children. The establishment of
new churches and Sunday schools may have provided for
part of your old constituency. Those who are not
" present " may be u accounted for," and satisfactorily.
But if, on the other hand, your old scholars have left
the school and are still in town, able to attend school but
attending none, and if besides there are in town many
ehildren and adults whom your Sunday school ought
to reach and does not, then there is cause for alarm, for
prompt investigation, and for the adoption of thorough
remedies.
68
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ATTENDANCE WANES 69
Never Scold About the Attendance. — The people you
will have a chance to scold are almost certainly not the
people that are to blame. Even if they were, scolding
does no good. There is a reason for the poor attendance.
Discover it, frankly acknowledge it, and set to work
manfully upon the cure of it.
This Reason May be Poor Teaching. — The teachers
may not know enough about the Bible to make attend-
ance worth while, or they may not tell what they know
brightly enough to make the school attractive.
The sovereign remedy for this trouble is a teachers'
meeting. You doubtless have tried it in your school ; all
schools do try it ; but the leader was a poor one, or the
good leader got tired or moved away, and the teachers'
meeting died or is dying. Resurrect it. You can.
Obtain the best available leader. Contrary to the com-
mon impression, executive ability is more necessary here
than teaching ability. Your best leader for a teachers'
meeting is some one that can set others to work, and
draw out the thoughts and plans of all for the benefit of
all. Introduce outside aid in the way of occasional
lectures before the teachers by specialists. Assign defi-
nite parts in the teachers' meeting to as many teachers
as possible. Never spend more than half the time of the
meeting upon the thing to be taught, and devote the rest
of the time to discussing the best ways of teaching it.
A good teachers' meeting is feasible everywhere, and
a good teachers' meeting means full classes almost every
time.
The cause of the poor attendance may be a dull-looking
school-room, that gives every one that enters it the blue
70 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
shivers. The remedy, of course, is to brighten up the
room. Paint is cheap, wall paper is cheaper, pictures are
cheaper still, and flowers are cheapest of all.
Perhaps your opening exercises are listless, monoto-
nous, drawling, and stupid. That cannot help affecting
the attendance unfavorably, because its depressing in-
fluence extends over the whole Sunday-school hour. The
obvious remedy is to put variety and sparkle into this
beginning of the school, with special music, an orchestra,
an occasional recitation, much singing, Bible-readings
diversified continually, a picture shown now and then, or
some object from Bible lands. Plan the opening. Plan
different openings. Let the openings move swiftly, with
no harangues, but with much for all to do. This change
alone will add to the interest of the school more than you
imagine.
Perhaps your attendance is waning because the scholars
themselves are not interested in filling the school and
keeping it full. " The best advertisement," any business
man will tell you, " is personal mention." If Mrs. Sat-
terleeand Mrs. Sapperton and Mrs. Schermerhorn will tell
their next-door neighbors how very cheap and good are
Wilkins & Wallace's towels, that enterprising firm may
safely dispense with expensive newspaper announce-
ments. There is no better way to promote the growth
of your Sunday school than to set Charlie Faunce and
Flossy Ool^rove to telling Tom Lemons and Susie Bald-
win what perfectly splendid times they have there.
There are several good ways of interesting the schol-
ars in the work of bringing in new members. One
method is to divide the scholars into companies of live,
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ATTENDANCE WANES 71
each five being made up from one class so far as possi-
ble; then let the fives see how soon they can increase
themselves to tens, by adding new scholars to their own
class or any other. Announce the fact from Sunday to
Sunday as each ten is completed.
Another method is to start a contest, seeing which
class, in proportion to its initial numbers, can, within a
given time, increase its size the most. Prizes may add
to the interest of the contest, if it is thought wise, and
some schools are in the habit of presenting a reward to
each scholar who brings another to the school, the re-
ward being given after the new scholar has attended a
certain number of weeks.
The young people's society may be enlisted in this
work. Most of these societies have Sunday-school com-
mittees, formed for the express purpose of aiding the
school in every way ; and of course the promotion of
good attendance is one of their chief aims. In many
localities the young people's societies have carried on a
systematic, house-to-house canvass of the town for new
scholars ; and if they do not do it, the school officers
could easily organize such a canvass on their own account.
"Where the young people do this work, some of the older
members of the school should be deputed to oversee it,
that their experienced wisdom may guide the young
folks' energy and zeal.
A permanent plan for recruiting should be part of the
machinery of the school. I know of nothing better than
to appoint in each class a membership committee, with a
chairman, who makes weekly reports to the class. It
would be best to have the class itself elect this committee
72 SUNDAY-SCUOOL PROBLEMS
once a year. " Does any scholar know of any one who
should be a member of this class?" This question
should be asked every Sunday by every teacher. It is a
great mistake to throw upon the teacher the responsi-
bility for maintaining the attendance and increasing it.
Talk about the interest and value of the class will come
with far more grace from the scholars than from the
teacher, and will be far more effective.
A similar committee may be appointed, once a year or
once a quarter, from the entire school. It might be
called a " scout committee," or an " invitation commit-
tee," and its duty should be to watch the Sunday con-
gregations and invite all the strangers to come to the
school ; offering to accompany them, if the school is held
after the morning service.
The Pulpit Announcement. — The work of such a com-
mittee will be strongly aided by a hearty, attractive an-
nouncement of the Sunday school from the pulpit, — not
one of these perfunctory notices: "Sunday school at
the conclusion of this service, and all are cordially in-
vited to attend," but a few sentences into which some
original emotion is evidently put, such as this announce-
ment: " You don't know what you are missing if you
are not attending our Sunday school. Last Sunday, for
instance, I dropped into Professor Thomas's class, and I
heard the most illuminating discussion of the parable of
the talents I have ever listened to. Just step into the
vestry at the end of this service, and try it for an hour."
There are many other methods by which the pastor
may promote Sunday-school attendance. One of the
best of these is by taking the Sunday-school topic now
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ATTENDANCE WANES 73
and then for the theme of his sermon — not the whole
lesson, so that he will exhaust it, but one small corner of
it, with references to the larger subject which is to be
treated fully in the Sunday-school classes. It is often
very helpful also to hold a series of prayer meetings,
whose topics are those of the following Sunday-school
lessons.
Home Department Help.— A first-class ally of the
school in this matter of attendance is the home depart-
ment. No Sunday school should try to get along with-
out such a department, and this is only one of its ad-
vantages. A well organized home department, with its
score or more of zealous visitors, watching for every op-
portunity to transform the home student into the regular
attendant on the classes, will bring dozens of new schol-
ars into the school every year, and bring them in under
the best auguries for their permanent stay.
A Matter of Age. — A step quite necessary to take, if
you would build up the membership of your school, is to
consider what ages are not well represented there, and
so plan your campaign with special reference to the lacks
you may discover. Is it adults you chiefly need ? Are
you weak in the matter of young married people ? Is
there a falling off among the boys when they get to
their middle teens? One of these deficiencies is quite
sure to bo discovered ; very likely all of them, with
others.
The best remedy is to set to work those of the par-
ticular age or ages whom you already have in the school.
Get the boys to bring in the boys, the young couples to
seek out other young couples, set the primary depart-
74 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
ment and the adult department to enlarging themselves.
There is no leader for a boy of twelve quite equal to an-
other boy of twelve.
Social Classes. — After you have studied into the mat-
ter of ages, continue the process a little and see what
social classes are represented in your school and what are
not. Iiow about the servant girls? Are tho business
men there, the merchants and their clerks? Are the
students conspicuous by their absence? Yours is a rail-
road town ; what is your Sunday school doing for the
railroad men ?
For many of these, perhaps for all of them, your only
chance of interesting them in the school is by the estab-
lishing of special classes, led by teachers peculiarly
adapted to the constituency you are seeking to reach.
A wide-awake Christian manufacturer may be persuaded
to organize in the school a class for business men, young
and old. Some college professor may gather around him
the young collegians and the school teachers. Some
wise and loving woman may draw together a class of
servant girls.
The necessities of the case will sometimes require these
special classes to be held at other times than the regular
Sunday-school hour. Servant girls' classes, for example,
are generally held in the afternoon. A railroad men's
class must be held whenever the most of the men are at
leisure. You must enlarge your idea of the Bible school
until it becomes a sort of Bible university.
Many a Sunday school has been greatly enlarged and
its interest magnificently quickened by a means that
seems at first rather to rival the school than to aid it, —
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ATTENDANCE WANES 75
an outside Bible-study class, taking up a course alto-
gether independent of the International Lessons. If you
can find an inspiring teacher to give such a course, —
everything depends upon the teacher, — and if you can
bring together in the class your teachers, the older schol-
ars, and those of the congregation that should be in the
Sunday school but are not, it will be an easy thing, after
the course is completed, to divert to the school the fresh
interest that will certainly be aroused. The result will
be a large ingathering of new scholars.
A course of lectures on Biblical topics — again if the
lecturer is an inspiring one — will prove almost as useful
as the large Bible-study class in promoting zeal for the
Sunday school. Useful, also, is any pleasant entertain-
ment under Sunday-school auspices — a concert, a stere-
opticon lecture, a picnic, a novel form of sociable.
Draw people together and set them to talking under the
leadership of the school, and they will inevitably talk
more or less about the school, and be drawn to it more or
Any special feature you can introduce into the school
routine will serve as additional basis for that advertise-
ment which is quite as necessary for the King's business
as for secular commerce. Now it will be some unusually
good music. Now it will be a set of bright chalk talks.
Now it will be a newly installed stereopticon (for these
instruments may be made quite as serviceable by day-
light as by night, and the use of them adds wonderfully
to the interest). Now it will be some object lesson in-
troductory to the theme of the hour. Now it will be a
series of five minute drills on Bible geography or Bible
7G SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
history, briskly conducted with maps and charts. Any
plan of this sort, carried on with zest, will show enter-
prise, and demonstrate that the school is a live institu-
tion, worth the attendance of live people.
In country districts, and sometimes even in cities,
a Sunday-school omnibus is quite essential if you would
maintain attendance at the highest point. I say an om-
nibus, but of course I mean any roomy vehicle, which
will gather up all, both old and young, who could not
otherwise get to the school. The especial advantage of
this is manifest, of course, on stormy days.
It is for these stormy days that we need to plan most
carefully, since the habit of going to Sunday school is so
easily broken ; even a single lapse may break it. Strive
in every way to impress upon the teachers the especial
need of their presence on such days. Some preachers
make it a point to preach their best sermons on rainy
Sundays. In the same wise fashion, devise all the
pleasant plans you can for stormy Sabbaths, — some jolly
surprise, which the scholars that are there will talk about
with their mates, and say : " Don't you wish you hadn't
stayed at home for the rain ?"
Though, as I have said, " the best advertisement is
personal mention," yet the Sunday school ma} r well take
a leaf from the tradesmen's book, and make a liberal
use of printer's ink. Set at the task the most skilful
writer in the school, some one with a genius for attract-
ive ways of putting things, some one who knows also
how to display his thoughts in a neat and taking arrange-
ment of type. A few dollars every quarter spent for
advertising circulars would be quite as well spent as for
WHAT TO DO WHEN THE ATTENDANCE WANES 77
missions ; indeed, it would mean many more dollars for
missions in the end.
In addition, try personally written postal cards and
letters of invitation. Systematize the work. Almost
any member of the school will be willing to write one
such letter a month. As you obtain the names of those
that should be in the school, distribute them around, and
make sure that each receives the stimulating written in-
vitation. By the time a person gets the invitation
in all these ways, — by word of mouth, by circular,
by pulpit notice, and by letter, — he will begin to think
seriously of accepting it, in self-defence !
Much depends upon how the attendance is reported
to the school each Sunday. Individual attendance rec-
ords will be kept, of course, by the secretary of each
class, and full recognition should be given to individuals
who are faithful as well as to classes. Once a quarter is
none too often for the school secretary to read the names
of all who have been present every Sabbath.
In making the weekly report, let the secretary study
variety, and seek in every way to draw attention to his
figures and their meaning. Sometimes— perhaps al-
ways—the record should be a graphic one. Place a
large placard before the school at the end of the session,
reading, in bold characters easily deciphered across the
room : " Attendance : last Sunday, ; this Sunday,
." Arrange it so that you can readily slip in the
proper digits.
Often, however, the emphasis of the voice must be
added. This may be merely by way of a cheery com-
ment, such as : " See how we are growing ! We'll soon
78 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
have to move outdoors to get room enough ! " or
" Twenty more than last Sunday ! That means that
about twenty of you told your friends what a good time
we have here, and got them to come with you." If the
attendance is less than last Sunday, let the superintend-
ent and secretary stand up and point to the placard, and
simultaneously say just "Oh!" If you are seeking to
develop some particular department, the secretary should
give a vocal report concerning it every Sabbath, such as :
"Our adult department is coming up; thirty-five this
Sunday ; that's a gain of ten in two weeks."
And now, after these suggestions for the increase of
the attendance, I want to set off against them a needed
warning. It is very easy to exalt Attendance upon the
throne where the Bible alone should rest in your Sunday
school, and that is a fatal error. To be sure, there is no
use in wise teaching unless you have scholars to teach ;
but also, there is no use in having a room full of scholars
unless you have wise teaching. Where the Bible is
made vital in human lives, very slight effort will draw
the crowds to it; where the fundamental purpose of the
Sunday school is forgotten or relegated to the back-
ground, no amount of modern advertising will hold the
crowds that the advertising will gather. " And I, if I
be lifted up," still declares our Saviour, "will draw all
men unto myself."
CHAPTER XI
THE BOY OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL
Doubtless for every girl whom a teacher is perplexed
to win, there are a dozen boys. Therefore I will write
about " the boy " rather than " the girl " in his out-of-
school relations, though all that I shall say will be quite
as applicable to the girl as to her brother.
I am convinced that the place to win the boy is out-
side the Sunday school. Most teachers seem to look
upon their work as precisely analogous to fishing, the
school-room being the pool to which the boy-trout re-
sorts, and there alone they may cast their flies with any
prospect of success. Teaching is more like hunting.
You must go forth adventurously and range the wood-
land. You must seek your game in their native lairs.
Their haunts are many, and wide apart. You cannot
sit still and bid them come to you ; and if you corral
them and shoot at them en masse, that is sheer butchery !
A teacher's work is well-nigh a failure, then, if it is
confined to the paltry hour of the Sunday school. You
must win the boy on ground that is natural to him. But
what ground is natural to him ? To give a few practical
suggestions in answer to that question is the purpose of
this chapter.
Boys' Clubs — It has become quite the fashion to ad-
vise the organization of boys' clubs, if religious workers
wish to get hold of those tricksy spirits. Now there is
79
80 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEM8
no doubt that boys love a club, though I fear they enjoy
the most preposterous club of their own contrivance far
more than the finest arrangement craftily impressed
upon them from the outside, though it be psychologically
perfect in all its details, and modeled upon the ideas of
the professor of pedagogy who has written the latest
book. But really, with public-school teachers and Sun-
day-school teachers and pastors and Christian Endeavor
workers and parents and friends and philosophical in-
vestigators of " the boy problem " all forming boy clubs,
Johnny is in a fair way to be clubbed to death. Do not
form a boys' club, therefore, in connection with your
class, if that side of the boy-nature is already satisfied
with such an organization. Try some other plan.
Various Kinds of Clubs.— However, if the way is clear,
a boys' club is certainly a good method. What sort of
club? Boys are interested in many things, they are
blessedly ready to be interested in nearly everything;
therefore you have chiefly to ask what you know most
about, like best, and can best do.
Are you a walking enthusiast ? Then a walking club,
— "The Peripatetics," perhaps, — with Saturday tramps
to this and that object of local interest, with tests of
speed and endurance, and with a fine infusion of John
Burroughs and Bradford Torrey, will be the organization
you are most likely to make succeed.
Are you learned in history ? Then an indoor coterie,
" The Explorers," will find the fascination of MacMaster
and Macaulay, of Motley and Green. Whatever traces
of the past are found in your neighborhood, also, will
draw your club into the open.
THE BOY OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL 81
Is chess your hobby ? Then establish a " Pillsbury
Partnership," inaugurate a furore of gambits and prob-
lems, and hold a tournament every fortnight. And it
might as well be checkers, or tennis, or crokinole.
If you can mount the class on bicycles, organize your-
selves into "The Hotspurs," with meets, and century
runs, and club colors, and mysterious bugle calls, and a
range over the entire county.
What delightful possibilities for you and the boys lie
ensconced in a natural history club, the " Eye- Eyes "
("Indefatigable Investigators")! And that, whether
you take for your province snails or stars, birds or butter-
flies, fossils or flowers ! A museum. Scientific " papers."
Exhibition days. Long rambles over hill and dale.
A travel club (R. R. — the Royal Rangers ! ) will minis-
ter to the boys' love of adventure. Rightly chosen books,
together with a selection of the photographs of foreign
scenes now so plentiful, excellent, and inexpensive, joined
with essays and readings, and talks from the many — and
nowadays they are many, at every crossroads — who have
actually " been there," — is not that a promising prospec-
tus?
Then, there are possibilities of an art club (with the aid
of photographs and half-tone prints), a puzzle club (" The
Brain-Twisters "), a scrap-book club (" The Clippers "), —
indeed, you can attach the club idea to any of your in-
terests, with fair prospects of making it an absorbing in-
terest with the boys.
Club Mysteries.— One of the chief advantages of the
club is its opportunity for the mysteriousness in which
boys greatly delight. You can give it an odd name ;
82 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
known to the uninitiated only by cabalistic letters. You
can have a badge or a button, a system of pass- words
and hidden tokens, and even a secret language, made in-
comprehensible by such easy devices as the addition of
" i bus " " ery " and " atic " to every word, and the substi-
tution of " hat " for " and," and " cob " for " the."
l)ut if the club is overworked in your neighborhood,
you can use the same ideas in other forms. It is not
necessary to form a Philately Phellowship in order to
utilize in your boy-winning those alluring bits of gummed
paper. You can simply constitute your sitting-room a
stamp exchange, and gather the boys there occasionally
with their albums. You need not establish an athletic
club in order to conduct a " Held day,'' in which the boys
of your class, acting as marshals, will set up the lists in
running, leaping, vaulting, throwing, wrestling, with all
the boys in town. An evening of puzzles at your house
may be better than a puzzle club, and an hour or two
with your microscope may answer in lieu of the 4k Eye-
Eyes."
I am not urging the teacher to press into all their boy
lives, obtruding himself upon every sport and making
himself the monitor of every interest. I am only insist-
ing that he should enter enough of their lives to know
them thoroughly, and get into vital touch with them.
That being accomplished, in whatever fashion, his work
with the boy outside the school is done.
"How Shall I Begin?" is the question sure to be
asked by those who enjoy none of this contact with
their scholars.
Begin gradually. The boy is a shy animal, not to be
THE BOY OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL 83
caught by a sudden leap. Perhaps an evening at your
house is the best way, with good things to eat (the boy
demonstrates the Chinese notion that the seat of the
affections is the stomach !) and with the merriest of
games. This may grow into a regular series of class
socials, held once a month, sometimes at the home of the
teacher, sometimes at the homes of the scholars. Later,
the class may even venture upon corporate hospitality,
and invite some other class to an evening's fun.
A series of class excursions is another mode of ap-
proach to boys that has proved its value. Take them to
the menagerie, having previously armed yourself with a
budget of animal anecdotes. Visit the art gallery with
them, the museum, and the public library. Take them
to the court house and the city hall. Be their chaperon
at some interesting session of the legislature, the city
council, the board of aldermen, or the school committee.
Keep on the lookout for bright lectures to which you
may escort them. Go with them to a college, and show
them its ways of working. Pilot them through a fire en-
gine house, a police station, a glass factory, a tannery, a
flour mill. In the summer, conduct a grand outing, and
" tent it " with them for a week. Not all of these charm-
ing excursions will be open to you, but many of them
will, and you can easily devise substitutes for those you
must omit. It is impossible to measure the good you
may accomplish through these excursions with your class.
They will be worth, in character-building and for eter-
nity, all the money and time they will cost, and a thou-
sand times more.
Little Attentions. — But along with these more elaborate
84 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
plans, there are many little attentions you can show the
boys that will count, often, for as much as the exten-
sive schemes. A jolly word when you pass them on
the street. Friendly letters written to them when you ?
or they, are out of town. Kindly messages and visits
and little presents when they are sick. An invitation,
now to this boy and now to that, to take a meal at your
house, spend the evening, or pass the night. A little care
in guiding their reading, with the recommendation of
" splendid " books in the public library or the loan of
equally " splendid " books from your own collection.
One evening in the week regularly set apart as theirs, an
evening in which you are " at home " to them and to
them alone. One room in your house dedicated as class
headquarters, and used for that purpose only and fully.
A circular letter, to be passed from one to another, in
a prescribed order. A cumulative letter, to be passed in
like manner, but each member of the class to add a brief
note as it comes to him. A class paper (if any scholar has
a printing press or a duplicating contrivance) with its
proper corps of editors and its important list of subscrib-
ers. All of these ways of winning the boys are feasi-
ble for some teachers, and some of them are feasible for
all teachers.
There is no need of emphasizing the necessity of see-
ing them often in their own homes, knowing their
parents, their surroundings, their helps and hindrances
in this place where helps and hindrances are most pow-
erful. This duty is quite generally recognized. Would
that it were heeded as generally.
In all of this familiar intercourse with the boys, where
THE BOY OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL 85
does religion come in ? It comes in everywhere, under,
neath, though it may come in nowhere on the surface.
It is impossible to enter into any pleasant, helpful rela-
tion with your scholars out of school that will not
strengthen your influence in school, confirm your teach-
ing and inspire their studying.
The essentials are, first, to know the boy. You can-
not teach any one until you know him. Second, to love
the boy. You cannot know any one until you love him.
Third, to get the boy to know you and love you, without
which also he cannot be taught by you. Don't pretend.
Don't "let yourself down" to them. Don't think that
you must act like a boy in order to win a boy. Be sin-
cere and manly and downright. Be jolly and sympa-
thetic and alert. In becoming their comrade never cease
to become their leader.
And in it all, estimate very lightly what you are doing
for them compared with what they are doing for you.
CHAPTER XII
THOSE NOTICES
The giving of notices is a Sunday -school necessity.
Some schools minimize the notices, others revel in them,
but all must endure them.
The Value of Notices. — And they are by no means
an unmixed evil. Rightly managed, they may quicken
attention and agreeably diversify the exercises. They
introduce the scholars to new and helpful interests.
They serve as a sort of table of contents of Christian
work.
They inuy be all this, but they seldom are. Usually,
they are hindrances and nuisances. Usually, the hack-
neyed introduction, " Listen to the following notices," is
a signal for confusion or apathy. The superintendent
stumbles over unfamiliar chirography. He drones and
mumbles. lie rambles through long and unessential
particulars. lie repeats, and repeats, and repeats. lie
faithfully rehearses whatever stupidity is handed him.
Thus, for instance : —
"The twenty-first annual convention of the Sunday-
school Association of Caldwell County will meet at
Urbana on Thursday, December 6. Interesting ad-
dresses are expected from the Rev. Dr. Augustus B.
Brownlow and Prof. James L. Guinness. A full attend-
ance is desired. All are urgently invited to be present.
Per order committee, John Smith, chairman."
86
THOSE NOTICES 87
Great good will that do !
Brisk Notices. — How much more likely would the
teachers be to attend that convention if the superin-
tendent should say : —
"I have made up my mind to go to Urbana next
Thursday. I really can't afford to miss our county
Sunday-school convention. Dr. Brownlow is to speak, —
the most helpful Bible student within a hundred miles,
— and Professor Guinness, — the man who carries on that
splendid class of working men over in Shelby ville, you
know. I hope that many of our teachers will be able to
share this treat."
Maybe it is a teachers 1 meeting : —
"I desire to give notice that the regular teachers'
meeting will be held this week on Tuesday evening at
the usual time, 7.30 P. M. It will be held at the usual
place, in the parsonage. A very full attendance is de-
sired, as the meeting is to be addressed by Mrs. Randall,
who will discuss the geography of Palestine. Don't for-
get, the parsonage, and 7.30 p. M., sharp. I hope all the
teachers will be present. Let every one come. The at-
tendance at our teachers' meetings has fallen off lately.
Now I hope that every teacher in this school will be at
the parsonage next Tuesday evening, at 7.30 sharp. It
is very desirable to have a full attendance. Yery. The
parsonage, 7.30, Tuesday evening, remember. Let all
come."
That is a very naked hook, and it would be a
hungry fish that would bite. Why such insistence on
the familiar details, the "usual" time and place, and
the desirability of attendance? Never mind the desir-
88 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
ability; what is needed is to arouse desire. Thus,
perhaps : —
" You all know that Mrs. 'Randall has just got back
from the Holy Land. I was at her house the other
evening, and she showed me a lot of interesting things,
and told me a lot of interesting facts. She can make
one almost believe he has been to Jerusalem himself,
and Bethlehem and Nazareth, and all the precious places.
Now she is going to speak at the teachers' meeting on
Tuesday evening, and I don't believe the parsonage will
begin to hold all that want to hear her. The teachers
would better go early."
From these illustrations several points will be evi-
dent : —
Notices should not be read, but given in the superin-
tendent's own words, in a brisk, conversational style.
The more of himself the superintendent puts into the
notice, the more of his hearers is he likely to grip.
At the same time, for the sake of accuracy, the super-
intendent should have the notice before him in writing;
and if he is to give several notices, they should be pinned
or pasted together, to avoid confusion and quicken the
operation.
The tedious insistence on non-essentials is the great
flaw in most giving of notices. Pick out what is impor-
tant to be known, and let the rest go.
On the other hand, a notice must be full enough to
leave an impression of facts, and not flash like a meteor's
path, that instantly melts into the sky.
The value of a notice is quite doubled if you can say
"I" all through it. Personality counts. If you have
THOSE NOTICES 89
heard the lecturer whose course you are announcing, and
like him, say so. If you are going to a meeting you are
advertising and anticipate pleasure, put that in. And if
you cannot incorporate your own personality, perhaps
you can attach to the notice the personality of some one
else.
A bit of fun is invaluable, if you would have the notice
remembered ; only, join the joke so closely to the an-
nouncement that the two are inseparable, or the comi-
cality will be certain to fly away with your hearers'
attention, and leave far out of sight the facts to be
remembered.
In fine, the notices require preparation, often as careful
preparation as any other feature of the Sunday-school
hour. Usually, important interests depend upon them
for their success, and it is a shameful neglect of " our
Father's business" to present them in a slovenly and
ineffective manner. Here, as everywhere else, profit
springs from preparation.
I would even go so far as to write out different ways
of making important notices and study them, so as to
select the most attractive phrases. Of course, this is
only for practice, and not with any view to reading a
written notice before the school.
Much depends upon the voice you use. Let it be loud,
but not harsh ; decisive, but not jerky ; pleasant, but not
undignified.
Much depends on the time you select. Do not choose
a moment of restlessness and confusion, or a time when
the school is attending to something else, — finding a
hymn, perhaps, or making an offering. If the notices
90 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
are worth giving at all, they are worth a whole hearing
and not a divided one.
The best time for the notices is early in the session,
perhaps following the prayer. Some particulars of lead-
ing moment, however, may need to be repeated at the
close of the hour, in order to clinch them upon the
memory.
Some notices may best be given upon the blackboard,
without a spoken word. If you try the plan, make sure
that every letter is easily read from the remotest corner
of the room. A unique effect may be gained from a
brightly worded announcement, prettily printed with
colored chalk, put in place by the superintendent, and
pointed to in absolute silence.
A little drawing adds much to such advertisements,
and even very indifferent talents shine under the gener-
ous indistinctness of crayon. For example, if you want
to announce a Christinas concert, draw a Christmas tree
and color it green, with yellow flashing candles and
bright red bundles. If it is a harvest festival you are
proclaiming, depict an ear of golden corn. If it is an
Easter exercise, draw an egg.
Large sheets of paper, even the cheap manila wrapping-
paper, make excellent substitutes for the blackboard, if
you lack that most useful and easily obtained Sunday-
school aid. A bulletin board at the entrance may give
out most of your notices for you, or at least impress
them more deeply on the mind. Little slips of paper,
on which the notice has been printed by one of the man v
inexpensive manifolding devices, may be placed in the
hands of every one; and if the trouble is warranted,
THOSE NOTICES 91
no better mode of Sunday-school advertising could be
devised.
The Extra Notices. — All that has been said applies,
also, of course, to the many recurring notifications that
can scarcely be called notices in any formal sense.
For instance, the school has sent a gift to some mis-
sionary, and a letter of thanks has been received. How
tiresome to read the letter in toto, from the date line at
the beginning, through all the pleasant but often incon-
sequential particulars, to the signature at the close ! Let
the superintendent fix in his mind the brightest points of
the letter, and talk it off : —
" You remember that ten dollars we sent Mr. Saunders,
out in Idaho ? He has written me a letter, and you can't
guess how much good that money has done. Why, it
has bought the baby some new socks, and Jimmy Saun-
ders a new pair of mittens, and mended a hole in the
roof, and — " so you go on, while every mind is attentive.
If you had read that letter, however brightly Mr. Saun-
ders might have written it, you could not have produced
an equal effect.
There are also such announcements as the number
present and the amount of the collection. These facts
may be so stated as to increase both the attendance and
the offering, or they may be put before the school in a
way so dull and careless as to render the scholars them-
selves stupid and indifferent.
Sometimes the secretary and treasurer make these an-
nouncements ; and this is a good plan, if they can be de-
pended upon to speak at the right instant, briskly and
loudly. Indeed, the superintendent will always do well
92 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
to get some one else to make an announcement for him,
provided the substitute has some personal interest in
what he is going to say, and can speak precisely to the
point.
And finally, I hope none of my readers will think I
have spent too many words upon a small matter. No
constantly recurring Sunday-school feature is a small
matter. Only a few minutes are given to the notices, to
be sure ; but multiply them by tens of thousands of
schools and millions upon millions of listening scholars,
and the total of precious time and possible influence
would surely warrant many a chapter longer than this.
It is the littles that make success, in the Sunday school
and everywhere else.
CHAPTER XIII
THE SWING OF THE SCHOOL
You notice the difference as soon as you enter.
One school is alert, the other loggy ; one is attentive,
the other heedless ; one is interested, the other bored.
The first school seems to run itself ; the second, to be
painfully hauled. The first school marches — tramp,
tramp, tramp, the irresistible swing of the regiment.
The second school hobbles and crawls.
This is a fundamental difference in schools. There are
other fundamental reasons why some schools are com-
parative failures; but if they have not this regimental
swing, that is certainly one reason.
The Officers. — This swing implies, in the first place,
good officers. When you see a body of men or boys
marching with this glorious alacrity, unison, and poise,
you will know that he of the shoulder straps or the
chevrons is back of it. That march is his zeal incor-
porated, his enthusiasm and skill and patience. And
likewise when you see a Sunday school that goes with a
swing you will be sure that its officers are no dawdling
incompetents, but that they are business men, about the
King's business.
The Drill. — The Sunday-school swing implies, in the
second place, long and persistent drill, just as in the case
of the regiment. A certain measure of routine is essen-
tial if a school is to run smoothly. Endless changes,
93
94 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
incessant variety, may keep the scholars expectant, but
it also keeps them uncertain and hesitant. Familiar
roads are smooth ; and if they are well made, they are
free from ruts.
The Band. — Much of the regimental swing is due, in
the third place, to the regimental band. Its inspiring
strains quicken every foot, with every heart. They bind
the regiment firmly together by the invisible cable of
sound, so that the thousand move as a single man. And
what the band is to the regiment, that the enthusiasm of
the superintendent is to the Sunday school. His smiles
are reflected in the smiles of a hundred faces. His words
of cheer, his jolly laugh, his calm trust and confidence,
multiply themselves wherever he moves among the classes.
It is a glorious privilege, thus to set the time for the
march of the whole school.
All Together.— Imt no one man makes the regimental
swing, not even the colonel, lead he never so magnifi-
cently. Xo band makes it, play it never so briskly. The
regimental swing requires the co-operation of the men
of the regiment, practically of them all. And so in the
Sunday school : it is not enough for the superintendent
to be enthusiastic or the teachers to be well trained ; the
school will not swing till the scholars also have caught
the step and are alive with the rhythm.
The swing of the school begins with the opening word
of the superintendent, or even with his decisive stepping
upon the platform. That appearance before the school
should be the sole signal for quiet and attention, recog-
nized and obeyed as a thousand clanging call bells never
would be.
THE SWING OF THE SCHOOL 95
The Start. — If a company of soldiers starts to march
in a straggling, listless way, they will straggle listlessly
to their journey's end. How often, when I was drilling
at school, did the sergeant stop the company with a sharp
"Halt!" if we did not start off with left feet simulta-
neously brisk ! And, alas ! for the multitude of schools
that are started Sunday after Sunday in the same old,
listless way — the same songs sung in the same fashion at
the same intervals ; the same reading of Scripture, verse
about; the same prayer, with its stock phrases about
" choose out our changes " and " each and every one of
us," and " all this with the forgiveness of our sins " ; the
same conclusion, " The classes will now study the lesson."
The superintendent should prepare for the start-off as
thoroughly as the teachers prepare for the lesson. He
should devise little surprises, a new order, fresh methods
for the old order. The opening exercises give the time
for the whole session. Do not let them drag.
The Programme. — Beginning thus, the swing of the
school will depend on a swift programme, well thought
out beforehand, and carried through with no pauses or
delays. If one feature fails or is tardy, pass promptly
to the next, returning to it, if you choose and it is ready.
It would be comical, if it were not so sad, to see how quickly
a school goes to pieces while the superintendent is having
a whispered consultation with one of his officers, or the
secretary, who was to read a notice, is fumbling for it
through his pockets. Allow no opportunity for this
catastrophe. Keep things moving.
The Close.— Then, if this swinging opening is to be
brought to the climax of a swinging close that will carry
96 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
the effect of the Sunday school throughout the coming
week, the school must not be allowed to break step in
the teaching half hour. The superintendent, as was his
duty, has delivered the scholars to the teachers with
minds eager and receptive. It is their duty to deliver
the scholars back to him still unfagged and alert. Im-
press this responsibility upon them, and show them how
to do it. In other words, have a weekly teachers'
meeting !
There are many superintendents that will not know
what I am talking about in this article, and never will
know until chance, or a blessed providence, or the wise
arrangement for visiting made by some Sunday-school
association, brings them into a school that does move
with a swing. I worked for years in a school without a
swing, and knew no better till I was led, one happy day,
into a school of the opposite kind. It was, indeed, an
enlightenment.
And after a man has had this experience he is never
again satisfied with Sunday-school flabbiness. lie has
seen that the Sunday-school swing means officers cheered
by a sense of progress, teachers in their places with their
hearts on their duty, enthusiasm everywhere, and bright-
ness and determination. Best of all, he perceives that
the school swing is infectious; that it draws in with it,
in spite of themselves, the listless, the mischievous, and
the stupid, and incorporates them with the onrush of the
regiment. Were it only to sweep such as these into the
kingdom of heaven, the Sunday-school swing would be
infinitely worth while.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PEDAGOGIC VALUE OF FUN
There is a capital story by Owen Wister called
" Philosophy Four." It represents two hearty students
of Harvard, who are afflicted with Course Four in the
uncongenial study of philosophy, and are doing some very
necessary but very doleful cramming under a pedantic
tutor in preparation for the ordeal of final examinations.
Maddened beyond control by the delights of a perfect
June morning, they boldly escape from their tutor into a
far-away meadow, where they convert philosophy into a
jovial sport, pelting each other with inquiries concerning
Pythagoras and the rest, and keeping score against each
other as if the game were football or tennis. In the ex-
amination next day they outrank their disgusted tutor —
a conclusion entirely natural, and much applauded by the
reader.
Pleasure and Profit.— What was true of Philosophy Four
is true of all studies whatever, and assuredly true of our
Sunday-school work, namely, that " No profit goes where
there's no pleasure ta'en, " and that, per contra, the
nearer a study can approach to a game, the better results
will be won, in the memory and the life.
I do not advocate buffoonery, of course, the telling of
jokes malapropos, the meaningless grin, the nervous
titter, the sacrifice of worth to wit and of profit to a
pun. A monkey in a school-room would doubtless win
97
98 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
and hold the attention of the children, but he would see
the outside of the door even more promptly than Mary's
little lamb.
Still less do I suggest the use of sarcasm, that teachers
should "make fun" of the mistakes of their scholars.
Fun means sympathy, entering into the feeling of the
class and into the spirit of your task. There is no fun
that is not fun for two.
The advantages of fun in teaching the Sunday-school
lesson are many. It clarities the head. A good laugh
is a tonic to the brain as well as to the blood. Note
how the eyes of the children brighten when they are
amused. Their minds brighten at the same time, back
of their eyes.
That is one reason why the stories told by a witty
speaker are sure to be remembered, even though his
earnest remarks are forgotten, and that is why so many
are afraid of introducing humor into serious discussions.
This difficulty, however, arises only from the habit of
throwing in comicalities merely to raise a laugh, bits of
humor that are practically unconnected with the subject,
like clusters of electric lights placed in front of a picture.
But there is no such difficulty if the fun is introduced
like electric lights half covered in the ceiling, a reflector
throwing all their light on the picture below. Attach
your merriment to the points of the lesson so that the
two are inseparably joined together in your scholars'
minds, and whatever brightness you bring into the lesson
will simply insure its retention in the memory.
Another reason for the use of fun in teaching the
lesson is that thus you check your scholars' tendency to
THE PEDAGOGIC VALUE OF FUN 99
mischief. A good laugh is a safety-valve for energy that
might otherwise work itself off in disorder. These
lively pieces of humanity are determined to have a good
time somehow. See that they have it, but in your way.
Our Happy Religion. — The best reason for the intro-
duction of fun into your teaching is that thus you show
the happy side of religion; you make it evident that
Christianity is not a compound of long faces, sighs, and
darkened rooms, but that it is cheery, sunshiny, hearty,
even jovial.
Once in Canada I came across a summer colony of a
peculiar sect, an article in whose creed was the right to
laugh right out in meeting. I attended some of their
religious gatherings, and was startled, and interested if
not edified, by the frank, unafraid, unmistakable laughter
with which, all over the auditorium, the brethren and
sisters manifested their pleasure in the utterances of their
minister.
Well, I would not advocate that custom, but still I
should decidedly prefer it to the religious whine and the
pious groan. It appears more uncouth only because it
is less common. Ah, Sunday-school workers, we are en-
gaged in the propagation of earth's supreme happiness,
the one source of all joy there is. As a commercial
traveler carries samples of his goods, as a barber must
look neat about the head and a tailor about the body,
so let us, whose business it is to advocate the kingdom
of heaven, exhibit in our lives the essence of that king-
dom — not only righteousness and peace, but also joy in
the Holy Ghost!
A Merry Bearing. — To gain this desirable element for
100 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
your teaching, it is not essential that you have a sharp
tongue, ready with quip and crank. A merry bearing,
without a spoken word, will greatly commend you to the
hearts of the young folks. Marvelous is the effect of a
cheerful face, a dancing eye, a brisk and alert carriage,
(io witli these to the class, and you have well-nigh suc-
ceeded before you begin.
Brisk Speech. — Add to this a sprightly way of talking.
A droning teacher would better lav aside his commission
till he can reform his voice. Questions that hesitate
will never elicit prompt replies. Explanations that limp
and exhortations that stumble will never lead these direct
young minds into the kingdom of heaven. I think that
most Sunday-school teachers talk too slowly. When
men are eager, when they are "dead in earnest, " their
words crowd on one another's heels, and Hash with the
fiery torches of conviction. There is no deliberate,
stately utterance when children are at play, or when
grown-ups are really enjoying themselves.
Be Your Scholars' Chum. — Another fatal defect of
manner is that indefinable primness, quality of the tradi-
tional schoolma'am, which at once puts a thousand
leagues between you and your scholars. Most desirable
is that easy comraderie with which all successful teach-
ers approach their classes — a fascinating friendliness
with which some are naturally gifted, but which others
must strive after with long desire. The prim teacher
will say, " You are mistaken, Lucy. Can you not give
the correct reply?" And Lucy will blush and dumbly
shake her head. The teacher who is "just too lovely for
anything" will say, " O come now, Lucy, I know you
THE PEDAGOGIC VALUE OF FUN 101
don't mean that! Just think a minute, dear." And
Lucy will grin and give the right answer, if it is in her
curly pate.
Of course, this comraderie cannot be merely feigned.
It must be the real thing, or not at all. The teacher
must actually be on easy terms with her scholars, or she
cannot talk easily with them. And how shall one get
on easy terms with one's class ? It cannot be done with-
out spending time and taking trouble. The teacher must
have good times with the class outside the Sunday
school. Arrange occasional expeditions with them, to
some museum, or library, or public institution, or scene
of historical interest. Take walks with them now and
then, to study the birds, or the flowers, or the rocks.
Hold a field day, for outdoor games and athletic con-
tests. Invite them to your home for an evening of
games. Now and then get them to meet at your house
to study next Sunday's lesson with you, following the
study with games, singing, and a round of apples and
nuts. Invite other classes, that will be congenial, to
join your class sometimes in these pleasant hours.
Enjoying it Yourself. — And how, it may be asked, if
you do not take kindly to games, if you do not enjoy
them and are awkward at them ? What if fun does not
"come natural " to you ?
Well, in that case about the first thing you need to do
is to make fun natural to you! Change your nature.
Gloom is not goodness — it is almost its opposite. It is
a serious handicap to be too serious ; it is likely to
lessen your influence over others. Men that are most
saintly and most deeply in earnest — like Phillips Brooks,
102 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
for instance, or Moody, or Spurgeon — are men that
know best how to laugh and how to make others laugh.
If you would strive as earnestly to learn to play as you
strive to succeed in your work, you would learn to play,
and your work would be immensely benefited by the
operation. Certainly you cannot get your class to enjoy
their work until you also enjoy it, until you put into it
the vivacity and zest of recreation.
Something of the spirit of a game should enter all
recitations. Those two young men of " Philosophy
Four" were all the better friends because of their
friendly contest out in the meadows, and they became
friends, moreover, with the subject. I like to divide
classes, half against half, and keep competitive score of
their answers to my questions. I like to set one scholar
after another before a class, and see who can stand the
longest fire of interrogatories. I like to write divisions
of the subject upon slips of paper and have the class
draw them by lot, each elucidating the topic he draws.
I like to make an outline map upon the blackboard and
then cover it while the scholars copy it from memory,
fastening a gilt paper star upon the best copy. In many
other ways it is possible to introduce into the recitation
the spirit of a game, the spirit of friendly and fascinat-
ing contest.
Plan the Fun. — This enlivening of the lesson must be
planned for as carefully as any other feature of the
teacher's work ; it will not come without planning.
Especially if the theme is heavy and difficult is such en-
livening necessary for the best results. It will not des-
troy good impressions; it will do the opposite, it will
THE PEDAGOGIC VALUE OF FUN 103
clinch them. I would introduce into every lesson plan
one section that I would call " Just for Fun." It would
really be more than that, but never mind.
Perhaps it would be merely the telling of a bright and
pointed story. A good illustration, with a whiff of fun
in it, will brighten a lesson wonderfully. To gather
these I have a plan which I commend to all Sunday-
school workers. I keep a large number of envelopes,
each marked with the name of some virtue, vice, or other
commonly recurring category, and all arranged in
alphabetical order. Into these goes a large and con-
stantly growing collection of anecdotes and other ma-
terial for illustrations. When I read a good story,
suitable for use in brightening a Sunday-school lesson,
I cut it out and put it in the appropriate envelope.
When I hear a good illustration I jot down the points,
and file my notes in the same way. Thus I have at my
instant command a well- filled storehouse of material for
enlivening my lessons.
Specimen Illustrations.— For example, we are to dis-
cuss next Sunday Paul's testimony that he had learned,
in whatsoever state, to be therein content. I find in my
envelope marked "Contentment " some notes of a bit of
observation made by a friend of mine, and I tell the class
next Sunday how she was walking out one day when she
passed the house of a poor old woman and saw her sit-
ting on her front porch. Now this woman's husband,
John by name, was a ne'er-do-well and a drunkard, who
abused the old woman shamefully ; and yet she was sit-
ting there, her face radiant with smiles.
104: SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
" Why, Aunt Marthy," said my friend, "you must have
had good news, you look so happy."
" No," said the dear old lad}', " but I was just thinking
if my John was good and kind, how nice it would be!"
Or perhaps the lesson is on prayer, and includes
Christ's saying that whatever we ask for we are to be-
lieve that we have it, and we — have it. Straightway in
my envelope marked " Faith" I find the story of a very
poor family of a town in which I once lived. There was
nothing to eat in the house, but the mother had gone out
to beg some bread and milk for her children. In eager
and confident expectation the children sat in a row be-
fore the lire, each with an empty bowl and a spoon.
Suddenly the oldest noticed that the youngest had his
bowl tipped very much to one side.
"Sammy!" she exclaimed, "see what you're doin'!
You're spillin' your milk — when you git it ! "
Your Own Discoveries. — Such illustrations as these two
are, for me, vastly better than perhaps more striking
illustrations that I have merely picked up from books,
because the two little events happened in my own town.
In like manner, the anecdotes I discover for myself, in
books, periodicals, or the sermons I hear, are better for
my use than the admirable illustrations I find in the
lesson helps, though I use them also. The more inti-
mately the illustrations are associated with your own
life, the more valuable will they be in your teaching.
If that is true, then certainly the most useful illustra-
tion of all is one associated with the lives of your scholars.
If you have become one of their number, if you are ad-
mitted to their little jokes and are acquainted with the
THE PEDAGOGIC VALUE OF FUN 105
incidents of their lives that mean the most to them, then
you will miss a great opportunity if you do not utilize
such knowledge in teaching the lesson. For example,
you are talking about Saul's rapid progress in evil as
soon as he allowed the spirit of jealousy to creep into his
heart, and you slyly remark, "Saul found his downward
course accelerated after the first wrong step, just as Tom
the other day kept rolling faster and faster when he
slipped on Pigeon Hill ! " Tom, certainly, and probably
all the rest of the class, will never forget that point.
Use Your Imagination. — Perhaps the best mode of en-
livening the lesson is by a vigorous use of a consecrated
imagination applied to the Scripture you are studying.
I was always impressed by this in the preaching of
D. L. Moody. The great evangelist was never more
happy than when engaged in the exposition of some
event of the Bible. It was so real to him that he made
it real to the audience. His hearers became spectators,
as the actual scene was spread before their eyes.
For instance, I shall never forget his rendering — that
is the proper word — of the story of Elisha and the widow
with her oil. Moody sent her and her boy around among
the neighbors after oil jars, in which to store the ex-
pected miraculous supply.
"Rat- tat- tat!"
" Who's there ? "
"It's the Widow Benjamin. Have you any empty
jars I could borrow ? "
"Why, yes, one — and maybe two. Come right in,
neighbor. And let my Isaac help you carry them
home."
106 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
The other folks in the street begin to look out of the
windows.
" Why, what is the Widow Benjamin up to ? She and
her boy Joseph have taken home ten jars already, by
actual count, and if she isn't going out after more this
very minute ! "
" Rat-tat- tat ! "
And thus the vivid description proceeded. Is there
any doubt that every one in the room carried away an
undying impression of at least that one Bible story, and
of the lesson of faith and works which Mr. Moody drew
appropriately from it ?
The Story of the Demoniac— Mr. Moody's delight and
model, Christmas Evans, the famous Welsh preacher, had
the same sprightly imagination. So rememberable were
his sermons that, though he left no writings, they have
been transmitted to us minutely and faithfully from the
memories upon which he stamped them.
A good example is his sermon on the demoniac and the
swine. We are made to see the swine heading for the
cliff, and one of the swineherds, more alert than the rest,
cries out :
" What ails the hogs ? Look sharp there, boys — keep
them in — use your whips ! Why don't you run? Why,
I declare, one of them has gone over the cliff ! There,
there goes another ! Drive them back, Tom ! "
But over they all go, " black hog and all ! "
So the story proceeds, with an animated conversation
between the swineherds and the owner of the herd.
Then the scene changes. The demoniac, clothed and in
his right mind, is returning home. He shouts the good
THE PEDAGOGIC VALUE OF FUN 107
news to every one he meets. His children see him in the
distance. They run to tell their mother. The frightened
family lock the doors against him.
" Are all the windows fastened, children ? "
" Yes, mother."
"Mary, my dear, come from the window — don't be
standing there."
"Why, mother, I can hardly believe it is father!
That man is well dressed."
Thus Christmas Evans went on, picturing in his never-
to-be-forgotten way the return of the restored demoniac.
Well, we cannot all be Moodys or Christmas Evanses,
but we can all get some of their life into us. We can all
come out of the ruts, and stay out. We can all remem-
ber that religion is no mouldy, dead-and-alive affair, but
a vivacious, exhilarating joy. We can make the Sunday-
school hour for our scholars the brightest hour of their
week ; and in it all we shall only be illustrating the joy
of the Lord, that thereby we may win them to its abid-
ing strength.
CIIAPTEK XV
A TEACHER BY POST
When I was a boy I had many Sunday-school teach-
ers, but one, most faithful and long-continued, was a
woman who i$ rtmv in heaven. I do not recall a word
she said to me in all the years of her class instruction,
and yet she is probably the most influential teacher I ever
had, in any kind of school, because of three letters she
wrote me at intervals of about a year.
I was in the town and was seeing her every day.
There was no apparent necessity for a letter. However,
the fact that she wrote those letters to me made a tre-
mendous impression upon me. They were well- written
letters, and inspired a respect for her literary ability.
They were beautifully neat and careful in appearance;
time had evidently been lavished upon them. They were
tender, urgent, thoughtful pleadings for me to declare
myself a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, and join his
church.
"Well, I did not join the church till years afterward ;
but those letters never released their hold upon me, and
were positive factors in my decision. I do not recall
(more shame to me !) that I ever replied to the letters, or
even thanked the writer. Perhaps in heaven she will
know of these sentences, and accept the long-delayed ac-
knowledgment.
This article is for the purpose of urging upon Sunday-
108
A TEACHER BY POST 109
school teachers just such work as that. Eemember,
a letter is an event in a child's life, a rare surprise. To
receive a letter — actually by post — gives the child a de-
lightful sense of importance. The precious missive is sure
to be treasured ; its contents are sure to be remembered.
Nor even in the case of older persons — adult classes —
is a letter despised. Always it is valued above the same
words spoken. It is an assurance of interest on the part
of the writer. It is proof that he is eager to spend time
and strength to gain the ends of the letter. " Talking is
easy," has passed into a proverb ; but letter- writing —
everybody knows that that is not easy !
Indeed, because so much time and energy are required,
many teachers will shrink from this suggestion. And
yet, if you do a very little of this work every day, you
will be amazed to see how easily you will do it, and how
much of it you will get done in the course of the year.
Much Depends Upon System.— While taking all advan-
tage of unexpected occasions and opportunities, I should
not wait for them, but I should plan this letter writing
as far in advance as possible. I should even keep a little
ledger, and set up a letter-account with every scholar —
just when I wrote and when I received an answer, and
what the results were. I should use copying ink, and
make a press copy of all my letters, to review now and
then what I had written to each, ami to avoid duplicat-
ing. These copies, with whatever letters I received from
each scholar, I should keep in separate pigeon-holes, one
to a person, striving thus to give each correspondence the
individuality that these different souls need. In your
oral teaching you must do mass work, chiefly ; but in this
110 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
letter-writing you are doing just the personal work that
is most fruitful. You can study every scholar by him-
self and meet his own peculiar need.
These Letters Need not be Long.— Just a line sometimes
will be as good as a quire. " You gave us a good recita-
tion last Sunday. Thank you ! " Can any one doubt
that those ten words, received through the mail, would
send a glow to any scholar's heart, and to his head the
determination to give good recitations forever?
Yet, though the letters may often be brief, they should
never be careless. Use good stationery and good ink.
Bring out your best penmanship. Always stamp them
and send the letter by mail ; a letter sent around by the
servant is not to the child a " real letter."
Do not write at all until you can put your heart into
the letter. It is the personal touch that counts. If the
missives are in the least degree stiff or perfunctory, if
they are written from duty and not desire, the sensitive
recipients will feel it. Individualize the scholars as you
write. Picture each before you. Think of his home, his
surroundings, his likings, his tasks, his temptations.
There is not in all the world a life like his ; let there be
no other letter like yours to him.
Of course this implies that you cannot use for this pur-
pose the hektograph or other duplicating devices. For
getting up diagrams, announcements, lists of questions,
and similar pedagogic details, the duplicator is indispen-
sable ; but one letter written solely to Lucy Brown is
worth a dozen that Lucy must share with Susan Green
and Alice Barber and Grace Colesworthy.
This is not to say that a " round robin " is not a useful
A TEACHER BY POST 111
variation in your epistolary labors. For example, you
are absent on some delightful vacation trip and you wish
to tell the whole class about your experiences, but you
have no time to write each a long letter. In that case,
you will place at the head of your account an alphabetical
list of the class, with instructions to pass the letter
around in that order.
Seek and expect return letters. Ask questions, and in
other ways show that a reply is desired. Be appreciative
of it when it comes. Often the writing of this reply will
be to the scholar the best part of the experience.
I do not mean to imply that the letters should always,
or perhaps often, be entirely serious. Bits of fun will
brighten wonderfully your relations w T ith your scholars,
and nowhere more than in these letters. Yet I should
tuck away in each epistle, however merry, some earnest
hint of eternal realities.
I do not mean to imply, either, that the letters should
be regular or frequent. Let them not become a burden
to you, or familiar commonplaces to your scholars.
Maintain the helpful element of surprise.
Once in a while I should obtain the aid of some one
else in this letter- writing. Here is a troublesome boy,
and you are a woman. You may know some young man
whom the lad admires, and a manly letter from him,
on fundamental matters, may, if you can bring it about,
do more for the boy than all your teaching; and it will
be a part of your teaching. Here is a soul " almost per-
suaded." A wise, loving note from the pastor or the
pastor's wife may give just the needed spur to decision ;
and you may obtain that note. Sometimes it will be
112 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
the superintendent that can write most helpfully ; some-
times it will not be an adult at all, but another boy or
girl. Just bear in mind this possibility of co-operation
in letter-writing. Here, as well as everywhere else, it is
not good to be alone.
I find myself writing in terms of the boys and girls ;
but let it be borne in mind that all these suggestions
apply quite as forcibly to their elders. Human nature
is about the same, at eight or eighty.
Letters to Parents. — Indeed, one of the most fruitful
lines of work you could follow, if you are a teacher of
young folks, is the writing of letters to their parents.
Not letters of complaint — strictures are always better
spoken than written — but letters praising their children
when you can praise them honestly, telling your plans
for the children, asking their co-operation, and suggest-
ing how it may be given. Of course these letters are
not to take the place of conversation with parents, but
they will be more impressive than talk, with them as
with their children.
In this letter-writing you will need to guard against
any suspicion of favoritism. Take an early occasion to
write to all your scholars, and when you write to any
scholar thereafter, let it be, so far as possible, on an oc-
casion evidently peculiar to himself.
When to Write. — What are some of the occasions that
afford good opportunities for these letters ? They are
very numerous, when once you begin to look for them.
Anniversaries always give a good chance. There are
the seasons — the New Year, fit time for a guiding word,
a twelvemonth motto ; the holy Easter, that well may
A TEACHER BY POST 113
prompt an invitation to the new life in Christ ; Children's
Day, and Rally Sunday, the beginning and close of vaca-
tion, with suitable reminders of wise play and wise
work ; Thanksgiving Day, with impulses for gratitude ;
jubilant Christmas, that should bring its message of love
and cheer. Lovely printed cards are available for most
of these festivals ; but, even if they are used, the written
word should not be omitted.
For individual work, however, more personal anniver-
saries are generally to be preferred. Next Sunday will
be a year after Tom's joining the church. Why not a
letter to him, reviewing his first year as a professed
Christian, full of stimulus for the year to come? (Of
course you wrote him a letter when he joined the
church.) Or it may be just two years ago that Ed
Ballentine entered your class. lie has forgotten the
date, but a cordial letter from you on that anniversary
will make membership in a Sunday-school class a vastly
more important affair in his eyes henceforth. Birthdays
are always fit times for tender and wise counsels, and
your class birthday book should be always at hand. Per-
haps it is ten years since you became teacher of that class,
and what more appropriate than a special greeting (which
may be printed this time) to all the present and former
members ?
A Correspondence Class. — I include the former mem-
bers, because a Sunday-school teacher is losing much of
the blessedness of this blessed relation unless he main-
tains it after his scholars have left the class and school,
and perhaps gone out into the busy world. I know a
teacher of a class of servant girls. They, of course,
114 SUNDAY-SCIIOOL PROBLEMS
make many changes in abode, but she follows them up.
Tli us she has formed what she calls a correspondence
class ; it has twenty-nine members, and each of them re-
ceives a letter from her once a quarter.
There are other occasions, many of them, that will
furnish openings for fruitful letters. There are times of
sorrow, when loved ones die, when sickness comes, or
some disappointment or loss. Be ready then with a
heartening word — not only spoken, with the meaningful
pressure of the hand, but written, for reading over and
over. There are times of joy, more likely to be neglected :
The young man has been appointed valedictorian, has ob-
tained a situation, has been admitted to the firm ; the
young woman has read a charming essay at the literary
club, or perhaps her marriage engagement is announced.
Why should not such occasions be signalized by letters
of congratulation ?
Sometimes the occasion of the letter must not be
stated, as when you realize that one of your scholars
is exposed to sore temptation, and you must reach out
a hand to him, though in the dark. Then you will im-
provise an occasion from your own life. It will be a re-
cent experience of yours, perhaps, which you want to
share with him. It may be a bit of your reading, which
you really must pass along. It may be a good poem,
which has just come to you with new force, and you
know his fondness for poetry. At such times you will
be profoundly grateful that you have established the
habit of writing letters to your scholars, so that such a
message comes naturally from you to him.
In the main, of course, the occasions for your letter-
A TEACHER BY POST 115
writing will be connected with the ordinary progress of
class work. You will wish to give praise for a lesson
well learned. You will wish to make assignments of
special work, and you know that a request by mail will
be better heeded than one by mouth. You will want to
impress some thought of the last lesson, or say some
word for which there was no time in the class. You
will be away on vacation, or they will be absent on
theirs, and you wish to maintain the continuity of the
class. You will be sending messages to sickrooms, often
with little gifts. Best and chiefest of all, you will want
to draw your scholars to Christ, and because of their
diffidence, or perhaps because of your own, you will
choose to break the ice by a letter, which will certainly
be followed up by personal conversations.
I have by no means exhausted this fruitful theme, but
I have written enough to exhibit its wide possibilities.
The teacher's art is manifold, and the best teacher is the
one that is eager to teach in every way. He will follow
the example of that superb teacher, Paul, and be made
all things — letter-writer and all — to all his scholars,
that by all means he may save some.
CHAPTEE XVI
THE SUPERINTENDENT'S BLACKBOARD
IMAGINE a secular school without a blackboard!
How constantly, in our public schools and colleges, this
invaluable pedagogic aid is used, adding eve-gate to ear-
gate, and doubling the access to the pupils' minds ! If
our Bible schools are not to fall behind in educational
power, they also must use the blackboard. And not
only must there be one in front of the school, ready
to carry its silent but forcible messages simultaneously
to every brain, but each classroom must be furnished as
well ; or, if your classes are still jumbled together in the
general pandemonium of one " Sunday-school room,"
none the less should each class have either a blackboard
or its equivalent in an eaormous paper tablet.
The best blackboard for the superintendent is on the
whole a stationary one, fastened to the wall in front of
the school. It is conspicuous, is always in position, and
is never in the way. It should run in grooves, being
supported by weights, so that any one working at it may
push it up as he writes. It is best to have two boards,
one back of the other, acting as counterpoises, so that as
one moves up the other moves down. Thus a design or
inscription may be placed upon the board behind, to be
disclosed at the proper minute by shoving up the board
in front. Such a blackboard has proved very satisfac-
116
THE SUPERINTENDENT'S BLACKBOARD 117
tory in our school, and any good carpenter could make
one.
If for any reason this is impracticable, a portable board
may be made by almost any one, or may be bought for
from two dollars up. For drawing, the best is a black-
board that is not a board at all, but simply a slate-sur-
faced canvas, stretched tight, but giving beneath the
chalk sufficiently to produce the most effective shading.
While few Sunday schools have blackboards at all, of
those few scarcely one uses the blackboard as much as it
should, or as wisely. Blackboard work is an art in it-
self, and like all arts it requires earnest and persistent
study.
*This is not to say that the effects should be intricate.
On the contrary, it is the simple, straightforward black-
board work that is the most attractive — outline drawing,
rapidly made in the presence of the school, and clear,
bold lettering.
Colored chalk may be used with good results, but only
the brightest of reds and yellows for what you want to
be seen from the back of the room. I have seen black-
board work in blue or green that was practically invisi-
ble twenty feet off.
Indeed, the back of the room must be your goal, for
eye-gate as well as ear-gate. Whatever you write, print,
or draw on the blackboard must be seen from that view-
point, and without eye-strain, or you have bungled at
your work.
For what will the superintendent use his blackboard ?
In the first place, sometimes if not always he will use
it for the routine notices of attendance and collection ;
118 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
only, he will not use it in any routine fashion. For in-
stance, he may print, with vim : —
Tresent last Sunday, 4>3L
Vfesent tkis Sunday • ZlO.
LVasii YOUf{ inuttt
Or, if the collection is falling off, he may prod the
school thus : —
Collection -to-day,
— from t O I scholars
OM/y 16? cents.
ftOOM FO* IMPROVE** EWT f
Or, if congratulations are in order, he will deliver them
thus : —
COMING UP!
(jOOD!
Or, if he wants to remind the scholars of the mission-
ary object for which they are giving, he may use his best
flourishes on the following: —
UcnL <uuKf 4f. 63 X**daj.
frlAfuitiJ AfwLcC.
Two-Minute Talks. — The talkative superintendent is
THE SUPERINTENDENT'S BLACKBOARD 119
so unmitigated a nuisance that I hesitate even to sug.
gest the possible value of a two-minute blackboard talk
by him at the close of the lesson hour. The two min-
utes are so likely to grow to ten ! But if the superin-
tendent will keep his watch in his hand and stop short,
no matter where he is, at the expiration of one hundred
and twenty seconds, he may place an effective " snapper "
upon the lesson.
To that end a blackboard design of some sort is espe-
cially useful, both because it may largely take the place
of a speech, and because so much truth may be presented
in a form so portable. No programme for this work
can be laid down. A man's own ideas are always the
best — for him, provided he enlarges and fertilizes his
ideas by careful and frequent study of the ideas of
others.
Various Plans. — Sometimes the superintendent will
place on the blackboard, before the beginning of the ses-
sion, three questions on the lesson. lie will tell the
school to consider those questions during the lesson hour,
and be ready to answer them at the close.
Sometimes he will simply print on the board a Bible
verse or an original sentence summarizing the teachings
of the lesson. He will cover this with a sheet of paper,
and at the close of the recitations he will remove the
paper and have the school read the sentence in concert,
several times.
This covering of a design, in whole or in part, by
paper pinned on, is a useful device. It may be employed
to add interest to a picture. For example, you may
draw Elisha, with the horses and chariots on the moun-
120 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
tain round about; but the latter may be hidden by
pieces of paper until the proper time for disclosure.
The prevalent use of acrostics is to be condemned, ex-
cept in the rather rare instances in which the acrostics
are really bright and pointed, worth remembering and
possible to remember. Most of them are merely fortui-
tous alliterations, teaching no lesson whatever. For ex-
am pie, this, of which I myself am the proud author: —
Saul Q c cinds
eeics asses ^Uni£.
That is pretty bad, but not one whit worse than thou-
sands that are solemnly set forth as condensations of
Scriptural truth. They titillate the fancy, but they do
not enlighten the mind. They trifle with majestic senti-
ments, and reduce them to the jingle of the nursery:
"The Jack and the Jolick and the Jamboree."
If I may draw once more from my own devices, I
would say that the following arrangement of letters
comes nearer my ideal of blackboard work along this
line. The lesson deals with the rich young man who
came to Jesus, with the house on the sand, or some
similar theme. The superintendent prints in a vertical
line the letters of the word " Christ." He then says a
few words about the true wealth, urging the scholars to
obtain it from Christ. The " richest "man is the man
who has "Christ." As he talks, the superintendent ex-
tends arrows from the letters toward the right, repeating
each letter at the end of its arrow, until the diagram
looks like this : —
THE SUPERINTENDENT'S BLACKBOARD 121
The fact that an E must be supplied would greatly dis-
turb a virtuoso, but does not trouble me in the least.
What I want is to put a truth in a simple, rememberable,
graphic form ; and that I have done.
A historical chart of great value is a simple upright
line drawn on the left of the blackboard, and divided
into decades or centuries, to cover the period studied
during the quarter. Write the names of the characters
in the proper places as you study them, and without a
word your line will become a historical backbone for the
quarter in the mind of every spectator.
When you begin to study Christ's life, inspire the
scholars with an ambition to learn in chronological order
all the seventy-five (more or less) recorded events in that
life. Make a numbered list of them on the black-
board as you proceed in the study. Review them every
Sunday, covering them with a piece of paper, and
not disclosing each until it has been named by the
school.
Blackboard Maps. — Often a map is the best occupant
of the superintendent's blackboard. It should be very
distinct, but merely outlines. You might call out a
122 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
scholar and ask him to mark the situation of whatever
place is the scene of the lesson ; then, of the scene of
the last lesson. You may mark places and ask the school
to name them. When events are closely connected, you
may bring in the serial interest. For instance, lines of
various colors may represent the various journeys of
Christ, prolonged as the lessons proceed ; or the routes
followed by Paul, or Moses, or Abraham. Instead of a
chalk line, you may use pins, connected by strings of dif-
ferent colors.
Blackboard Drawings. — The ability to draw is not, as
has been shown, an essential to the successful use of the
blackboard, and yet it is a great aid. No elaborate
drawing is needed, nor has the superintendent, in his two
or three minutes, time for it. One of the brightest
blackboard talks ever given was upon the parable of the
good Samaritan, and was illustrated merely by a square,
with two parallel lines winding diagonally across it for
the hill-road, while a short line represented the prostrate
traveler, and upright lines in various places stood for the
other characters of the story.
Similarly, a circle is a sufficient Pool of Bethesda, a
short horizontal line amply sets forth the impotent man,
a few Vertical strokes will be his friends, and a scarlet
upright will be the Saviour. The various steps of Saul's
progress and decline may be pictured with clearness and
point by an outline flight of steps, rising, falling, and
stopping abruptly as the king's life plunges into the
darkness of a suicide's death. All Bible stories may be
depicted in this simple way. The children's vivid imagi-
nation will fill out these scanty lines, and make them as
THE SUPERINTENDENT'S BLACKBOARD 123
significant as a cartoon by Raphael. They are far more
helpful, because far less misleading, than more elaborate
attempts, such, for instance, as a watering-pot in action
which I once saw drawn to represent — showers of bless-
ing!
In conclusion, let me emphasize the necessity of brevity.
The superintendent's blackboard will be a nuisance and
not an assistance if he does not confine himself strictly
to two or three minutes, — merely the keystone word
that binds together the impression of the lesson hour. If
in any of the ways I have indicated, and all of them in
turn, he can accomplish this, the dingy surface of his
blackboard will become the glowing heart of the school.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AS AN AVOCATION
Some persons take up Sunday-school work as a mere
temporary employment; and of course they get from it,
at the best, only transient and paltry results.
Others enter upon it as a bit of fun. Their scholars,
perhaps, enjoy with them the novel experience ; but their
labor is as evanescent as a summer holiday.
Still others assume the teacher's task as a disagreeable
duty. They clinch their teeth and go at it in bulldog
fashion, worrying all pleasure and profit out of it, until
the task is dead.
And yet others are personally aggrieved when asked
to take a Sunday-school class, and if in a manner forced
to comply, they nurse the wrong in a rebellious heart.
Small wonder that their scholars are rebellious also.
A Life Task.— But there are some — happy is the Sun-
day-school cause in that there are many — who pursue
their Sunday-school task in a far different spirit. To
them it is a life-task, a glorious life-task ; second, neces-
sarily, in their time and thought and energy, to their sec-
ular employment, but not second in their eager devotion.
In other words, there are many to whom the Sunday
school has become an avocation.
An avocation is the side calling which runs parallel to
124
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AS AN AVOCATION 125
the main calling, as a delightful country lane lies parallel
to the beaten country highway. One flees to it with a
sense of relief from the noise and bustle. A well-loaded
wain may pass along it, but leisurely. The cherry blos-
soms hatig over it, and the primrose peeps from the
banks.
An avocation is not a luxury, it is a necessity. It
affords that variety which is often more than the spice of
life, being its flexile water; without it life grows parched
and withered.
An avocation is not a mere sport, though it is a recrea-
tion — it re-creates. Indeed, it must have substantial aims
and worthy processes, or it cannot withdraw an earnest
man from his routine employments and give him that
change of activity which is the most profitable and enjoy-
able of rests.
To an avocation one is called, just as much as to a voca-
tion. It is an error only less serious to choose the wrong
avocation than to select the life-work that God does not
design for us. To certain avocations, as to certain voca-
tions, men are called by the combined voices of oppor-
tunity, duty, ability, desire, and conscience, — some or all
of them. In those they will be successful, and nowhere
else.
Now if all this is true, it makes a vast difference in
what way one takes up his Sunday-school work. If God
intends the task for you at all, he intends it as an avoca-
tion, not as a jest, a burden, an experiment, or an affront.
And the only way to succeed in anything — Sunday-
school work or anything else — is to do it in the right
spirit. A task is half determined by your impression of
126 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
it. Pond-like, it takes its color from the mental sky that
broods above it.
An Ideal Avocation. — And Sunday-school work, if you
take it up as your God-given avocation, is an ideal one.
Those that undertake it in the wrong spirit (To not see
how that can be. " I always come home from my class
with a headache," sighs one. "Those boys will be the
death of me ! " groans another. u I don't see why / have
to teach that class, when Miss Jones could do it just as
well as not," frets a third. They do not understand how
the Sunday school can afford an avocation.
But the true teacher understands ! There are trials in
her path, to be sure, but they are swallowed up of the
joys. Her Sunday-school work is not a depression, but an
exhilaration. It does not weary her, it actually rests her.
She does not dread it, but anticipates it with pleasure.
She does not come away from it with a headache, but
with brains pleasantly excited and a warm glow at the
heart. She dreams of it. It has become one of her most
cherished ambitions. She has no thought of giving it up,
ever. In short, it is her avocation.
Very likely this feeling has not come at once. Very
likely at first she was called to her avocation only by the
voices of opportunity, ability, duty, and conscience, the
voice of desire being silent or opposing. But as she has
persisted honestly in the work, it has become her delight.
The Sunday school is an ideal avocation because it so
nobly enlarges life. It gives broad views of time and
events. It acquaints us with the richest history and biog-
raphy. It introduces us to the loftiest philosophy.
Things the angels themselves desire to look into are its
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AS AN AVOCATION 127
common themes of study. A knowledge of the Bible is a
liberal education. " Fear the man of one book " — when
that one is the Book.
Moreover, the avocation of Sunday-school teaching will
further your vocation, whatever it is ; and this not merely
through the wide reach of information into which it will
lead you, though that is much, and the quickening and
uplifting of your mind, though that is more. The art of
teaching is the art of self-command and the command of
others, the art of tact, the art of impressing yourself —
what you know and think — upon the lives around you.
And this, as any successful business man understands, is
the very essence of success in a worldly calling.
It is a still further proof of the value of Sunday-school
teaching as an avocation that it is helped by your voca-
tion, whatever it is. The two fit in together, as they
should. Your teaching is vitalized by your daily work.
From that work you draw your most effective illustra-
tions. In that work you test the truths you teach, and
you carry the verification back to the Sunday school.
St. Paul wove many a matchless chapter of the Bible as
he wove his tent-cloth ; and " he that will not work shall
not eat," of spiritual or material food. The best Sunday-
school teachers, other things being equal, are the busiest
men and women of affairs.
Make it a Business. — Making Sunday-school teaching a
vocation means making a business of it, though a subordi-
nate business. Time must be given to it, generously, and
as regularly as to the business that affords you a liveli-
hood. In the definite planning for the week which the
wise always do, you will plan for a little Sunday-school
128 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
study every day, and for each day its definite portion —
the Scripture basis for one day, the facts of place and
time another day, commentaries the third, illustrations,
applications, teaching plans, review, for the remaining
days. In the same way you will plan out your year's
work, as a farmer plans his plantings or a merchant his
purchases and sales.
Nothing will be left to haphazard, not even the place of
study. It will be the cars, during the half-hour to town
and the half-hour back again. Or it will be in the
kitchen while you are waiting for the dinner to cook.
Or it will be in your bedroom, the first thing every
morning.
And in addition to the regular time and place, if Sun-
day-school work has really become your avocation, your
thoughts will turn to it instinctively and pleasantly in
moments of leisure at any time and place. It will be
" on your mind," as tennis is on one's mind if one is a
tennis enthusiast, or as the chess-lover carries with him
the latest fascinating problem. You will always have
with you, in some conveniently portable form, the lesson
text for the coming Sabbath, or even for the entire year.
You will always carry a little blank book, in which to
jot down Sunday-school ideas or plans or thoughts on
coming lessons, or the illustrations that are so easily
gathered but so easily lost if they are not fastened at
once.
Learn All You Can About It.— There is no permanent
zeal without knowledge, in an avocation, as certainly in
a vocation. If you are truly making the Sunday school
your life-work, you will be eager to learn from books and
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AS AN AVOCATION 129
periodicals all you can about it. You will subscribe to
one or two journals of instruction for teachers, just as the
golfer or hunter has his magazine for outdoor sports.
You will read the many wise and helpful volumes on
Sunday-school teaching that recent years have brought
us, and you will collect a little library of them for con-
stant study.
Especially, you will seek to peruse that open book,
the experiences of other teachers whom you may meet.
You will not miss a convention of Sunday-school work-
ers, if you can help it, any more than a genuine yachts-
man would miss a regatta. You will take a Sunday now
and then to visit some other school and observe the
methods there. You will drop in on the secular schools,
and learn most profitably from their ways of doing
things. You will watch the most successful teachers in
your own school also, and will copy their methods. You
will arrange jolly suppers and evening gatherings for
your co-workers, for acquaintanceship and for the shar-
ing of ideas. One of the joys of an avocation is the com-
panionship with the pleasantest people which it brings,
and in this particular no avocation of them all is to be
ranked above Sunday-school work.
Grow in Your Work Many teachers in our Sunday
schools tire of their task because they are not growing in
it. Knowledge is not enough for enthusiasm ; it must be
expanding knowledge. Every year should have some
definite plan for advance, some programme of improve-
ment. The live worker is eternally dissatisfied. Certain
months of normal study should be a part of every Sun-
day-school year. Now it will take up Bible geography ;
130 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
again, Bible history in outline; during other years, the
story of the manuscripts, reviews of the books, biograph-
ical studies, the study of some era, Bible botany, the
doctrines, miracles. Let the aim be clear-cut, and not
too ambitious for sure attainment. Allow no year to
close without a sense of positive gain.
Be a Sunday-school Specialist. — And yet, with all this
ardent advance into the wide fields of Bible lore, in his
practice the successful teacher will be a specialist.
Choose the grade for which you are best adapted. It
may need some experimentation to discover whether you
are best with older scholars or younger, boys or girls or
men or women. But having settled that point, hold to
the one line of work. If it is the tiniest children, insist
on their leaving your class as soon as they are able to
read. If it is boys, be watchful for the time when they
should go on to the young men's class.
And Polish Your Specialty. — Learn all there is to know
about kindergarten methods of the Sunday school, if that
is your chosen field ; or about adult classes, if it is there
that you shine. A man who canoes a little, bowls a lit-
tle, cycles a little, plays chess a little, and paints a little,
will have no ardor for anything. Do your one thing in
the Sunday school, and do it supremely well.
Have regard, that is, to the vast value of cumulative
experience. That is the chief reason why the Sunday
school is to be made a field of effort for life. As class
after class comes under your influence, imbibes your
ideas, is strengthened by your character and fired by
your faith, how gloriously the totals rise ! Men and
women by hundreds look back upon the faithful Sunday-
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AS AN AVOCATION 131
school teacher with a grateful affection they rarely feel
even for their teachers of public school or college. " It
was he, it was she," they remember, " that taught me the
way of life, that introduced me to my Saviour and to the
concerns of eternity." And theirs will be an eternal
gratitude.
The Glorious Rewards. — Ah ! what avocation presents
rewards comparable to this ? The philatelist collects
stamps, but the Sunday-school teacher stamps the divine
image upon deathless souls. The biblomaniac gathers
first editions, but the Sunday-school teacher presides at
the making of first editions of men. The art amateur
searches out the earliest impressions of great etchings,
but the Sunday-school teacher himself makes the first
impressions of imperishable works of art. The camera
enthusiast transfers to paper the rarest glimpses of na-
ture, but the Sunday-school teacher exposes to the heav-
ens the lens of a human soul, and forms a picture that
will endure after all photographs have faded away.
When the laurel wreaths are awarded on the Recogni-
tion Day, none will be greener than his, or more beauti-
ful in the eyes of the angels.
CHAPTER XVIII
HOW TO BUILD UP THE ADULT BIBLE CLASS
No defense should anywhere be needed for the motto,
" All the church in the Sunday school, and all the Sun-
day school in the church." Indeed, all Christians will
admit that no one ever grows too old for Bible-study, or
becomes so wise that he is not likely to gain much from
Bible-study with other Christians.
The rub comes in the practical working out of this
commonly confessed truth. The children — we can send
them to the Bible school ; but what impulsion can force
us to send ourselves ? There are so many church serv-
ices, anyway. And they are so long. And we are so
tired. Oh, hum !
Thus it comes about that the adult department is by
far the most poorly attended, in proportion to its possi-
bilities, of all our Sunday-school departments. How to
build up the adult Bible class is everywhere the most
pressing of Sunday-school problems — pressing, that is,
unless it is ignored altogether, and the Bible school of
the church becomes a Bible kindergarten. To help solve
that urgent problem, and add to the Sunday school its
most important element, is the ambitious purpose of
this chapter.
The Class Room. — Perhaps the first essential for a
good adult Bible class is a place to put it. Theoretically,
132
HOW TO BUILD UP THE ADULT BIBLE CLASS 133
the attention of adults is more easily held and retained
than that of children. Practically, if you want a strong
and growing adult class, — set them off by themselves !
This necessity, proved by experience, arises largely, I
think, from the need of overcoming the popular im-
pression that the Sunday school, after all, is a childish
institution.
It may not be easy to find a room for the adult Bible
class. Many thousands of Sunday schools are obliged to
meet in the church auditorium. But generally it will be
possible to carry out for the older folks a plan often used
for the children, and make a temporary room with cur-
tain partitions, supported by uprights that rise from
sockets in the floor. A method very likely to be still
more acceptable, and yet one rarely tried, is the use for
the adult class of some private house near the church,
where one large room, or two connecting rooms, will
make an ideal meeting-place.
But whatever mode of separation from the school is
adopted, the older members should join with the young-
sters in the opening exercises, that they may lend their
visible influence to the school. Nothing will so magnify
the boys' and girls' respect for Bible-study as the sight
of a goodly number of men and women engaged in the
same pursuit. For the sake of this example it is also
desirable that the adult class join the school in the clos-
ing exercises, though they will need more time on the
lesson than the rest of the school, and should be privi-
leged to take it.
The Teacher.— If a suitable meeting-place is the first
essential for a successful adult class, the chief essential
134 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
is a good teacher. And here men often make the mis-
take of thinking that no one but a remarkable Bible stu-
dent can teach an adult class well. On the contrary, the
class may well contain many a man or woman who
knows more about the Bible than the teacher, though of
course the teacher's scholarship must be such as the class
will at least respect. But the teacher must be an able
executive. He must be skilled in conducting debates,
tactful in managing people, winsome in drawing out
knowledge and opinions, decisive in closing discussions,
in stating conclusions, and in guiding the deliberations of
the class. He must be a pedagogical general.
For example, in some of the most successful adult
classes about which I have learned, the teacher himself
does very little talking. He is an enthusiastic and in-
spiring presiding officer. A week in advance he has
made his assignments. Mrs. Tillinghast will give a
summary of the events intervening between the last
lesson and the present. Dr. Hopkins will say a few
words introductory of the lesson, its central theme, its
subordinate themes, a sort of prospectus. Miss Gilmore
will give the facts regarding the time of the lesson, and
Mr. Gravenhurst will describe the scene in which the
lesson is located. Mrs. Roper will bring up points from
the parallel passage in another book. Major Dayton
will present a synopsis of an important magazine article
bearing on the lesson. Certain difficult phrases will be
referred to Professor Goodrich for an explanation, and
certain Oriental customs to Mrs. Goodrich. Mr. Daven-
port will conduct a discussion of the main teachings of
the lesson, and Mr. Edgerton will close the half hour
HOW TO BUILD UP THE ADULT BIBLE CLASS 135
with a statement of the principal points to be remem-
bered. Such a programme as this, briskly engineered
by a capable chairman, would make few demands upon
him, would enlist the leading members of the class, and
would be vastly more effective, in the long run, than
even the most brilliant teaching which is largely a
monologue.
The Lecture Plan.— Not that the monologue should
be excluded altogether. Indefensible in teaching chil-
dren, an occasional lecture adds dignity and attractive-
ness to an adult class. Indeed if, as occasionally hap-
pens, a few members of the class monopolize the time
and drive away other members by tedious and obstinate
discussions or harangues, then the teacher must adopt
the lecture system to save his class. And always the
class will appreciate the introduction now and then of
some specialist for an extended talk. A traveler fresh
from abroad, for instance, may describe the lands you
are studying about. A physician may discuss the med-
ical side of Luke's writings. Some scholar learned in
ancient history may review recent discoveries among
the monuments. A Christian scientist may give his
views on the reasonableness of miracles. For such a
talk, of wide scope and fertilizing power, the lesson for
the day may profitably be omitted or postponed.
In adult classes the methods of the university are to
be used, rather than those of the grammar school. Be-
fore starting on a new course of study, the teacher should
consult the class and get their ideas as to the best meth-
ods to follow. Sometimes, even when there is no other
reason for it, a sense of freedom and of mastership is
136 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
gained by departing for a time from the International
lessons and striking out on a line of your own choosing.
Always the International scheme is to be made the serv-
ant and not the lord of the adult class.
Something to Advertise. — Whether such a departure
is made or not, something special to advertise is quite
essential, if you would build up the adult department.
It may be a series of talks, by specialists, on attractive
Bible subjects. Some novel programme of class-work
may be adopted, for a quarter or a year. A single new
feature, such as a class library or regular class socials,
may be introduced.
And then, when you have obtained this something to
advertise, advertise it! Let the minister make it a text
for a pulpit discourse on the adult class and why all
adults should be in it. Set forth the inducement on
emphatic placards, posted in the church and about town.
Use the church paper, the town paper. Best of all, send
a postal-card invitation (printed with type or on a mani-
folder) to each adult member of the congregation, and
then follow it up with personal urgings.
A class organization is most helpful in such a canvass,
and in the general conduct of the class ; it aids greatly in
carrying out the ideal of an adult class that the members
of the class should do as much as possible and the teacher
as little as possible! There should be a president, who
should conduct the business of the class; a secretary, to
keep the constitution, records, and rolls ; a treasurer, to
receive the contributions, and obtain the lesson helps
and other supplies. The class should always vote on
the supplies and on the gifts to missions or charitable ob-
HOW TO BUILD UP THE ADULT BIBLE CLASS 137
jects. When the teacher must be absent, the substitute
teacher should be elected by the class, and the secretary
should obtain his services.
Committees. — Especially, there should be committees.
The membership committee will seek to add to the class
roll. It is a good plan to " vote in " every one that
should join the class, and then appoint one member of
the class a special committee to wait upon the member-
elect and urge his acceptance. Of course this system of
elections is only for the purpose of making folks feel
that they are desired, and, after they join, that they " be-
long." If it degenerates into the spirit of caste and
clique, the class is ruined. It should all be as democratic
as the gospel, and the wish for new members may well
be proclaimed at each meeting, the secretary announcing
the gain or loss, if any, of the past week.
Then, there should be a social committee ; for regular
class socials, perhaps every two months, will do much to
build up the adult department. These should be held, in
turn, at the homes of the members. Elaborate refresh-
ments should be rigidly barred. Some pleasant enter-
tainment should be provided, but much time should be
left for friendly conversation. Joint socials, with other
adult classes similarly organized, are among the delight-
ful possibilities. So are class picnics (no, I am not for-
getting that I am writing about adults !), class attendance
in a body on pleasant and profitable entertainments, and
class excursions to libraries, museums, and places of his-
torical or scenic interest. Such social episodes will do
wonders to promote the class esprit de corps.
Another useful bit of machinery is the " porch " com-
138 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
mittee, whose duty it is to scan the church congregation,
note the strangers, give them a hearty invitation to the
class, and, if they consent, escort them thither. Various
other committees will arise, as the work progresses, and
an adult department, thus efficiently organized, will be-
come a genuine power, not only in the school, but in the
church and the community.
The Bible Central. — For all this pleasantness, however,
the kernel of success lies, of course, in the solid Bible in-
struction given and received. Every detail of the class
life must centre upon the Scriptures. Bibles should be
plentiful in the class room, — enough for each scholar to
have one. Let some bring the revision, let others bring
the Greek, the Hebrew, the French or German. There
should be maps on the wall. There should be a black-
board. Fundamental reference books should be at hand ;
if possible, a class library. Induce the scholars to buy
commentaries and Bible dictionaries, the teacher combin-
ing orders so as to get them at a reduction. Pictures on
the wall, photographs of Bible scenery, a collection of
Oriental curios— once set the class to gathering illustra-
tive material, and it will flow in upon you.
At the end of each lesson the adult class should carry
away the satisfying sense of definite accomplishment.
The use of a syllabus is a help to that end, — a set of
topics or of questions, printed from type or on a mani-
folder. These syllabi should be on uniform paper, that
they may be preserved, and used on review day. Every
lesson should close with a review, or swift summary.
When review day comes, more or less elaborate essays or
talks may be given by members of the class, taking up
HOW TO BUILD UP THE ADULT BIBLE CLASS 139
points of special interest connected with the past three
months' work. Do not be afraid — or, rather, train the
class not to be afraid — of occasional written tests, intro-
duced on any Sunday. Frame questions that are com-
prehensive, yet that can be answered in a very few words.
Confine this exercise to ten minutes or less, and promptly
excuse all who shrink from it. Indeed, in all the work
of the class it is well to recognize in your mind a class
nucleus of real students who are ready to be questioned
by name and called upon for any service, and the class
visitors and onlookers who prefer, because of timidity or
ignorance, merely to sit and listen. While recognizing
this division, seek constantly to carry the class members
from the second class into the first.
Interest the Men. — It generally is the men that are most
ready to take part in the class discussions, and, alas ! it is
everywhere the men that are hardest to interest in the
class. For this reason (quite unfairly, I grant, but in
their unselfishness the women will forgive it), the class
work should be made to have a predominantly masculine
character. In every way, cultivate the men. Introduce
themes that will interest them. Draw your illustrations
from business life. Make practical applications that will
fit the work of men. Appoint a special " men's com-
mittee," to enlarge the masculine membership of the class.
The women — God bless them ! — will come of their own ac-
cord.
Of course no one imagines that these few suggestions
will completely solve the difficult problem of the adult
department ; but they will go far, I am sure, toward a
solution of them, and they will point out the way to
140 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
meet the unnamed and unexpected perplexities when
they arise. Only, let every Sunday school be assured
that an adult department is possible for it, and an adult
department that is an entire and glorious success.
CHAPTER XIX
WHAT TO DO WITH THE HARDER LESSONS
What Makes a Lesson Hard ?— Usually the fact that it
is not suited either to the circumstances or the mental
development of your class. It may be too difficult for
them, like a lesson from the first half of Romans for a
class of little fellows ; or it may be too easy for them, like
a lesson in the over-familiar story of Moses in the bul-
rushes for a class of grown-ups. A lesson from the
minor prophets that would be almost meaningless to a
child of ten, might transform the whole life of that
young Christian ten years later. The problem is to
make Hebrews clear and interesting to the child, and to
cram the account of Daniel in the lions 1 den with new
significance for the adult. The problem is to transmute
the milk for babes into meat for strong men, and the
meat into the milk. It is not an easy problem, but it is
one full of fascination and profit. Indeed, at bottom, it
is the great problem of the teacher's art, — to clothe
things hard and forbidding with the grace of naturalness
and a winning charm.
Therefore my advice to the teacher is that he do not
groan over the harder lessons fretfully ; or shirk them,
perhaps, by substituting easier ones. Leap upon them
manfully, as foemen worthy of your steel. As Mark
Tapley was overjoyed when at last he encountered a
141
142 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
situation wherein it was some credit to be jolly, so do
you rejoice in a fair opportunity to test your pedagog-
ical skill.
Discover, if You Can, the Reason Why the Lesson was
Selected. — Our International Lesson Committee are men
of sense as well as scholars of erudition. They have in
mind the whole school, and not one department of it.
They realize deeply the immense interests entrusted to
their care. They never do their work haphazard, nor
select a lesson without good reason for the selection.
If you can discover that reason, much of the difficulty
of teaching the harder lessons will at once be removed.
Then, meet the remaining difficulties fairly, and not
with babyish evasions. If it is the second chapter of
Ephesians which furnishes the lesson, do not prepare a
few perfunctory points, and take to the class some article
or story that is half appropriate, with which to pad out
the time. Recognize the true topic, — death without
Christ and life with Christ, — and determine that that
particular truth shall become a part of your scholars'
character.
Do not hesitate, if the scholars or the other teachers
complain about the lesson, to admit that it is difficult;
but appeal to their pride, as you have already aroused
your own. Tell them, as Plato was fond of telling his
disciples, that " good things are hard." Exhort them to
face the problem with determination, sure that in the
toughest rock lie hidden the biggest diamonds.
Do not Permit the More Difficult Lessons to Steal a
March Upon You.— It is an excellent plan to examine
carefully the lessons for a year in advance, and discover
WHAT TO DO WITH THE HARDER LESSONS 143
which are going to present the greatest difficulty. Bear
them in mind, then, for months before you come to them,
and think about each one of them until you have found
a solution for its perplexities. Thus upon some of the
lessons you will focus two or three times as much labor
as upon the easier ones.
The superintendent, too, should give the teachers
seasonable warning when a hard lesson draws near,
urging them to make special preparation for it. He
might wisely arrange to give more time to the teaching
on that particular Sunday. Perhaps a greater service
would be to procure some bright, suggestive speaker,
who will take part of the time usually given to the open-
ing exercises, and speak to the school, just before the
lesson, not spoiling the lesson by anticipating its interest,
but skilfully leading up to it and inspiring a zest for
it.
When the difficult lessons come along, then, if ever, is
felt the need of a teachers' meeting, and then is the best
time to start one, if your school lacks that unequaled pro-
moter of efficiency. It would prove the entering wedge
if the superintendent should call the teachers together just
to study, under competent leadership, the lessons that pre-
sent immediate difficulties. If they are brightly managed,
these temporary meetings may well be transformed into a
permanent institution.
The minister, also, should lend a hand at this juncture.
If he takes the interest in his Sunday school that a live
minister will, the difficult lessons will appeal to him as a
peculiar opportunity for service. Just before the lessons
are to be taught he may preach a sermon, applying to
144 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
them some illuminating principle that will prove to every
teacher a guide through their labyrinth. If this is not
practicable, he may assign the subject for some prayer
meeting, advertise it thoroughly, and thus turn upon the
hard lessons the wisdom of the entire church — that is, if
your prayer meetings are the real thing !
The Teacher's Harder Study. — But, after all, the fate
of the difficult lesson rests with the teacher, and not with
the superintendent or the minister. Until he has made
the lesson easy to himself, let him not expect to make it
easy to any scholar, lie must read more than usual, see-
ing the lesson through many eyes. He must think more
than usual, digesting and making his own these manifold
thoughts of others. Especially, he must study the diffi-
cult lesson in the large, see it in all its relations, get a
sharp view of the events connecting it with preceding
lessons, and look down upon the entire field from above,
as one com prebends geography from a balloon.
Simplify.— And then, having learned all you can about
the lesson, see how much you can forget ! That is, do
not try to teach all you know. Fix on the central
theme, and do not admit a single detail that would
confuse and distract. Adopt a simple outline. For no
lessons is this so necessary as for the hard ones. Far
more than is often realized, the teacher's art is the art of
balance, of selection, of proportion ; and the more diffi-
cult the subject, the greater the need of observing this
principle. A very few things taught, and taught so as
to be remembered, will make a successful lesson.
Learn the Scholars' Difficulties.— So much for your
mastery of the lesson ; but before you can adopt a teach-
WHAT TO DO WITH THE HARDER LESSONS 145
ing plan, you will need to form a clear idea of the diffi-
culties your scholars will find in their preparation. There
is no better way to discover these than b}' actually go-
ing over the lesson with some member of your class.
Note where he hesitates and stumbles and appears
stupid ; note the questions he asks ; observe the effect
of your explanations, and use it all as indications of the
way that lesson should be taught.
A method even more thoroughgoing and effective is
to hold a midweek meeting of your class for that es-
pecial lesson — a study meeting, while the Sunday hour
is to be a recitation meeting. This study meeting might
be held at your house, with some pleasant social features.
After an hour spent together around a table, poring over
Bibles, Bible dictionaries, Bible atlases, concordances, and
other helps, not only will the class be brought closer to-
gether than ever before and drawn nearer to their
teacher, but they will have gained a new insight into
the way to study — and all this in addition to a start on
the difficult lesson which will make the coming recita-
tion meeting a delight and a triumph.
Some Novelty. — It is well to save for the harder les-
sons whatever bright novelty you wish to add to your
teaching methods. By introducing it at that time you
signalize the lesson as one of unusual importance, you
add to its interest, and you insure its being better re-
membered.
For example, you may not yet have set your class to
writing paraphrases of the Scripture text; you may not
have divided the verses around, asking each scholar to
write out a commentary on his verse, to be read in the
146 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
class; you may not have prepared an outline of the
lesson and given copies of the outline to each scholar as
a guide to his study ; you may not have prepared a set
of questions on the lesson, requesting each member of
the class to write out his answers before Sunday, so that
they may be compared by the class, which will then
vote on the best answer to each question. Any one of
these little schemes would insure an exceptional amount
of study and arouse the scholars to do their best.
Special Essays. — Some lessons can best be treated by
essays on their most difficult points, all members of the
class sharing in the work ; if the same subject is assigned
to more than one scholar, so much the better. For ex-
ample, if your lesson is taken from the great argument
in Romans for justification by faith, ask three members
of the class to write five-minute essays on the book, giv-
ing its general outline and the course of its argument. If
the lesson is chosen from one of Jeremiah's prophecies,
ask three scholars to write five-minute essays on the
circumstances of Jeremiah's life and the evils against
which he preached. Looking at a theme from three
points of view, and repeating three times the fundamen-
tals of the lesson, will greatly help to clear up the teach-
ing and fix it in the memory.
A Programme. — For variety, try sometimes a regular
programme in place of the recitation. Let each scholar
have a neat copy of the programme, to use in following
the exercises and to take away with him. If your class
meets in a separate room, announce the plan a week in
advance, and ask the scholars to invite outsiders in to
hear the exercises. If the lesson, for example, is on
WHAT TO DO WITH THE HARDER LESSONS H7
Christ's talk with Nicodemus, you might have one
scholar prepare a talk on Nicodemus, the office he held,
and why he came to Jesus by night, together with what
is known of his later history. Another scholar will read
an essay comparing this conversation with Christ's other
conversations that are recorded, as to theme, manner,
and results. A third scholar will write an essay on the
new birth, its meaning and necessity. A fourth will give
a Bible- reading, comparing the passage in John with
other Scripture on the same subject. A fifth will read
a commentary on the topic, — some passage from an
eloquent sermon, perhaps. Two others will recite
hymns or other poems upon the new birth. Still others
will relate instances of the new birth, stories of modern
conversions. You might close with a portion of Drum-
mond's chapter on t!ie new birth in his " Natural Law in
the Spiritual World," and with an earnest prayer for
all present that have not been born again. Such a
programme would signalize any lesson, and transform
it from a hard, dull one, to a red-letter day in Sunday-
school history.
A Lecture.— A reversal of this method may be best, on
occasion, — just a long talk, a lecture, given by the teacher
or by some one called in for that particular lesson. For
instance, the passage for that Sunday may be taken
from the middle of the book of Job. Hardly could you
do better than place a Bible in the hands of each scholar,
and then let either you or some one who has made a
special study of Job, go through the entire book, reading
the finest passages, giving a running commentary, ex-
hibiting the dramatic form and the structure of the great
148 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
poem, and showing through it all its framework of
superb doctrine.
At the end of such a talk, or at the beginning, there
might be a " quiz," brisk questions being fired back and
forth. Even better would be a written test of the
scholars' grasp of the subject, the questions being so
framed that adequate answers can be very brief.
Similar to this lecture from some outsider is the plan
of an exchange of classes. If you take a new class and
your class has a new teacher for the difficult lesson, what
is lost from lack of knowledge of the scholars may be
more than counterbalanced by their interest in the fresh
face and novel methods. The new broom may sweep
clean even the cobwebs of a tangled lesson.
Sometimes a novel lesson help will serve the same
purpose as a new teacher. Provide each scholar with
some book, paper, or magazine which will help him study
the lesson — something altogether different from the
lesson help he is in the habit of using. This loan will
be in itself a forcible hint for harder study than usual,
and curiosity, if nothing higher, will lead to an ac-
quaintance with the new book or paper.
Whatever method is chosen for the difficult lesson,
bear in mind the especial need of a review the next Sun-
day, and plan to make it unusually thorough. Indeed, a
review for several Sundays in succession, or until you are
sure the subject is mastered, would be entirely in place.
For there is no excuse for the Sunday school except as
things are learned.
It will be noticed that throughout this chapter I have
spoken of the difficult lesson, and not of the lessons that
WHAT TO DO WITH THE HARDER LESSONS 149
are hard to teach because they are too easy and familiar.
Nearly everything I have said, however, will apply,
with little change, to the latter problem as well as the
former.
Be sure, teachers, that whatever difficulties surround a
lesson, they may be conquered by a willing spirit and a
thoughtful mind. Every lesson is a rough block of
marble, with a statue inside it. Often, very often, it
happens that the more hammering you must do to get
the statue out, the more lovely appears the statue when
at last it is discovered. To work, then, with hammer
and chisel, and grace and grit to your elbows 1
CHAPTER XX
THE BIBLE IN THE CLASS
Whatever else is taught in the Sunday school, it is
mainly a school for Bible-study. " Bible school " is a far
better name for it, were not the other name so firmlv
established. And yet there is many a class that does not
study the Bible, but merely studies about it. The folly
of this is sometimes recognized, and at once there springs
up an unreasoning prejudice against lesson leaves and
lesson helps of all kinds ; whereas these are of the great-
est usefulness, it being only necessary to see that they do
not drive out the Bible itself, but that this fundamental
text-book is in the hand of every scholar, and is con-
stantly and intelligently used. Let me give a few sug-
gestions, first in regard to getting the Bibles into the
Sunday school, and second in regard to using them when
they are there.
Appeal to the parents, perhaps by a circular letter or a
public address, asking them to provide Bibles for their
children. Let the school arrange with a dealer to fur-
nish Bibles at a discount, and appoint one person to re-
ceive orders from parents and scholars. If any parents
are really too poor to buy Bibles, the school officers
should quietly present copies through the teachers.
Usable Bibles.— It is quite necessary, if these Bibles are
to be used, that they should be usable. In all other
150
THE BIBLE IN THE CLASS 151
books for children we sensibly insist on large, clear type.
Why should the children's Bibles be illegible with line
type, thin paper, and poor print ? The children's other
books are bright with beautiful pictures and brilliant
with handsome bindings. Why should their Bibles be
the most unattractive volumes they possess ? Is this the
way to exalt the Scriptures in their childish minds ?
No; economize in any other direction in the Sunday
school, but be liberal when you buy the children's Bibles.
Get opaque paper, large type, leather binding. Let it be
a reference Bible, with an atlas at the end, and all the
helps of a teacher's Bible. If the parents can be per-
suaded to have their children's Bibles interleaved, they
will add much to their possible value. And I, for one,
would never give a child the King James version. lie
is to be a child of the twentieth century, and he has a
right to the most accurate obtainable translation of the
words of Holy Writ, our Victorian revision.
Take the Bibles Home. — The Bibles being provided,
should they be kept at the school ? That plan saves
trouble, but it wastes scholarship. A good Bible, and all
the scholar's own, is the teacher's best inducement for
home study ; but not unless the Bible is carried home.
Every class should have a number of extra Bibles, for the
use of children that forget theirs, as well as for the use
of visitors; but ingenuity and persistence will prevail
upon the scholars to bring their Bibles from home.
The girls, and especially the boys, may feel shamefaced
about carrying their Bibles through the streets. Though
they will not admit it, they are woefully afraid of seeming
"goody-goody." If, however, the entire school enters
152 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
into a covenant to bring their Bibles, and young folks
are seen scurrying, Bible in hand, down every street,
what all boys do no boy will be afraid to do. The main
difficulty is to get the fashion started.
For this purpose I should have a careful record kept,
by individual names in each class, of the Bibles brought
every Sabbath ; and I should include the record, with
comparative statements, in the secretary's report to the
school. In addition, I should organize a "B. B. B." —
u Bible Bringers' Band." Obtain badges bearing the
cabalistic letters, and permit every scholar to wear a
badge so long as he brings his Bible regularly ; but if he
forgets it any Sunday, keep his badge for a month from
that date. Present photographs of Bible scenes to all
the scholars that can show a perfect " B. B. B." record
for a year.
But there is no use in getting the Bibles to the school
unless you use them when there; and, moreover, a bright
use of them in the class will go far to insure their being
brought. So we will pass to our second inquiry, — how to
utilize the Scriptures in our class work.
The Teacher's Own Bible.— In the first place, it must
be urged that teachers use the Bible as the basis of their
own study — not the teacher's monthly or the commen-
tary or any other help ; all these, though absolutely
necessary, are distinctly secondary. Thorough familiar-
ity with his great text-book will alone enable the teacher
to appeal to the Bible for constant confirmation of his
statements, for illustrations, for side-lights, for additional
facts. Certainly for every use of secular careers, such as
those of earth's Cromwells, Arthurs, Victorias, Wash-
THE BIBLE IN THE CLASS 153
ingtons, and Mil tons, our Bible teachers should give their
scholars citations of sacred biography, the lives of Moses,
Samuel, David, Elijah, Paul. We are to emphasize
Bible-study, and not, as is too often customary, the study
of Jewish history along lines parallel with the history of
Greece and Rome. If the teacher has not a manifest love
of his Bible, and a flashing, finger-end acquaintance with
it, there is no hope that he will inspire his scholars with
either the love or the knowledge.
Also, the school as a whole must use the Bible. It is
the universal custom to read the day's lesson at the open-
ing of the session, generally the superintendent and
school reading alternate verses. Let this reading always
be from the Bible and never from the lesson leaves.
Often let it begin before the assigned lesson, or extend
farther, or even let a selection be made from another
portion of the Book. Open the school and close it with
the reverential reading of some psalm in concert, and
often change to fresh passages. In this way let the
Bible become the book of the school, and it will far more
likely become the book of the scholar.
In the class itself, a good introduction to the lesson is
the simple reading of the text in some version unfamiliar
to the scholars, who will note the differences as they
occur. The American version may be used in this way,
the various renderings of the Bible in Scotch, in ordi-
nary modern language, and in foreign tongues. If any
scholar understands French, or Latin, or German, or
Greek, encourage him to bring to the class the Scrip-
tures in those languages.
Illuminate every lesson with light from all the Bible.
154 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Set your scholars to constructing their own reference
Bibles. Assign each verse of the lesson to a scholar,
and teach him how, at home, to find other Scriptures
illustrating its teachings, customs and facts. In the class
recitations all this work will be combined.
Bible-marking, by some simple yet comprehensive plan,
will greatly promote the scholars' use of the Bible. At
the end of the year the school may place on exhibition
all the Bibles that have been thus used, giving prizes,
perhaps, for the best work done. Such an exhibition
may be made a most profitable occasion. In addition to
the marked Bibles, a collection of all sorts of interesting
Bibles may be placed on view, — Bibles in many lan-
guages, old Bibles, rare Bibles, big Bibles, little Bibles,
various versions, Bibles with special histories — a very
carnival of Bibles. A little entertainment may also be
provided, consisting of class drills in the use of the Bible,
essays on the Bible and its history, recitations of striking
Bible passages, and the like. All this will add to the
school's interest in the Scriptures.
Some Bible Drills. — I have mentioned Bible drills.
Let me name a few. Such sprightly exercises as the
following may occupy the first five minutes of every
lesson. The scholars will enjoy them, and they will give
the class familiarity with the Bible more rapidly, per-
haps, than any other method, because they contain the
element of play. Here are a few modes of Bible
drill:
1. Finding versos: " First Corinthians 2: 5," — to see
who can first turn to the passage and read it.
2. The subject of the verse given concisely, the book
OF THE
UNIVERSITY
THE BIBLE IN THE CLASS V ^
and chapter, but not the verse. Who will first find it ?
As : " Read the verse on giving in Acts 20."
3. Famous passages indicated more obscurely, to be
found as quickly as possible. For instance : " Isaiah's
description of the Messiah. Paul's chapter on charity.
The list of the twelve apostles. The Magnificat. The
epistles to the seven churches."
4. Who will first find a text on temperance ? on love ?
on prayer ? on sin ?
5. Who can first find the sentence, " Thy faith hath
saved thee ; go in peace " ? The phrase, " Apples of gold
in baskets of silver"? The proverb, "A soft answer
turneth away wrath " ?
6. Who can find the first reference to Paul that
occurs in the Bible? to Moses? to Christ? to Elijah ?
7. Turn to the shortest verse in the Bible. The
longest chapter.
8. Find the Ten Commandments. The Shepherd
Psalm. Moses' Psalm. The Sermon on the Mount.
The Lord's Prayer. Paul's speech on Mars' Hill.
Such exercises as these may be devised in great num-
bers by the teacher, and used until the- scholars develop a
remarkable facility in the searching of Scripture. Occa-
sionally let a member of the class be appointed drill-
master, and put the scholars through their paces in-
stead of the teacher. The drill must be conducted in a
sprightly way, and with entire good humor, if it is to be
a success.
You will not go far in the class use of the Bible with-
out discovering the need of a class concordance and Bible
index. Both of these, as found in our teacher's Bibles,
156 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
are so incomplete as to be more tantalizing than
useful.
The presence of Bibles in the class is an especial ad-
vantage at the outset of the lesson, when you study the
connecting links of history binding the current lesson
with its predecessor. If the scholars have not studied
these intervening passages, have them open their Bibles,
glance rapidly over the proper chapters, close the books,
and then tell, as called upon, the facts they have thus
gleaned.
Once in a while, when you want to stimulate some
special scholar, it will be well to appoint him (or her)
44 Bible man " (or " Bible woman ") for the day. Then
all questions relating to other parts of the Bible will be
referred to him as they arise, and he will be expected to
consult his Bible and discover the answers.
Of course the teacher will take care not to confine this
work to the few familiar books of the Bible. Open up
to your scholars Ilosea as well as John, Job as well as
the Acts, Ezekiel as well as the Psalms. Make it a point
to associate with each lesson as many Bible books as you
can, thus giving your scholars each week a wide view
over Holy Writ.
A little record, easily made, which will serve as a de-
cided incentive to the use of the Bible, is the following:
Get your scholars, as soon as they are sure they under-
stand everything on any page of the Bible, to write in
the corner of the page the initials of their name; they
have made that page their own. At least one page will
be marked each Sunday, and your class will be eager to
see the conquered area grow.
THE BIBLE IN THE CLASS 157
Apply to the problem of Bible-study tangible little
plans like this, showing your scholars definite results
growing slowly but surely, and they will soon become
fascinated with the noble occupation, and will carry it
on from these little beginnings to the great results of
genuine scholarship.
CHAPTER XXI
PATRIOTISM IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
How can the study of the ancient Hebrews, so far
away in space and time, be made to promote patriotism
among 1 our modern girls and boys ?
The difficulty is all on the surface, for the problems
that good citizens are trying to work out in our country
are essentially the same problems that faced the best
men and women of Bible times. What better illustra-
tion of the evils of nepotism and of absentee government
than the story of Eli and his sons? Where, even in our
own days, so favored in that particular, could one find a
more admirable specimen of a demagogue than Absalom ?
Do not our labor troubles echo the difficulties that arose
among Pharaoh's brickmakers, and also among Solomon's
builders, led by that " walking delegate," Jeroboam ?
What an example does David's great sin furnish of the
relations between the private and the public life of rulers !
How many points in our Bills of Rights were anticipated
by the episode of Xaboth's vineyard ! Goliath was made
to know the power of a single young patriot, and Pilate's
example should suffice to make manifest for all time the
futility of mere expediency as against justice.
Indeed, our modern civilization is based on the Bible ;
and, quite naturally, the Scriptures are the best text-
book of patriotism.
158
PATRIOTISM IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 159
The Patriotic View Broadens the Lesson. — It gives a
new interest. It wakes up the scholars, who may have be-
come sated with the ethical view, and tired of steady
moralizing. It is especially helpful in classes of boys;
and these embryo citizens begin to see religion as the
manly thing it is when they hear its application to men
and affairs of the present-day world.
To teach patriotism — in the Sunday school or anywhere
else— one must be a patriot. If the great theme is on his
heart, the teacher will find it in every lesson.
Nor is it enough for a man to be a patriot in theory
and feeling only — if such a thing is possible. No one
can be an effective teacher of patriotism without a knowl-
edge of his country, its history, its constitution, its gov-
ernment, the condition of its citizens. Few matters are
more profitable themes for the teacher's study than social
conditions and economic problems, — the life of the poor,
the temptations of the drunkard, incitements to gam-
bling, the manifold misery of the slums, the often equal
wretchedness of wealth. A knowledge of such facts will
quicken sympathy and enlarge the understanding. It
will vivify and explain much that is in the Bible, and the
Bible in turn will solve the problems of the present day.
Hardly can you do your scholars a more valuable service
than by showing them how to bring the inspired wisdom
of old into our modern living.
The newspapers must be among your constant allies
in this work, because they mirror your country's condi-
tions — not perfectly, ah, no ! but better than any other
medium. You must yourself be a vigorous newspaper-
reader, not confining yourself to one paper, nor to the
160 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
papers of one party. It would be an excellent plan to
instruct your class also in the art of reading a news-
paper wisely, — an art so few possess. To this end ap-
point one scholar each week as the " newspaper reporter "
for the class. Go over the papers with him every day,
showing him what to read thoroughly, what to read only
by title, and what to pass over as summarily as if it were
poison. Show him how this incident and that are
related to the truth of the next lesson, and get him to
make before the class a report of such events. This ex-
ercise will greatly aid in making the Bible a vital book
for the children.
Just one word of perhaps unneeded caution. Be care-
ful in this newspaper work to treat fairly all parties, and
all points in dispute among good people. Remember
that you are likely to have among your scholars or their
parents representatives of all parties, and always discuss
principles rather than parties or party leaders.
The teacher of patriotism should read the writings of
the great patriots wherever he can find them, and copy
passages for future use. Note especially any reference
to the Bible or any parallel to Bible events, and place
copies of such utterances in your Bible at the passages
which they illuminate. These echoes of the Bible in the
words of great patriots will demonstrate to your scholars,
more impressively than many words of your own, the
truth and power of the Book.
Most Sunday-school lessons have a national as well as
a personal aspect. The teacher should not neglect the
first, though it is confessedly more difficult to study and
present. History in itself has a profoundly ethical
PATRIOTISM IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 161
value, if it is properly taught. There is far too little
use by Sunday-school teachers of such impressive and
fascinating histories of Bible times as the works of
Geikie, Stanley, Edersheim, Sanders and Kent. They
will teach you to take broad views, and will enable you
to win and hold the most thoughtful and ambitious of
the young people.
Study Secular History. — It is a good practice for a
teacher always to have on hand, as well, some secular
history — the story of Holland, say ; of Switzerland, of
Greece, of England, of Germany, Russia, the United
States, Japan. A new country might well be studied
thus each quarter, noting as you proceed all illustrations
of Bible truths and parallels to Bible history, jotting
down the references on the margins of your Bible.
For patriotism must come to have, to you and your
class, a meaning far larger than the boundaries of your
own country. You must come to see how all countries
of the modern world are bound together by a network of
vital interests, so that when one suffers all the others suf-
fer with it. The highest patriotism strives to improve
its own land, that it may the more effectively bless the
world.
Study Biography.— In emphasizing the need of the
study of history, I do not intend to imply that biography
is to occupy a secondary place, for biography is only his-
tory taken to pieces and seen at close range. The life
stories of the Hebrew heroes are best illustrated by the
biographies of modern patriots — Moses by Lincoln, Jona-
than by Wolfe, Gideon by William of Orange. The
more you study the Bible and the more you study
162 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
national biography, the more fascinated you will be with
the correspondences and illuminations you will discover.
If you have a boys' class — and many a class of girls
would also find it interesting — organize it into a Chris-
tian Patriot's League. Design a banner for it and a badge.
Hold occasional special meetings, especially on the
national holidays ; but the regular meetings will occupy
the five or ten minutes of the Sunday-school hour that
are devoted to the patriotic aspects of the lesson.
Make use of patriotic recitations whenever you can.
All your scholars should know by heart the national
songs, so that they may be repeated in concert when
they are suitable.
Portraits of eminent patriots will be useful to add
vividness to such work as I am outlining. They may be
cut from periodicals, neatly mounted, and kept in alpha-
betic order ready for the proper lessons. Pictures of
landscapes with soul-stirring associations, and of houses
connected with the lives of national heroes, may be used
in the same way.
The lessons that may be taught from such studies are
personal, as well as national, because a nation can be
pure and strong only as its citizens are capable and good.
The great international question of arbitration, for in-
stance, is fruitful in its suggestions of individual kindli-
ness and justice. The long struggle of the Hebrew na-
tion with idolatry has a thousand applications to the cor-
rupting idols that we are all likely to set up in our souls.
A word must be said about the superintendent and the
general exercises of the school, and how they also can
teach patriotism.
PATRIOTISM IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 163
Occasionally some Christian office-holder may be ob-
tained for a few words to the school. This address will
mean much, especially to the boys, and will exalt im-
mensely in their esteem not only the Sunday school but
also the entire subject of religion.
As the national holidays come along, recognize them
in the general exercises of the school. Use decorations
in which the flag is prominent. Have some scholar give
an appropriate recitation. Select the songs with refer-
ence to the occasion. Remind the school of the day, and
in a few words urge upon the scholars the love of their
country and loyalty to it.
Patriotic Prayers. — Most important of all, let the su-
perintendent, as he opens the sessions with prayer, never
forget the country, but in thanksgiving and petition lay
its interests before the Almighty. The scholars them-
selves may offer a patriotic prayer, committing to mem-
ory some such hymn as " God bless our native land,"
and repeating it reverently in concert, standing as they
do so.
Many more suggestions and plans might be added, but
what I have given is enough to direct the attention of
Sunday-school workers to this most important but sadly
neglected subject. If the next generation is to be one
on which our country can safely rest, its patriotism must
!>•' planted now while they are young. If that patriotism
is to be substantial and fruitful it must be upheld by re-
ligion, and in no place better than the Sunday school can
the love of country be intertwined with the love of God.
CHAPTER XXII
"Oh, that book is Sunday-schooly !"
" Pooh ! It's a Sunday-schooly song ! "
" Pshaw ! That's Sunday-school talk ! "
AY ho hasn't heard such sneers? And who, that is a
Christian, has not been pained by them ?
There is no denying it: to affix the term "Sunday
school" to a thing is to discredit it in the eyes and ears
of many persons. " Sunday-schooly " is a sort of syn-
onym for "namby-pamby " and "goody-goody."
A False Impression. — Now, all well-informed Chris-
tians know that this common impression is a false one.
They know that the Sunday school is one of the noblest
of earth's institutions, manly and womanly, and the
making of men and women. How are we to correct this
false impression ? How are we to exalt the adjective,
kw Sunday-school, " in the dictionary of the world?
The fact that these sneers have their origin with the
ignorant and the malicious does not free us from the
necessity of refuting them. Though they spring from
the brains of infidels, they soon come to influence the
thinking even of believers; and, though at first they are
caught up by those that know nothing of the Sunday
school through experience, before long they fill with
doubt and unrest even the teachers and officers of our
schools.
164
" SUNDAY-SCHOOLY " 165
Of course, jests and criticisms, though false, are in a
sense tributes to the vitality and power of the Sunday
school. Men do not ridicule and oppose dead things and
nonentities. But this sort of tribute the Sunday school
can best do without.
It is the measure of truth in these innuendoes that barbs
their satire. Those are false friends of the Sunday
school, however loud their laudations, that will admit no
need of improvement in the institution. In fact, I be-
lieve that within the present century the Sunday school
has to take as many and as great steps in advance as it
took during its first hundred years. It is for all Sun-
day-school workers to accept hints for progress from
whatever source, even from those who deserve to be
classed among the foes of the Bible school.
" Sissy Talk." — Many of the sneers for which " Sunday-
schooly " stands are based upon the alleged " sissy talk "
heard in Sunday schools. " Now, my dee-ah children,"
the teacher or superintendent is represented as saying,
" you all want to die and go to heaven, don't you ?
As many as would like to, may hold up their hands.
Yes, that is good, very good indeed, my dee-ah chil-
dren."
The comic papers, and the humorous departments of
some of our magazines that should be in better business,
often put such silly harangues in the mouths of supposed
visitors, whom the superintendent asks to "say just a
few words to the children." He begins in some such
way as this :
"You must be good, children, and mind your paws
and maws, and your kind teachers in the Sunday school.
106 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
You love your kind teachers, don't you, children ? As
many as love your teachers, hold up your hands. That
is exceedingly gratifying, children ; a very creditable
manifestation."
Of course, those that are familiar with the modern Sun-
day school recognize this as an absurd caricature of the
kind of talk heard there. It may have been heard in the
Sunday schools our fathers attended ; at least, the comic
writers have established a tradition of such talk. It may
still be found in some out-of-the-way schools. But in the
average school this wishy-washy mode of addressing the
children is about as rare as Hindustani.
How can we give the lie to this slander, and dis-
credit its perpetrators? Only by seeing to it that no
" baby talk' 1 is allowed in our Sunday schools. It is al-
ways wiser to talk a little over the heads of children
than to " talk down " to them. They will forgive pon-
derous sentences, and will respect them even when they
do not understand them ; but baby talk they will not
forgive. Teachers should constantly keep in mind the
most mature of the class, and not, in their care for the
more stupid and childish, neglect the quick and eager
scholars. Most children, indeed, are intelligent beyond
what they disclose except to the most keen and sympa-
thetic questioners, and teachers are generally safe in
trusting them a little beyond what appea ranees and
replies would warrant.
And then, as to giving invitations to address the Sun-
day school, that should be done very seldom, and with
the very greatest care. It is a good rule to allow no one
to use those precious moments of the open session except
" SUNDAY-SCHOOLY " 167
on business, with a definite purpose in view. The privi-
lege of addressing a Sunday school should be guarded
as jealously as if it were Congress or Parliament.
Pert Replies. — One of the stock themes of the comic
paragraphers, in connection with these imaginary talks
to the Sunday school, is the pert reply put in the mouth
of some urchin. It would be easy to make a large col-
lection of these Sunday school sayings of children, most
of them impudent, all of them absurd, and nearly all of
them manufactured or grossly exaggerated. We have all
heard Sunday-school speakers that questioned the chil-
dren ; but who of us has ever heard a reply so startlingly
ignorant and ingeniously comical as those in which the
comic papers abound ?
These alleged "smart" sayings injure the Sunday
school. They make us appear to be instructors in pert-
ness. They represent our schools as full of forward
chits, tolerated and even encouraged. I do not think I
am overrating the mischievous influence of these skits.
To counteract them, we must, in the first place, refrain
from quoting them. Unfortunately they are too often
repeated by thoughtless Christians, and I have even
heard them related in talks to the children themselves.
A fine example for them ! In the second place, when we
hear these stories, we need not laugh. Our sober silence
will be a protest, even if we do not care to utter an open
rebuke. And in the third place, when we talk to the
children, we must make our questions so explicit, our
thoughts so clear, and our bearing so reverent, that such
answers as I have described would be most unlikely to be
given.
168 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
The phrase, " Sunday school books," has been for many
years a term of contempt. In the old days of dismal
memoirs, whose heroes and heroines were always preter-
naturally good and invariably short-lived, this contempt
might have been deserved. Now, however, when the re-
ligions literature for children is so varied, attractive, sub-
stantial, and in every way admirable, "a Sunday-school
book" should be a title of honor. But old prejudices die
hard, and this among them.
I suppose the only way to erase this impression regard-
ing Sunday-school books is for each worker to insist on
the literary as well as the religious value of all that are
placed in the particular library with which he has to do.
The school should have a library committee, selected
with great care, and made up of the most intelligent
Christians in the church. When you get a capable com-
mittee, keep them as long as they will serve. The books
should be chosen, not merely because they are good, but
because they are good for something. They should be
well- written as well as well-intentioned. Crude English,
extravagant or silly plot, and morbid views of life should
not be tolerated. The catalogues of all publishers should
be scanned, and correspondence should be had with other
workers, to learn of the best books they have discovered.
In proportion as our schools avail themselves of the
splendid range of fascinating religious books by the best
authors now accessible, this reproach of "Sunday-school
books " will die away.
Sunday-school Music. — Similar things may be said of
Sunday-school songs. There is not a cultivated musician
whose lip does not curl at the mention of them.
" SUNDAY-SCHOOLY n 169
" Twaddle ! " he exclaims. u Rubbish ! Silly and mean-
ingless doggerel set to trashy, tinsel tunes ! "
In the main, it is to be feared that the musician is
right, and this in spite of the fact that unexceptionable
Sunday-school song-books exist — books made by Chris-
tians of true literary and musical ability, whose songs
sing themselves sweetly to the mind and memory as well
as to the tympanum. But where these are sold by the
thousand, the jinglers and janglers are sold by tens and
hundreds of thousands.
It is not necessary to set the children to singing " Old
Hundred " (though that would not hurt them) in order
to avoid these tumty-tum tunes with their empty words.
I certainly am not urging a Sunday-school programme of
Te Deums. It is entirely possible to provide the school
with music that is not heavy and words that are not be-
yond the children's understanding, yet both music and
words shall be of the purest beauty. And in proportion
as that is done, will this old sneer at the Sunday school
pass away.
"Sunday-school teaching" is another phrase that car-
ries with it a certain contempt. It is supposed to be
slipshod, the reverse of thorough and scholarly. It is
compared unfavorably with that of the secular schools.
Often, of course, the reproach is justified, though the
unceasing wonder should be that, with voluntary attend-
ance, with only half an hour a week, with little or no
study on the part of the scholar, and with unpaid teach-
ers, the instruction in our Sunday schools is as good as it
is. But it is constantly growing better. Our ideals are
rising. The advantages of grading and of examinations
170 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
are coming to be understood. Normal classes and teach-
ers' meetings are more and more used and valued. Defi-
nite results are sought from the scholars, and, being
sought intelligently and persistently, are gained. The
discredit of Sunday school teaching is being removed.
"Kop, Skip, and Jump."— Much of this discredit has
sprung from what has been so repeatedly urged against
what it has pleased some to call the " hop-skip-and jump "
method of Sunday-school study. In reality, if we admit
that some parts of the Bible are to be studied more care-
fully than others, it is hard to see how we are to avoid a
little saltatory exercise in getting to them.
But the sting of the criticism may be removed only by
careful attention to the surroundings of every lesson, and
the interspaces between them. We may linger longer in
Genesis and Joshua than in the intervening books of the
Hexateuch, but let us walk through them, however
rapidly, and not jump over them. Let us take broad
views. Let us give our scholars an understanding of the
Book as a whole. Let us rightly divide, when we divide
at all, the Word of truth.
The Traditional Picnic— There are many traditional
features of the Sunday school at which men poke fun.
One of them is the Sunday-school picnic, that imaginary
compound of ants and sandwiches, jelly and trousers,
lost boys and distracted guardians. We must remove
the slight foundation of truth on which this hilarious
fiction is built, if we want to see it fall to the ground.
Our Sunday-school picnics must be well-planned and
well-officered. Enough older folks must go to give the
affair dignity and stability. They must be made worth
" SUNDAY-SCHOOLY M 171
while, — not mere occasions of fret and anxiety. Suffi-
cient amusement must be furnished, carefully thought out
in its minutest details. Let the food be abundant and
good, but do not allow the affair to centre on the feast.
Aim at higher things, at the school's best interests
through merry intercourse of scholar and teacher and
the ingathering of strangers. If this is done, the
antique jests concerning Sunday-school picnics will be
forgotten.
The Reluctant Scholar.— Another picture in the Sun-
day-school gallery, as popular fancy has it, shows the
unfortunate boy, in stiff, best clothes, led unwillingly to
Sunday school, looking longingly at the bold, bad boy
who taunts him from behind a fence, he being on the
way — lucky fellow ! — to the trout pool or the swimming
hole. The view of the case is reinforced by numberless
jokes based on the Christmas tree, and the suspicious in-
crease of the school just before the season of gifts.
A growing number of Sunday schools are aiding in
the demolition of these jests by a vigilant eye on the
attendance all the year around, and especially by making
the school so attractive that the children will need no
compulsion, but will attend gladly, and even feel vastly
aggrieved if compelled to remain at home.
There are other slurs to which the Sunday school is
subjected. There is the traditional collection, with its
buttons and its lead coins. When our schools every-
where adopt the envelope system of class collections, and
set before the scholars positive aims for their giving,
adopting some different object of benevolence perhaps
every month, then we shall hear the last of this slur.
172 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Also, there is the traditional superintendent, patroniz-
ing the boys, chucking the girls under the chin, hammer-
ing his call-bell, and preaching a tedious sermon on the
lesson in the course of the opening exercises. He, too,
is passing from men's minds, as school after school hunts
out for its superintendent a warm-hearted, level headed
business man, of few words, of prompt decision, and of
quiet manner.
No Sunday school worker should disregard the cari-
catures of this beloved Christian institution, or care-
lessly leave them to die a natural death. The honor of
the Sunday school is in our hands. We cannot afford to
close our eyes to its faults, and we must learn to dis-
entangle the helpful truths from the malicious falsehoods
in these sneers and jests ; we must profit from the former
while we repel and rebuke the latter.
As all workers, from the most humble teacher to the
members of the International Committee, thus seek with
fearless zeal the improvement of the Sunday school, it
will grow better and better, and the ridicule of it will
grow less and less, until some day these jests will be
swallowed up in universal love and applause.
CHAPTER XXIII
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
I AM the proud possessor of a Sunday-school hobby.
Really, my stable is full of such hobbies, but one of them
towers high above the others, like the wooden horse of
the Greeks in a modern toyshop.
I have bestowed upon this hobby horse the descriptive
name, Proveit. Proveit is a determined and sagacious
steed. He is an old warhorse, and bears the wounds of
many a battle. Blow but a single note upon the bugle,
and my good steed, Proveit, pricks up his ears.
His food is facts, ground fine in the mill of logic. He
can do his mile a minute any day, yet he does not dis-
dain the plow and the harrow. He is worth a score of
those witless nags named Evasion, Sayso, and Takeit-
forgranted.
I am not shut up to a single horse ; thank heaven, no
Sunday-school teacher is ; but if I were, that horse
should be Proveit, and I should count on his pulling my
pedagogical carryall triumphantly over any road and up
to any goal.
In line, to drop allegory, which so easily becomes
tangled and tiresome, I proclaim myself a bigoted
enthusiast regarding the use of Christian Evidences in
the Sunday school. If you will let me tell you a bit of
my own experience, it will explain my zeal, and serve
me, perhaps, as a text.
173
174 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
When I was a boy, I had the most devoted of Sunday-
school teachers. They were holy women, for the most
part, consecrated, painstaking, prayerful. They did
more for me than the conceited boy realized, and more
than the still-conceited man can ever hope to de-
serve.
But one thing they did not do for me : they did not
discover my doubts ; and since they did not discover
them, naturally they did not dispel them. I was only a
boy, but I doubted the inspiration of Scripture, the
authenticity of miracles, the divinity of Christ, the
Trinity, the atonement. Unitarian tracts came my
way, and Unitarian preaching also, fascinating and
forcible, and I was more than half convinced.
All this time I was going regularly to Sunday school,
answering orthodox questions in the orthodox way, and
my teachers knew no more about my real mental con-
dition than about the Shah of Persia's. One blessed
woman among them wrote me a letter once a year
urging mo to join the church, and one noble man asked
me once if I called myself a Christian. I replied that I
did, and he was satisfied. I did, but I wasn't.
Then, as I became a young man and a teacher of
others, I entered upon that period of inner struggle
which more young men pass through than is often
realized, the struggle between faith and infidelity. My
friends, my desires, and all the influences that descended
from Baptist grandparents and Presbyterian parents
urged me to orthodoxy. My own unassisted and un-
instructed reasonings pushed me irresistibly into the
blackness of doubt.
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 175
" Believe it, because it is in the Bible," I was told ;
but I was also told that the Bible required me to believe
that Joshua caused the earth to stand still, and I was
teaching astronomy. I wanted the Bible proved, before
men proved statements by the Bible ; and no one, in
Sunday school or outside it, went that far.
It was at this time, when I was greatly troubled over
the matter, that I dug up out of a dusty corner in the
college library a book I shall always hold in reverence, —
Mark Hopkins's " Evidences of Christianity." Well do
I recall the thrill with which I read that volume. It
opened a new world to me, the world of reason, as
against mere authority, in religion. I had been taught
to reason in a circle: "This statement is the inspired
truth of God because it is in the Bible. It is in the
Bible because it is the inspired truth of God." Mark
Hopkins's u Evidences of Christianity " lifted me out of
that circle. It showed me that Christianity stands con-
fidently among the provable facts. It disclosed the
reasonableness of the supernatural, demonstrated the
authenticity of the Scripture record, and established a
foundation for faith on which, with joy and surety, I
have built my stronghold of creed. I have since found
other books of the kind, which I prefer, and the ideal
remains to be written ; but I and thousands of others
look forward to meeting Mark Hopkins in the land of
open vision, and thanking him for the manly service he
has rendered.
Now that service, I contend, should have been done
me in the Bible school and the church. — My faith or
infidelity should not have been left to the chance dis-
170 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
covery of a book on Christian Evidences. Nor should
the same risk be run in the case oi* any child.
I insist that the Bible is not even half taught until we
teach the reasons for believing it, and at every point
arm our scholars against the skepticism of the age. Un-
less they are able to give a reason for the faith that is in
them, nowadays they are not likely to keep any faith in
them very long, still less to inspire faith in others.
The study of Christian Evidences should be inter-
woven with all lessons in all grades, and in the older
classes exclusive attention should be given to it in oc-
casional courses of study. It will put backbone into
Bible history, vivify all your exegesis, vitalize all your
theology, bind your lessons together with a sturdy
thread, and give your scholars the zeal of crusaders, each
assuming that royal title, Defender of the Faith.
I know that there are objections to the teaching of
Christian Evidences in the Sunday school.
In the first place, itissaid that the discussion of Christian
Evidences suirjrests more doubts than it settles. The asser-
tion is : ik Take it for granted that the Bible is in all points
true, and it will not occur to your scholars to doubt it." I
wish that were so, but it is not, as every teacher and
every parent will testify. " Where did all the frogs come
from?" the children are sure to pipe, in studying the
Exodus. "Could I walk on the water, if I tried, as well
as Peter? Why not? Where did Cain get his wife?
If Jesus was God, why did he pray to God ? Where
did the ravens get the food they brought to Elijah?
Why was Achan's whole family killed with him ?" — What
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 177
teacher is there to whom such questions are not as famil-
iar as the alphabet?
The impression made on many a worried teacher is
that these puzzlers are brought out merely to perplex
and annoy. That may have come to be the case, but I
believe that at the start they were honest inquiries, not
to be repeated if honestly and satisfactorily answered.
But when the teacher does not meet them fairly, when
he hesitates and shuttles, when he procrastinates and
evades, the young folks come not unnaturally to the con-
clusion that their questions cannot be answered, that the
teacher is afraid to meet them, and they grow up with
the uneasy impression that religion is based on unsound-
ness and unreason.
Very likely the scholar will go on, at least for a time,
meekly answering the teacher's leading questions as the
teacher plainly desires them to be answered, nourishing
discontent and rebellion in his breast. Sometimes an in-
cautious query on the part of the usually prudent in-
structor will disclose the lurking infidelity. Then there
will be a flash of defiant, bold denial that will startle the
teacher and the class.
Well do I remember such an instance. It was a young
man, a church-member of long standing, a college grad-
uate and then a teacher, and he had been under my Sun-
day-school guidance for months without my suspecting
his doubts. One day, in private conversation, I touched
somewhat probingly his inner convictions, and to my
amazement he confessed almost absolute infidelity.
Brought up in the atmosphere of easy acceptance of
Christianity which I have described, joining the church
178 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
without any careful scrutiny of the foundations of his
faith, the intellectual clashings of college life had knocked
to pieces that flimsy structure of belief, and he found
himself without Christ and well-nigh without God.
It should not have been possible for that young man
to remain in my class for those months without my dis-
covering his real attitude toward the gospel. Such an
incident should not be possible in any class. Probably I
am not far wrong in saying that nine-tenths of our
classes would yield just such cases if the teachers should
search out, frankly and sympathetically, their pupils' true
opinions.
These young folks are thinking, nowadays, far more
deeply than we give them credit for. I was impressed,
one Sunday, by some conversation I heard on the way
home from a certain church. The sermon had been a
plain, simple talk on some matter of ethics, easy of in-
stant understanding in every part, and very likely sim-
plified by the good man who preached, in the hope that
something of what he said might be appropriated by the
lambs of the flock. Two of those lambs were walking
before me, — two young boys; and what do you think
they were talking about ? The theory of evolution !
That was in Boston, you say. Yes, it was ; but every-
where, I believe, we older folks are greatly underrating
the capacity of young heads for serious thought. Infidel-
ity floats in the air as pervasive as gnats in August.
Young folks are keen to catch up hints, and shrewd at
expanding them. This is in truth what it is so often
called, " an age of doubt," and the Sunday school should
be the church's main barrier against that doubt.
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 179
So far is it from being true that a full and frank dis-
cussion of Christian Evidences will suggest doubts and
promote skepticism that I believe the very opposite to be
the case. I believe that a great deal of the prevailing
skepticism, a skepticism much more far-reaching than is
often appreciated because it so frequently lurks in the
church itself, — I believe that much of this pervading
doubt and unrest is due to the universal neglect of Chris-
tian evidences in teaching and preaching.
Especially I believe that the measurable desertion of
the Sunday school and church by the young men and the
men full-grown is duo to the same cause. Any neglect
to place Christianity on the manly basis of proof, un-
rhetorical, clear-headed, logical proof, is certain to alien-
ate the men. There are no statistics — would that there
were ! — dealing with the masculine as distinct from the
feminine element in our Sunday schools and churches,
but any one's observation will prove to him that young
men and older men are chiefly found, other things being
equal, in those churches where a definite system of doc-
trine is taught with the most aggressive and sturdy con-
sistency. There are few things that men like better than
a Q. E. D.
But I can hear some one raising this objection :
"The Bible is an inspired book," he says, "and I want to
teach it like an inspired book. It is not like other books.
It is self-evidencing. It needs no assistance from human
reason, no bolstering of human logic. I need only pre-
sent its great truths and leave them to do their certain
work. To apply human logic is to discredit the authority
of Scripture and virtually to deny its inspiration."
180 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
In answer to this objection, — an objection which is
merely felt quite as often as it is urged openly, — I wish
first to say that I do not like the words, "human logic."
Logic, whenever it is logic and not mere pompous asser-
tion, is divine. Reason is of God and not of the dust or
the devil.
Unreason is to be feared, always ; but reason, never.
It is by reason and logic that we conclude the Bible to
be inspired, and the doctrine of inspiration has nothing
to fear from reason and logic. Indeed, it has everything
to fear from their opposites.
It is a commonplace of religious history that the
churches have been weakest under a regime of bald au-
thority, and strongest where reason and logic, evidence
and proof, are most thoroughly used in their behalf.
Protestants, of all men, should remember that fact. To
say, " You must believe this because it is in the Bible,"
is to adopt the method of the Church of Rome, and is to
insure a plentiful and increasing crop of skepticism.
First prove the Bible, and then draw your proof-texts
from it. How it dishonors the inspired Volume to assert
that an exhibition of the evidence of its inspiration will
detract from its authority ! Nowhere is that authority
stronger than among those who can give a reason for the
faith that is in them.
If you want to bring up in the Sunday school a set of
young people who will revere the Bible as the veritable
word of God to sinful, suffering men, who will esteem as
sacred its every sentence, draw their lives from its pages
and defend it from all hostility, you will accomplish this not
by emotional appeals, skin-deep illustrations, flimsy sym-
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 181
bols, and domineering ipse dixits, but by the quiet laying
of reason's foundation stones, upon which the lofty
structure will rise, course bound to course with the firm
cement of logic. It is in the conviction that in no other
way can the authority of Scripture be laid with con-
vincing and permanent power upon the hearts of men
that I urge the teaching of Christian evidences.
But yet one more objection is raised against this proof-
giving that I advocate, namely, that it will lead to long
and profitless debates in the lesson hour. I have even
heard it charged that Sunday-school teachers, at a loss
for material with which to fill up the time, deliberately
provoke discussions of knotty points, a favorite being, of
course, the question of miracles.
Such wrangling is as far as possible from my thought,
and is entirely unnecessary in the teaching of Christian
evidences. Indeed, I think it far more likely to take
place when Christian evidences are not taught than
when they are. If these points of doubt are evaded, the
suspicious and indignant scholars are likely, from min-
gled contempt and mischief, to bear them in mind and
bring them up again and again.
On the contrary, whenever a query is raised or a diffi-
culty presented, it should be met promptly, heartily, and
decisively. Give a sharp, clear-cut statement of the rea-
son, the evidence, the proof. If you cannot do it, frankly
admit your ignorance and promise to have an answer
ready a week hence ; then keep your promise, though you
must consult every doctor of divinity in town. The next
thing to wisdom, you know, is honest confession of igno-
rance.
182 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
If the question is not prompted by honest doubt, say
that you will answer it in private, after the class. Then
do it. Take the same course if the question is one quite
foreign to the lesson theme. Also, if there is a tendency
to debate after you have stated the reason or the proof,
cut it short by the same device, postponing discussion till
after the school is dismissed. No teacher should allow
himself to be side-tracked, nor will he, if he knows his
business.
I have just said that doubts are to be met and an-
swered as soon as they are expressed in the class. I
should go further. Doubts are to be answered before
they reach the point of expression , nay, before they arise
at all in the scholar's mind. The best teaching of that
straightforward thing, Christian evidences, is by indirec-
tion. The class is unconsciously fortified against skepti-
cism.
It is a great mistake for the teacher to introduce the
subject of infidelity and openly to combat it. Ingersoll
would have made very little stir in the world were it not
for the advertising he ffot from Christian denunciations.
The teacher should know at what points the Bible is
assailed most commonly. To that extent and for that
purpose only, he might well have a personal knowledge
of infidel writers. He cannot guard his class against the
foe unless he knows from what quarter and in what man-
ner they will attack. But the less the scholars know
about the names of infidels, their books, and their argu-
ments, the better. Some teachers and preachers apply
the principle of vaccination, and introduce a little of the
virus of infidelity, thinking that by counteracting this
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 183
specimen portion they will render their scholars immune
against the disease. Generally they are merely implant-
ing an appetite for more.
The teaching of Christian evidences for which I plead
is positive, and not negative; instructive, and not com-
bative ; a riveting of the structure of faith rather than a
launching of thuuderbolts against its assailants. The
teacher should remember his own doubts of former years,
and recall how he overcame them. He should talk with
his scholars frankly and frequently on these great themes,
so as to note the beginnings of doubts before they them-
selves are quite aware of them. In preparing every les-
son he should ask himself this invariable question :
"What points in this passage will seem difficult of belief,
either now or in after years? What opportunity does
the lesson give for the strengthening of faith on the fun-
damentals of Christianity?" It is a preventive work
that I am advocating, and not an aggressive work; the
planting of good seed, thick and sure, and not the up-
rooting of weeds. Class wrangles and fretful arguments
are no more necessary an accompaniment of the teaching
of Christian evidences than of the teaching of geometry.
One other objection, and one only, remains to be men-
tioned. Some are afraid that persistent and thorough
attention to Bible proofs will put religion on a merely in-
tellectual plane. No one would deprecate this more than
I would. All religion is more of the heart than the
h< ad, and the deepest truths of religion are inscrutable
mysteries to the mind. A merely intellectual religion is
as dead as a skeleton in the physiologist's laboratory.
But if a merely intellectual religion is a skeleton, a
184 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
merely emotional religion is invertebrate, and it is about
as bad to have flesh without a backbone as to have back-
bone without the flesh. Even the heart must have a
bony casket for defense and support, and even the most
profound religious mysteries, such as the atonement and
the Trinity, are believed upon reasonable grounds or not
actually at all.
There is far more danger, with the average teacher,
that Sunday-school instruction should give too little for
the head than that it should give too little for the heart.
Heart appeals draw their material from common life and
feeling. They are easily made, and, usually, as easily
forgotten. They suggest themselves in connection with
all lessons, they are fully treated in all our lesson helps,
they demand for their study and presentation little orig-
inality or labor.
Christian evidences, on the other hand, require some
research and study. One must be prepared for objec-
tions and further inquiries. Material for this mode of
teaching is not easily accessible, nor to be mastered with-
out diligent application, nor to be presented effectively
without originality and skill. Often, I fear, it is the
sluggishness of teachers, rather than their assumed fear
of placing religion on a merely intellectual basis, that
holds them to questions of feeling and conduct, and away
from discussions of evidence and fact.
But if the teacher will seriously undertake these stud-
ies, if he will earnestly set him to the firm establishment
of his faith and the faith of his scholars, he will find in
the study of Christian evidences an unparalleled mental
stimulus. It is history, and history that deals with the
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 185
noblest men and women. It is philosophy, and philoso-
phy concerned with the loftiest themes. It is literature,
and literary criticism of the highest and most enlighten-
ing type. It is logic, and logic dealing with no abstract
syllogisms, but with the nerve and blood of human ex-
istence. The study of Christian evidences will arouse
the minds of teacher and scholars alike, lift the lesson
hour from the furrows of stale custom, and vitalize the
entire Sunday school with a sense of achievement and
mental mastery.
Nor will the heart aspects of religion suffer from this
attention to the head aspects. Show me the reasonable-
ness of miracles, and the Red Sea and Carmel, Cana and
Bethesda, speak with new authority to my soul. Prove
to me that John wrote his Gospel, and the fourteenth
chapter breathes a balm it could not have for me be-
fore. It is impossible to derive the highest comfort,
inspiration, and guidance from a book that may be
largely a forgery, however beautiful the forgery may be.
It is impossible to feed upon the Scriptures while one is
harassed with half-confessed fears that inspiration is a
mere dogma, the supernatural an outgrown fancy, and
miracles only myths. Prove Christ a veritable fact, as
real as Washington or Victoria, as real as your next-door
neighbor; show your scholars that the report we have
of his words and deeds is as trustworthy, to say the
least, as any column they will see in to-day's newspaper,
and at once the Bible becomes a vital Book, and Christ
becomes a speaking Friend, and the discovery breathes
into all the doctrines of Christ's religion the breath of
life.
186 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Some may be inclined to inquire with what age one
should begin to teach the evidences of Christianity.
Should proofs of the Bible be introduced in the primary
department ? Should the youngest scholars be taught,
for instance, of the possibility that God used a strong
east wind to sweep the Red Sea bare before the Israel-
ites ? Shall we tell them how the Bible was brought to-
gether and how it came down to us? Shall we cast our
teaching in the easy traditional mold, or shall we base
our teaching, at the very start, on the best and wisest
we know ?
Well, the best and wisest is none too good for the
children. Certainly it will discredit the Sunday school
if, even by implication, we teach them anything they
must unlearn in later years. Assuredly we must speak
the truth, even to babes.
But how much of the truth shall we speak? That is
the question. Their young minds are eager to spring at
you with Why ? and How ? It is as great a mistake to
ignore their mental perplexities, to deprecate them, pal-
ter with them, or put them off, as it is in the case of their
elders. Sucli treatment is pusillanimous and mischief-
breeding. No; reason must be allied to our religious
teaching from the beginning, and must be expressed as
fast as it can be understood.
This is not to say that Christian Evidences will be
taught to our little ones in the same way we use with
older classes ; far from that.
My little girl once asked me, " Why can't we see
God, if he is here ? " How should I answer her ?
Should I enter into an explanation of the difference be-
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 187
tween spirit and matter ? How could I explain it when
I don't in the least understand it myself ?
I answered her with another question : " What do
you think is the reason ? "
" I guess it's because we haven't the right kind of
eyes," she replied, and added, u We get a different kind
of eyes when we die, don't we?"
Well, of course, I assented, and of course I didn't try
to go farther. Indeed, I am not sure that the wisest
man that ever lived could go farther.
" Why did Jesus let them kill him ? " the child may
ask, remembering the mighty miracles the Saviour
wrought. Shall we talk about the atonement ? Shall
we introduce the doctrine of justification by faith, which
is to be the great comfort of their maturity ?
We shall make a simple beginning toward the fulness
of that wondrous truth. "Jesus wanted just to be a
man," we shall say. " lie wanted to be like us, and suf-
fer as we do, and even die as we do, that he might show
bow God loves us." That does not go very far, but the
child can go as far as it goes, and it is true as far as it goes.
In that spirit I would approach all the child's ques-
tions. The letters the child uses are the same as those
used by Bacon, its figures the same as Newton's, but its
combinations of letters and figures must be immeasur-
ably simpler. " C-a-t cat," however, is on the way to the
Novum Organum, and "twice two is four" is on the
way to the Principia. Even the little folks can learn
the elements of Christian Evidences.
I )ne inquiry sure to arise when teachers begin seri-
ously to consider the teaching of Bible proofs is, " What
188 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
shall I do with the higher criticism ? " That is a real
perplexity, for these are days of many revolutions in
Bible study, and views regarding the origin and history
of the sixty-six sacred books are advocated in orthodox
pulpits which would have excommunicated their promul-
gators a century ago. Whether the book of Daniel was
written under the Maccabees, whether Deuteronomy
was produced after the division of the kingdom,
whether the fourth Gospel is John the Apostle's or some
very different John's, — such questions as these will arise
in disheartening number before the teacher has gone far
in his own Bible studies. That he should meet these
doubts fairly and solve them manfully ought not to need
to be said.
There are current two views of the higher criticism.
One makes it a dragon, and runs away from it ; the other
makes it an idol and worships it. Both are wrong.
Only one question is worthy to be asked regarding a point
of higher criticism, and that is, Is it true? Not, what
evil results will flow from it if it is true, but, h it true?
Some of the modern Bible scholars are irreverent,
flippant, conceited, and slash with their opinionated pen-
knives in the face of all the moral and literary convic-
tions of mankind. Other are cautious, profound, rever-
ent, of sympathetic insight, of masterly comprehension.
AVhen such men, out of their vast erudition and in eager
love of God and his Book, choose to speak, it befits you
and me to keep silent and listen. Tenchers in our Sun-
day schools should know enough about modern Bible
studies to distinguish between these two classes of
scholars, to avoid the one and cleave to the other.
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 189
It is the height of folly to insist that our grandfathers
discovered all there is to know about the Bible. It is
also the height of folly to fear that any discovery will
shake the immutable truth of God. It is most necessary
for Sunday-school teachers to maintain minds that are
open to all proved facts about the Bible. How otherwise
can we hope to prove the Bible ? But an open mind
need not be open at both ends. Whatever truth we ad-
mit, we need never let our faith fall through.
It is most necessary, also, for gunday -school teachers
to recognize the true foundations of faith. If we are fool-
ish enough to base our faith in God and his Book upon
a literal acceptance of the story of Joshua's causing the
sun, that is, the earth, to stand still, then all argument
and evidence that this story is merely an ancient poem
will shake our faith to its foundations.
A firm sense of proportion is the teacher's invaluable
aid. He must learn to distinguish between essentials
and incidentals. He must understand what he can well
afford to let go and what he must defend at all hazards.
He must not ride hobbies, either of conservatism or of
radicalism, or he will assuredly tumble into the ditch.
Believing firmly that all Scripture is inspired of God and
profitable, he will hold that belief not as an iron armor
but as a workman's blouse. To him the Bible will be,
not a dead, paved street, but a ploughed field, ever fertile
for new harvests of thought and life. In that spirit, so
far as his opportunity and ability permit, he will master
the higher criticism. At any rate, he will not let it mas-
ter him.
I should like to see our Sunday-school teachers every-
190 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
where forming classes in Christian evidences. Of course,
the Bible should be known thoroughly, from cover to
cover. No one can prove a sum till he has done it,
and no one can prove a Bible of which he is ignorant.
I was told the other day of a class of young women
within ten miles of Boston who, with their teacher, came
recently to the serious conclusion that the ark of the
tabernacle was a sort of photograph of Noah's ark which
the children of Israel carried around with them. It may
be imagined how luminous a discussion of the authorship
of the Fourth Gospel could be carried on by such a class
and teacher.
No ; this study of Christian evidences presupposes a
passable knowledge of the contents of the Bible. But if
the study is earnestly followed, Bible knowledge will
surprisingly develop with it.
These teachers' classes in Christian evidences should be
built up around a text-book. If you want a small and
attractive book, I know of nothing better than the
"Short Manual of Christian Evidences," by Professor
Fisher, of Yale University. It is published by Scribner's,
and its price is seventy-five cents. I might name other
books, but that would only confuse you needlessly.
A necessary element in such a study is the history of
the manuscripts and of our English translations, a fasci-
nating subject, to be pursued with the aid of such popular
volumes as " The Parchments of the Faith," by Merrill,
sold by the Baptist Publication Society for $1.25, and
"Our Sixty-Six Sacred Books," by Rice, sold by the
American Sunday-School Union for from fifteen cents
to half a dollar. After you have read such books, you
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 191
will almost invariably carry on the subject with the aid
of more elaborate treatises.
My thought for these teachers' classes in Christian
evidences is very simple. Every teacher should own the
text- book, for later reference and for lending to his
scholars, as well as for present use. All having read
the chapter assigned, the teachers will come together to
talk it over. The leader will have studied the same
subject in some larger and fuller book. He will have
written out a set of questions covering the assigned
ground, and these are to be answered by the teachers.
They will be so framed as to bring out discussion and
perhaps excite debate. A brief essay on the subject will
be read, at each meeting by a different teacher. The
hour will close with the discussion of difficult points
that have come up in recent lessons or are anticipated in
the lessons to come.
In all this work the teachers should be encouraged to
make their own original contributions to Christian evi-
dences. One of them, for example, in reading the story
of Samuel, has been struck with the account of the evil
life of that good man's sons, and is impressed with the
honesty of the Scriptures. Certainly a false historian
would have made Samuel bring up his sons in godliness,
and would have told how nobly they succeeded him and
carried on his line. Such a bit of evidence is worth to
its discoverer many pages from a book, and will be pre-
sented by him with peculiar force to others.
As to the aims of this study, they will be simple, and
easily attained. There are certain points the Sunday-
school teacher should know with all ardor of conviction.
192 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
They are these: God is. Christ lived in the flesh. The
Bible is what it pretends to be. The truth of miracles,
of the supernatural. The reality of immortality, of
heaven, of hell. The fact of the atonement. The doc-
trines of the Trinity, of regeneration, of inspiration.
If the teacher is himself convinced, through and
through, of those eight truths, ami if he is able to
convince others, meeting their arguments and resolving
their doubts, his study of Christian evidences has re-
ceived its practical crown. His Sunday-school work has
become more of a science and less of a rhapsody. It
has attained the businesslike methods of secular schools.
It has reached the dignity of the law courts. It obtains
the respect and admiration of young men. It binds the
intellect to the heart and both to Christ. It not only
wins souls, but it holds them after they are won.
And now perhaps I cannot close this chapter in a
better way than by giving an illustration of just what I
mean by the teaching of Christian evidences.
I will suppose that you are to teach a lesson that most
teachers use annually, the Easter lesson, the resurrection
of Christ. This lesson affords you an easy chance to
exhort. You may indulge in word pictures of the scene.
You may enter into a long description of Eastern tombs
and Roman guards. You may drill into the class the
precise order in which the women and the various dis-
ciples visited the tomb. You may warn your scholars of
the certainty of death, and impress upon them the truth
that Christ is the Resurrection and the Life. You may
carry out this programme, through which that class has
already passed perhaps a dozen times, and you will prob-
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 193
ably leave them with little firmer grasp on the great
fact of the resurrection than they had before. " O, if I
only knew that Christ rose from the dead ! O, if I could
only be sure that my dear one is still alive ! " Who has
not heard that cry many and many a time, as I have
heard it, from those who have enjoyed all their lives the
ministrations of the pulpit and the Sunday school ?
Ah, teachers, when you next have a chance at that
blessed Easter lesson, use it as your God sent opportu-
nity to banish such doubts forever! The proofs of
Christ's resurrection are many, and varied, and irresist-
ible. Point to the narratives themselves. Let the class
read them aloud, noting how simple they are, how nat-
ural, how apparently honest and straightforward. Point
out some of the seeming discrepancies, like the differ-
ences in the accounts regarding the arrival of the women.
Show how these discrepancies may be explained, but at
the same time remind the class that a fictitious narrative
would have avoided discrepancies, especially those that
lie so plainly on the surface. Contrast this simple, hon-
est, convincing narrative with a false account of the
same event, the product of later ages, the so-called Gospel
of Peter. Read to the class this extract : —
"In the night before the Lord's Day, the soldiers
being on guard two and two about, there arose a great
voice in heaven ; and they saw the heavens opened, and
two men descending thence with great light and ap-
proaching the tomb. And that stone which had been
placed at the door rolled away of itself to one side, and
the tomb was laid open, and both the young men went
in. On seeing this, the sentinels woke the centurion and
194 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
the elders (for they also were on the watch); and while
they were relating what they had seen, they saw again
coming out of the tomb three men, the two supporting
the one, and, following them, a cross. And of the two
the head reached the heaven, but that of him whom they
led overpassed the heaven. And they heard a voice out
of heaven saving, 4 Hast thou preached obedience to them
that sleep?' And from the cross came answer, ' Yes.' "
Now that is the way myths grow up, and that is the
way they are written. The miraculous predominates.
It is grotesque and exaggerated. It is miracle unrelated
to character, unexplained by any of the necessities of the
case. In the true account, on the contrary, the miracu-
lous element is minimized ; it is unforced ; it springs
simply and easily from the circumstances. It is inevi-
table.
Brooding over these veracious accounts, you will dis-
cover many internal evidences of their veracity. For
example, the prominence given to women. While this is
entirely in accord with the rest of the Gospels and with
what we have come to look upon as natural and beauti-
ful, what ancient writer, if he were manufacturing a nar-
rative, or what ancient rumor, growing slowly to a myth,
would have made a Tew weak women the discoverers and
heralds of the resurrection ? Would it not have been
John, perhaps, to whom this honor would have been
assigned, or Peter, or James? or would it not have been
some superb, thunder-smitten delegation from the San-
hedrim ? But, " The first day of the week cometh Mary
Magdalene" — who would ever have thought of that?
Again, what false historian would have recorded the
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 195
incredulity of the disciples ? '" Some doubted," it is re-
corded in Matthew. "They believed not them which
had seen him after he was risen," says Mark. The
women's words seemed to the disciples M as idle tales,"
says Luke. Thomas was unbelieving, and the two of
Emmaus had no hope.
Again, bid the class note the little details, such as none
but eye-witnesses would recall or dream of writing, — the
linen cloths lying, the folded napkin, the imagined gar-
dener, John outrunning Peter, the table blessing at Em-
maus, the broiled fish and honeycomb, — these are touches
that need only to be pointed out to confirm the narrative
wonderfully as natural and true.
Pass on to consider how many appearances of the risen
Lord are recorded, and all as naturally. It is impossible
to explain away so many independent events. Consider
also the number of persons involved, as many as five hun-
dred at one time. They could not all have been subject
to hallucinations. Consider the sudden cessation of these
appearances at the end of the forty days ; whereas, if
they had merely been the visions of dreamy zealots, they
would have increased in number as the church grew.
Consider the wonderful change produced in the apostles,
raised in an hour from the sad depression caused by
the crucifixion to an exalted enthusiasm that braved all
dangers, sent them to proclaim the good news in the
temple itself, and brought about Pentecost. Was this
wrought by an empty dream of an unreal resurrection ?
Consider the most striking case of all, that lawyerlike
Paul, transformed in an instant, at sight of the risen
Christ, from a persecutor to an apostle. Remember how
196 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
he based his preaching upon, the resurrection, and de-
clared that if Christ were not raised, it was all vain.
Kemember that, in the confident faith inspired by the
resurrection and by that alone, thousands upon thou-
sands during the succeeding years gave that supreme
evidence of belief, a martyr's death. Was Paul be-
fooled ? No keener man ever lived than he. Were the
martyrs visionaries ? Men do not lay down their lives
for visions.
Suppose it is argued that Christ did not die, but merely
swooned on the cross. What, then, became of him ?
When and where did he die ? Could the disciples have
hidden him ? Would he for a minute have consented ?
Suppose the enemies of Christ carried away his body,
and thus the tomb was found empty. Why, then, did
they not produce his body, and thus end the story of
his resurrection ?
Was it all a myth ? There was no time for a myth to
grow up. Was it a falsehood ? The character of the
disciples renders the thought impossible. By the record,
tested in every part, and by the results, viewed under
every light, the resurrection of Christ is one of the best
attested facts of history.
Well, it is in about that fashion that I would ride my
hobby horse, Proveit. And I contend that such a mode
of teaching the Easter lesson would lead irresistibly to
all the ethical conclusions obtainable from any other way
of teaching, all the comfort, all the joy, all the adora-
tion, and would establish them upon foundations that
cannot be shaken by the shock of death.
Oh, to be sure of one's religion ! What a strength it
CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 197
is ! Not to hold one's faith tentatively, at the mercy of
a skeptic's sneer. Not to falter before the pompous emp-
tiness of infidel fallacies. Not to faint under the test of
sorrow or gloom or mortal extremity. To have done
with doubt, once and forever. To know, and know that
you know. To be able to build on firm foundations, im-
mutable and eternal as truth itself. All this is the priv-
ilege and therefore the duty of every Christian ; to be
led into it is the right of every Sunday-school scholar.
May he who became the Word, the incarnate Reason of
Jehovah, guide us and enable us to guide our classes to
the reason and the proof of his gospel !
CHAPTER XXIV
CIIK1STMA S F EST I VITIES
Am I wrong in thinking that I see a gradual drawing
away from Christmas celebrations in the Sunday school ?
I hope I am. Teachers and officers, however, are very
likely to shrink from the labor involved, to remember
past turmoils, and to devise some makeshift of a celebra-
tion that is no pride to themselves or satisfaction to the
children.
For the children, bless them ! are not weary of these
things. The glittering tree and the jovial Santa still fas-
cinate them as they fascinated my own well remembered
boyhood, when they formed the sparkling cynosure of
the entire year. And it seems a pity, since so much
pleasure can be given so easily to so many, to minimize
it or do away with it altogether.
Simple Celebrations.— I say " so easily," though I am
well aware that the adverb will arouse sarcastic smiles.
But I believe we make far too much fuss over our
Christmas rejoicings, losing in multiplicity of parade
the beautiful, simple lesson of the Advent. An ideal
Christmas celebration may be purchased at little cost of
money, time, or strength. No one person, and no few
persons, should be allowed to bear the burden of it, but
it should be divided among many. Where the Sunday
school is small, by all means neighboring schools or the
198
CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES 199
schools of the entire town should unite for the festival,
and thus put in practice, that evening at least, one of the
chief teachings of Christmas. Divide the work among
many committees, each with a responsible head. Let
one group plan the decorations, let a committee obtain
the evergreen boughs, another fashion the wreaths,
another put them in place. Set a committee to ar-
range the singing. Set another committee over the
ushering. The tree, the exercise, the presents, — divide
the work into little parcels, and then no back will break.
Besides, far more good will be gained if many are thus
interested in the celebration than if only a few receive
the rewards of service. And if any superintendent says
it is easier to do the thing himself than to superintend
so many, ask him the meaning of the name of his office.
In this committee work utilize as far as possible the
young folks themselves. They will enjoy it, and their
loyalty to the school will be increased by it. Their in-
terest in the celebration will be proprietary. Utilize
also the skilled force of the young people's society.
They will feel complimented, and the service will bind
the two organizations more firmly together.
Overcrowded Programmes. — The matter of time will
do much to decide whether the celebration is dreaded, or
anticipated with pleasure. Most of such festivals are
sadly overcrowded. Time carefully each exercise, mak-
ing generous allowance for "getting up and sitting
down," for coming in and going out, and for the unex-
pected hitches that are sure to come. Leave liberal
gaps, as men leave gaps between connecting railroad
rails, because "heat expands." Rehearse everything,
200 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
and "get a good ready." Insist on promptness. Set
the hour early, and let people know you will begin at the
hour, though only ten are there. Then, keep your word.
Close early, before the fidgets come. " Early beginning
and early to close, and oh, how successfully everything
goes ! "
Our Christmas celebration should be, as far as possible,
a re-embodiment of the Advent Day itself. There are
four simple elements of that great event, and if we in-
troduce those four elements into our Christmas exercises,
they will be well-rounded, attractive, and fruitful.
There is : —
First, upward ; the thought of the star; the element
of worship.
Second, downward ; the angels' song of good will ;
the element of charity.
Third, inward; the manger and its blessedness; the
element of rejoicing.
Fourth, outward; the magi and their offerings; the
element of gifts.
i. Upward.— Who has not attended Christmas festi-
vals that might as well have been festivals in honor of
Mercury or Juno ? The real thought of Christmas has
scarcely entered at all into the celebration. I have seen
an evening's Christmas entertainment, in a Sunday
school, that was based entirely on the brownies ; another
year, entirely on the characters of Mother Goose's
melodies !
Now I believe that the Christmas concert should be a
gain to the religious life of every participant and auditor.
I would precede it, on Christmas morning, with an
CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES 201
early morning prayer meeting — a sunrise prayer meet-
ing. Such a meeting has been held annually in my own
church ; it is very largely attended, by young and old,
and scores take part. It gives a spiritual tone to the
entire day. It is the best possible preparation for
Christmas evening.
At the very outset of the evening's exercises, make
plain the predominant purpose of the gathering, — that
it is to exalt the Saviour of men. Get the most eloquent
speaker obtainable to present the theme, briefly but most
winsomely. And I would follow this with several short,
simple prayers, in swift succession. One of these prayers
may well be given in brief, easy sentences, or parts of
sentences, which the children, even the youngest, will re-
peat after the speaker, all heads being bowed.
Having in some such ways as these gained the upward
look, next make sure of: —
2. Downward. — I have known Sunday schools that
gave up, by vote, their Christmas festivities, especially
the gift part, in order to use the money for the pleasure
and comfort of poor children. This spirit of self-denial
can be cultivated in other ways, throughout the year,
and in our well-to do Sunday schools it is not necessary
to abandon the Sunday-school " treat " in order to get
the element of charity into the celebration.
In some way, however, this element must be incorpo-
rated. Make a strong appeal to the parents. Ask them
to give each child a chance to earn something to give to
the poor at Christmas. Do not consider your festival in
commemoration of the Christ-child a success unless each
of his children has brought something of his own, though
202 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PKOBLEMS
only a stick of candy, to give away to Christ's other,
less fortunate, children. And then let the scholars de-
liver these gifts in person, going about in groups under
the conduct of their elders.
3. Inward. — Christmas affords an unexampled oppor-
tunity to exalt the church in the children's minds as the
centre of joy, even of jollity. As I remember my own boy-
hood (and I'm a good deal of a boy still !),and as I watch
other children, I conclude that the Christmas jollity centres
in Santa and the tree. Who tires of the tree ? Who wants
to bring in the gifts in prosaic wicker baskets? Never
the children. Who wearies of jovial St. Nicholas ? The
grown-ups that must wear the wig and furs and for one
short evening unbend their precious dignity ; not the
children. Why, I saw once in a department store a
" Santa Claus " writing in a book the Christmas wishes
of the boys and girls as they came up and revealed them,
— the surliest fellow, as to eyes, voice, and evident spirit,
I ever saw, a fellow with no heart at all for his blessed
task ; and yet the dear children flocked around him like
bees to a bunch of old-fashioned phlox. It must have
been the long white beard.
Have a tree, if it is only a stick ; have a Santa Claus,
if he is only a stick. Get a Santa who will omit the
cheap jokes and exalt Christ. But don't leave out the
fun.
Much of this is true also of the Christmas " exercise,"
or "cantata," or "concert," or what you choose to call it.
Circumstances differ so widely that I cannot name for
you good exercises, though that would be a useful serv-
ice. Your best plan is to send for samples galore, and
CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES 203
make your choice. You will have ample range. Santa
Las been exploited in every possible phase. They have
even gone on to Mrs. Santa and Santa Junior, and Santa's
sisters and cousins and aunts. A good exercise will in-
troduce the element of surprise, it will not give the chil-
dren much acting to do, it will be simple and remem-
berable, and it will contribute unmistakably to the
genuine Christmas spirit; it will exalt Christ. Some-
times you can get best results by using the best parts of
more than one exercise.
Home made Exercises.— It is not at all necessary
always to send away for an exercise in order to have a
thoroughly successful Christmas celebration. Make your
own. Advertise it as an original exercise, and you will
increase the interest considerably.
One home-made exercise might be called " The Light-
ing of the Tree." The tree will be all ready for lighting,
and will be in view as the audience gathers, but the
lighting of each candle will come as a response to some*
appropriate Scripture verse repeated by a scholar, or
some Christmas poem recited, or some Christmas song
sung. Not until the last child has made his contribution
will the tree shine out in its full beauty. Of course, the
pastor will draw a little moral from this.
Another home-made exercise might be called " Christ-
mas Questions." It would consist merely of a series of
questions and answers, the former propounded by the
superintendent and the latter given by the children.
Now a single child would reply, now a class in concert,
now the whole school. Now the answer would come in
the form of a Bible verse, now as a stanza of a hymn,
204 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
now as a poem recited, now as a bit of description read.
As to the questions, they should cover the Christmas
story, and whatever, growing out of it, the superintend-
ent and teachers wish to bring in. For example, "Where
was Jesus born?" would be answered, possibly, by the
singing of Phillips Brooks's beautiful hymn, " O little
town of Bethlehem." "What great men came to find
the infant Jesus ?" would be answered by the recitation
of Longfellow's poem, "The Three Kings," and by an
abstract of Henry Van Dyke's story, "The Other Wise
Man." The plan gives unlimited range to the ingenuity
and skill of whoever may prepare the exercise.
A variation of this exercise may consist of brief ad-
dresses (limited to three minutes) by different persons,
each address to end in a question, and each question to
be answered by a song. There may be a choir of chil-
dren hidden behind a curtain, or two choirs thus hidden
at the ends of the room, singing antiphonally. For ex-
ample, after a brief description of the scene at Bethle-
hem when the angels sang, introduce the question,
" What did they sing about?" which the children
will answer by singing softly E. II. Sears's lovely hymn,
"It came upon the midnight clear." After a little talk
on the theme of the refusal to receive Mary at the inn,
ask : " Would you treat the Lord Jesus in that way ? "
receiving as answer the song by Emily E. S. Elliott,
whose refrain is, " O come to my heart, Lord Jesus ;
there's room in my heart for thee." This service might
be named "The Answer of Song."
One more suggestion for a home-made exercise, this
time a little more elaborate, may suffice. Call it " The
CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES 205
Building of the Cross." Make pasteboard cubes, quite
large, say a foot each way. Cover them with white, and
paint or draw on each an easily seen symbol of some con-
spicuous event in Christ's life. Sometimes an object
fastened to the cube will serve for the illustration.
Sometimes a picture can be cut from a paper or maga-
zine. A star, for example, will represent the birth, a
stone in the shape of a flat cake will stand for the temp-
tation, a mountain scene will call to mind the transfig-
uration, and so on. These cubes are to be built up, on
the platform, in the shape of a cross. Separate scholars
will take them, and each, before depositing his cube, will
state what it represents, and will recite some passage of
Scripture, some poem, or some prose selection, appro-
priate to his subject. In this way perhaps twelve of the
principal events in Christ's life will appear to be building
up his cross. Arrange them chronologically, placing the
star at the bottom, and at the summit a picture of clouds
from which rays of golden glory are streaming, to repre-
sent the ascension. The side pieces must be added by
means of hooks, and the first must be supported till its
balancing piece is put in position.
4. Outward. — Just a word, in conclusion, as to the
school " treat," the presents for the children. Probably
every Sunday school has by this time seen the necessity
of forbidding a general receipt and disbursement of gifts.
Some parents are sure to take the opportunity for vulgar
display. I have been present at Christmas entertain-
ments when almost every alternate name called out be-
longed to a certain family, and their pew became filled
with parcels almost to a level with its railing. The chil-
206 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
dren enjoy watching for their names to be called, and
with a brisk Santa the operation need not be tedious ;
but it is a wise school that prevents heartburnings by
ruling that, for the sake of the poorer children, each
scholar shall receive no more than one gift, in addition
to the school treat of candy, nuts, and fruit. And then,
by shrewd management among the generous, see to it
that not the poorest child fails to receive this second
gift.
But cultivate at this season among the members of the
church and school the lovely spirit of giving. Urge them
to prepare gifts for others than relatives and nearest
friends, — for the lonely, for the sick, for the ugly, for
non-Christians, for those that do not expect it. Organize
among the children an S. S. S., — Santa's Secret Service.
Arm this messenger corps with printed receipt-books, and
be sure that each receipt, when signed, is returned to the
giver ; but provide for secrecy if the giver desires to re-
main unknown. This kindly mystery, this jolly unself-
ishness, is of the very heart of Christmas.
CHAPTER XXV
THE LESSON PERSPECTIVE
A Sunday-school lesson taught out of perspective is
very much like a drawing that is in the same pre-
dicament.
It is part of ray business to criticize the drawings that
are made for my paper, and once in a while I get from
some young artist a decidedly novel effect. Here, for
instance, will be a little girl looking out of a window,
and two or three yards away sits an old man in a chair.
He has suffered overmuch from the diminishing effect of
perspective, and barely comes up to her knees. In
another effort, only a brief reasoning suffices to convince
the designer that his church spire is precisely the height
of his front door. In still a third picture a box is so
drawn as to become a flat surface, or a room is absolutely
turned inside out.
Now the sense of proportion is one of the most impor-
tant pedagogical virtues, — to know what to place in the
foreground and what in the background, and what rela-
tion precisely the one should hold to the other.
Many teachers teach as a child draws — all on one plane.
Every fact, every truth, is of equal importance. The
exact position of Calvary, and the meaning of the cruci-
fixion to the world ; the probable size and material of
the tables of stone, and the contents of the Decalogue ;
the way they reclined at table, and the spiritual signifi-
207
208 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
cance of the Last Supper — the first set of facts is in their
teaching of equal weight with the second.
Such teachers exult in minute details — the weight of
Goliath's armor, piece by piece ; the appearance of the
locusts eaten by John the Baptist ; the kind of walls that
Asa built. Or, perhaps, they are especially pleased with
a certain thought, and elaborate it through fifteen ver-
bose minutes, quite forgetting that it is far from the
main thought of the lesson, and not a thought that will
much help the scholars anyway. Other teachers are
strong along a certain line, such as the succession of
kings in Israel and Judah, and drill everlastingly upon
that, heedless of what is probably best for their class.
Still others are so immensely tickled with a story illus-
trating some side point in the lesson, or with a diagram
or chart they have invented, that illustration or diagram
become virtually the entire lesson to them and their
luckless scholars.
A Well-made Plan. — Perspective in teaching a lesson,
like perspective in a picture, comes only from a plan.
However artistically careless and impromptu a good
drawing may appear, trace it back and you will find it
grid ironed with formal squares. The artist decides at
the outset what figures or objects shall stand in the fore-
ground and what shall be relegated to the diminishing
distance. If a cow is back in the meadow, supposedly an
eighth of a mile away, no amount of interest in that cow
will persuade the artist to magnify her size or increase
the distinctness of her spots.
After the same workmanlike fashion, the true teacher
decides at the outset of his studying just what is to be
THE LESSON PERSPECTIVE 209
the main point of his teaching. Sometimes it will be the
history, when exegesis must take a back seat ; sometimes
it will be the practical truth in the lesson, when the his-
torical, geographical, or critical phases of the text must
be passed over lightly.
Having decided on this central theme, the teacher's
next task is no less important. Out of the multitude of
subordinate topics which will crowd upon his ready mind
he must rigorously select those that are most closely and
naturally related to his main subject, those that will rein-
force it and not submerge it.
The Central Point. — You want to leave upon your
scholars' minds an impression of the lesson as a whole.
Your scholars — unless they are the phenomena they are
not likely to be — will not remember more than one point
of the lesson definitely, and you are lucky if they re-
member that ; the rest will be a loose haze. It should
be your sedulous care that the one thing they remember
is the chief thing, and that the loose haze is made up of
the subordinate things.
Pictures — to return to our useful illustration — are likely
to be "spotty"; to exhibit, that is, several centres of
emphasis and interest, rather than one. The " composi-
tion," as the artists say, is bad, and the picture is not a
whole, as a landscape is, or a group in a room. The
heroine may stand out finely, in bold relief against a
dark background ; but over in the corner is some insig-
nificant character who also is in bold relief against a
dark background, while in the other corner the silhouette
of some inconsequential chair divides the honors with
the aforesaid two. The picture is " spotty."
210 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Contrast with this — to take a well-known example —
Munkacsy's superb painting, " Christ before Pilate," or
Hofmann's " The Boy Jesus in the Temple." Note how
in both pictures all lines centre upon our Lord, all eyes
are directed to him, all interest is subordinated to that
imperial interest. The face of Pilate is itself a master-
piece. So is that fanatic Jew, who with uplifted arm is
shouting, " Crucify him ! " So are the faces of the sym-
pathizing women. So are the bearded rabbis. But you
recognize them in each case as accessories, after all, and
you return again and again to the lovely face of the
Wonderful Boy ; the regal, worn face of the Man of
Sorrows. By virtue of that dominating interest you feel
the picture as a unity.
Knowing what to leave out is the art of art. It is the
poet's skill, the novelist's, the orator's, the sculptor's ;
certainly it is the painter's. One is reminded of the story
of Leonardo da Vinci, who introduced into the picture
of "The Last Supper" a magnificent golden goblet.
" That goblet," said a friend enthusiastically, " is by far
the best thing in the picture ; it is the chief triumph of
your skill." Instantly Da Vinci dashed his loaded brush
over the goblet and obliterated it. " Nothing," he ex-
claimed, " shall surpass the face of my Saviour."
In that anecdote lies the secret of proportion in teach-
ing. It is interest that makes emphasis. If your interest
is in some inferior truth, your emphasis will be upon it,
whether you wish it or not. If your heart is fixed upon
the great central verities of religion, you will allow no
allurement of illustration or anecdote or historical lore to
distract you or your scholars from them.
THE LESSON PERSPECTIVE 211
In teaching the story of the man let down through the
roof of the house to Jesus' feet, if it is your heart's de-
sire to send your scholars to the great Physician you will
spend only enough time on the " mattress " and the
"roof" to make the scene intelligible, and you will speed
to the soul of the matter, the wonderful healing. In
teaching Paul's last recorded journey to Jerusalem, if
your heart is aflame with admiration for the apostle's
steadfast pursuit of duty against whatever obstacles, and
you are chiefly eager to incorporate that spirit in your
scholars' minds, then you will dwell only long enough
on the geography of Miletus, Tyre, Ptolemais, and
the rest, only long enough on Philip's prophetical
daughters and the quaint manner of Agabus's warning,
to render vivid the number and variety of hindrances
that beset Paul's determined will.
Do I seem, in insisting upon a single ineffaceable pic-
ture as adequate goal of an entire lesson, to be minimiz-
ing our Sunday-school design and effort ? Think what
it means to implant fifty-two such pictures, in the course
of a year, in the mind of any person ! What a gallery !
What a glorious Louvre of galleries growing from year
to year ! Surely that, well done, is triumph sufficient,
for time and eternity.
The Secret of Symmetry. — Dr. Moorehead, the beloved
Bible- teacher, saw his little grandchild playing on the
floor one day with a dissected map of the United States.
The lassie was sorely puzzled. Things would not fit to-
gether. Here between Illinois and Iowa was an alto-
gether impossible gap. Yonder was New Mexico thrust-
212 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
ing an elbow into Kansas. It was a disheartening jum-
ble, and the girlie was almost in tears.
" Turn it over," said Dr. Moorehead, " and work on the
other side."
There was a large face of George Washington on the
other side, and that was easy. Two eyes — why, of
course! And a nose, — right under the eyes, to be sure !
And mouth, ears, square chin, cheeks, — George "Washing-
ton was a rapid success, and the small worker was de-
lighted.
" Now turn it over."
A piece of cardboard slipped beneath helped to effect
the revolution, — not the first one in which George
Washington had been engaged, — and lo ! the puzzling
United States were all in decorous order, Kansas and
Illinois, Iowa and New Mexico and the rest precisely
where they ought to be.
And so, fellow teachers, if we want to bring into re-
memberable symmetry the perplexing, crowded facts and
truths of those great lessons, — let us turn them over, and
work on the Man I
CHAPTER XXVI
THE SUPERINTENDENT THAT NEEDS A MUZZLE
I hope my title will not seem harsh or disrespectful.
It is the spirited dogs, you know, that need a muzzle, —
dogs of the aggressive bark and the willing bite. There
are curs, lank and listless, that would never be honored
with a muzzle, even in a year of dog days.
The only trouble with my canine friend of the muzzle
is that he has misplaced his energy. He has barked at
the policeman instead of the tramp, and he has gnawed
at my trousers instead of his own disinterred bones.
Hence the muzzle.
Nothing more than this is the matter with our subject,
the superintendent. When he stands before those wrig-
gling youngsters and offers up a five-minute prayer, the
deed is good but misplaced ; the prayer belongs in the
church prayer meeting. When he introduces the respon-
sive Bible-reading with foregleams of the lesson, and
closes it with a comprehensive summary, what he says is
excellent but misplaced ; it belongs in the teachers' meet-
ing. When he holds the school for five minutes in order
to apply the day's lesson to the scholars' lives, prob-
ably every word of his homily is true and good ; but cer-
tainly every teacher before him, if she knows her business,
has already said to her scholars all that needs to be said
along that line.
213
214 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
But our over-energetic, or over-conscientious, or (shall
I whisper it ? ) our egotistical superintendent cannot givo
out a notice without enlarging every detail, cannot an-
nounce a song without directing attention to its senti-
ment, cannot shake his linger at an unruly scholar with-
out making him the text for a discourse on order, cannot
allow the secretary's report to go without an afterclap of
tedious encouragement or reproof.
The Superintending Superintendent. — Far from him is
the conception of the superintendent as an all-hut-silent
governor of the school, an officer whose appearance on
the platform or whose raised hand is the signal for an
instant hush, whose nod to the chorister or secretary is
their sufficient introduction, whose purpose is to say and
do as little as he can and get others to say and do as
much as possible, and whose central ambition is to de-
liver the school to the teachers precisely at the proper
minute and precisely in the proper condition of reverent
attention. This conception of his work is quite foreign
to the superintendent that needs a muzzle.
His Share. — He has not an algebraic mind. If he had,
he would argue : As I, John Smith, am to these twenty
teachers and one hundred and twenty scholars, so is the
time I ought to take for talking to the time I ought to
leave for them. He would calculate about as follows : —
Songs, S at 3 min. ea 9
Prayer Q
Bible-readiny 3
Announcement* #
Unforeseen extras ]+
THE SUPERINTENDENT THAT NEEDS A MUZZLE 215
Getting settled in classes aft* r <>p< h ing exercises . . 5
Collection, filling out records, distributing papers and
books 5
Teaching the lessons oO
Total, minutes 60
Time left for the superintendents liomily . . . . ?
But his mind is poetic, oratorical, imaginative, any-
thing but algebraic or arithmetical; therefore he must
have a muzzle. The questions are : what sort of muzzle ?
and how shall it be applied ?
Perhaps he may read this chapter, and it may serve as
a muzzle. If, however, he is so unfortunate as not to
have a copy of this book, I do not see that you can do
much without a teachers' meeting. It is through the
teachers' meeting that all Sunday-school reforms are to
be effected, and that is not the least of its advantages.
Putting On the Muzzle.— For at the teachers' meeting
you will insist upon setting aside the first fifteen minutes
for a discussion of the general interests of the school.
And in this discussion it will not be long before some
teacher will pipe up : " Mr. Superintendent, I must have
half an hour for the lesson ; how can I get it ? " And
the muzzle will thereupon be produced from its brown-
paper wrapping.
Mr. Garland will say, " That is my great need, too ;
last Sunday we actually had only seventeen minutes."
Miss Pay son: "Where does all the time go to?"
Professor Richardson : " Shouldn't we establish a rule
always to begin the teaching at a certain minute?"
Omnes : " Yes. That's just it. At a certain minute."
216 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Superintendent: "Certainly. Why not? A very
sensible suggestion. What do you say to 12:25 ?"
And the muzzle is on.
Keeping the Muzzle On. — Of course, it is going to slip
off, if you don't watch. You will be obliged to draw in
a strap here and tighten a buckle there. You may be
compelled to go into details, at your teachers' meeting,
much as in the tabular exhibit I have just made. The
chorister may have to insist on his three songs, with no
stanzas clipped. The secretary may have to insist on a
regular and adequate time for his announcements. You
may have to report the complaints of parents when the
school is not dismissed on time. Again and again you
may be forced to plead for your half hour for the lesson.
Vigilance is the price of more things than liberty.
But do not, for the lack of a little plain and coura-
geous speaking, allow a good superintendent to spoil
himself and the school. Know precisely what you want
of him, tell precisely what you want of him, and then if
he gets mad you will not want anything more of him at
all. But he won't get mad.
Is the muzzle to be complete? May not the superin-
tendent talk at all? Of course he may, but always in
strict proportion
1. To his ability.
2. To the need.
3. To the opportunity.
1. Some superintendents are skilled in blackboard
work, and by a few turns with the chalk can make a les-
THE SUPERINTENDENT THAT NEEDS A MUZZLE 217
son luminous, and start scholars and teachers finely upon
the topic of the hour. Others are good at object talks.
Others know just how to give the needed word of en-
couragement and good cheer. It would be a sin to muz-
zle absolutely a dog that can do such tricks as these.
2. Only, let nothing be done merely to show off the
skill. Carefully let the superintendent and teachers con-
sider the proposed contribution to the school hour, and
use it only in case it meets " a felt need."
3. And not even then, unless it can come into the
time I have set apart in my table for " extras," or for
getting to classes, and the like. The time for singing,
Bible, prayer, and teaching is not too long by a second,
and those four items are more important than anything
the brightest superintendent is likely to say.
I am truly sorry for the superintendent that needs a
muzzle. It is hard to suppress ideas that are eager for
utterance, "thoughts that breathe and words that burn."
But, for the good of the school and the cause of Christ,
let the muzzle be gracefully assumed and heroically worn.
Ere long — trust me — will come a beautiful transforma-
tion. The muzzle will be sublimed, will be elevated, will
become a ring of light, and will shine above the superin-
tendent's head as a martyr's aureole !
CHAPTER XXVII
Many more teachers than would care to acknowledge
it have the "pearls before swine" feeling. That is,
when they are urged to lavish themselves upon their
classes, to study long, to think hard, to plan like states-
men and teach with the zeal of jury lawyers, they begin
to object : " It would be a waste of effort. The schol-
ars would not appreciate it. They are too young, too
careless, too (in a whisper) stupid. It would be casting
pearls before swine."
Not that any teacher would in so many words call his
own best thoughts "pearls" and his scholars "swine,"
but — some things are too good for them. " You can
carry a thing too far, you understand."
No, no, no ! Nothing can be too good for your scholars.
No teaching can be too wise, too true, too loving, too
helpful. Since the days of Robert Raikes, no Sunday-
school lesson was ever taught too well.
On the contrary, it is the teacher's failure to pour out
his best that has caused the failure of every class that
ever failed. Only as we recognize the truth that this
Sunday-school task is the noblest ever given workman to
accomplish, the most difficult, the most glorious, right-
fully demanding our utmost resources, can we succeed in
it and enjoy it.
218
"PEARLS BEFORE SWINE " 219
To be sure, there may be too much preparation of a
certain sort: Miss Crayon gets an idea for a pretty
blackboard design, and she spends so much time in pre-
paring it that she can bring her class only the haziest
knowledge of the lesson story, quite lost in a rainbow
mist of hearts and arrows and chains and initials otf on
a lark.
Dr. Cannon loads up for his class of restless boys with
a big charge of historical facts, the entire history of the
house of Herods, and quite forgets to consider a single
point in which the lesson might hit their lives.
Young Mr. Shiner revels in anecdotes and brilliant
illustrations. His study for Sunday-school consists in
collecting a great variety of these, a variety so great
that they mutually obliterate one another and transform
the lesson into a Foster's Cyclopedia.
Dear Mrs. Grind plods painfully through half a dozen
commentaries, taking copious notes from each, and leaves
herself no time to arrange her stores of information,
assimilate them, and prepare them for introduction into
other heads.
Now all of these typical cases might be described not
as too much pearl but as too much oyster. The pearl,
if there is any, is lost, smothered. There cannot be too
good preparation for teaching that Sunday-school lesson ;
but to be good preparation it must be well balanced. It
must shape itself into sensible, natural questions. It
must leave room for — indeed, it must include — visiting
the scholars, writing letters to them, learning the lives
to which you are to minister. Yes, and it must not be
so arduous preparation as to forfeit that buoyancy of
220 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
body and freshness of mind in which alone the teaching
can be vigorous, attractive, and fruitful.
Unsuited to the Scholars. — There is something else
which is sometimes called throwing pearls before swine,
— the use in teaching of what is good in itself, and, very
likely, of a sort that is needed in the balance of the
lesson, but it is not suited to the age or circumstances of
the scholars.
For instance, before a class of children coming from
ignorant homes, the teacher uses an illustration from the
Sistine Madonna; no photograph, you understand;
nothing but Mrs. Jameson. Now that was no casting
of pearls before swine; it was not a pearl at all, but a
ball of clumsy clay. The pearl might have been an
illustration taken from a tulip, or a robin, or a chestnut-
tree.
It is well that sometime the scholars should know
something about the principal theories of inspiration, but
that, good in itself, is anything but good for a class of
fidgety boys. It is well that sometime the scholars
should know the value of a denarius, but in the primary
department you would better call it a penny. The
teacher should know these things, but to tell them to
the children before they are ready to remember them is
a waste of precious opportunity. One of the gardener's
hardest tasks is to thin out the flowers, throwing away
pansies and portulacas just because there is no room for
them to grow without spoiling other pansies and
portulacas. Precisely this bit of resignation every
teacher must undertake in the interest of his class,
mercilessly casting out of his presentation of the lesson
"PEARLS BEFORE SWINE " 221
every illustration that will clog, every fact that will
confuse, and every teaching that does not lit their lives.
Ah, you teachers who may have thought it possible
in your class to " cast pearls before swine," build up your
lesson like a pearl! Pearl-fashion, seek first for a
nucleus, a strong central truth, and let your thoughts
all grow to that. Then, as the oyster sucks in the sea-
water, great gulps of it, so do you read widely and
study much. As the oyster draws from the waves for
its pearl nothing but their lime, not even the gold that
is in them, so do you draw from all this flood of material
only what fits yourself and your class. And then brood
over it. Enwrap it in many folds, as the oyster wraps
the growing pearl. Put in the colors, the anecdotes and
illustrations, so that it will shine and attract. Roll it
over and over in your mind, until you can present it
with no roughnesses, well rounded and perfect. Medi-
tate over it, brood it.
And then, all being ready, and the day of days having
come, a pearl before God's little ones! Though it is
only a seed pearl, lay it before them with joy, proud and
happy that it may shine upon their life garments.
Sometime, in the city whose gates are pearl, you will
see what such patient, wise, and loving work has been
doing for yourself, that it has been fashioning gems for
an unseen crown, a crown that will flash out glorious
to men and angels in the day when God makes up his
jewels.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE CLASS NUCLEUS
The importance of this subject warrants setting it
apart in a separate chapter, even though the chapter
must be very brief.
No Sunday-school teacher has a right to be discouraged
whose class contains a nucleus. By a nucleus, I mean
the portion of the class that attends regularly, and
studies the lessons at home. This nucleus may consist
of only one scholar, but, as long as he has it, the teacher
should be of good hope.
All growth, all lite, is built up around nuclei. Given
a nucleus, nature can make an oak, a bird, a man.
Certainly, given a nucleus, any teacher can make a
successful class.
The trouble usually is that he does not know how to
use his nucleus, how to make it a live, attractive nucleus,
how to organize his teaching around it. For a nucleus
is a harm, rather than a help, if the teacher works for it,
and does not teach it to work for the other scholars.
All his plans must be based on the nucleus, and it is a
great temptation to stop there, — that is, to devote him-
self wholly to the brighter and more faithful scholars.
He will fail if he does. A nucleus is not a nucleus un-
less it is enlarging.
First, Recognize Your Nucleus. — This is especially im-
222
THE CLAS8 NUCLEUS 223
portant in the adult classes, which always contain so
many that come as mere auditors, and will not come
otherwise. They refuse to be questioned, and they con-
tribute nothing to the discussions. Out of deference to
this large element, the teachers of many adult classes
never address the members of the class by name, but
project their questions blankly, and usually with blank
returns.
Now in all such classes a nucleus should quietly be
formed. The teacher should go to each scholar, and
ask, "Are you willing that I should question you by
name ? " It should be understood that no one will thus
be questioned that has not given express permission, and
each newcomer might be notified of the fact. Then the
teacher should persistently and tactfully work to enlarge
this inoer circle.
Especially in classes of children, the nucleus may be
set to work helping the other scholars into more active
interest. The wise teacher will do nothing himself that
he can get the nucleus to do for him. Every scholar that
can be made such he will install as an assistant teacher.
If he can do it wisely, without arousing vanity, he will
tell such scholars what he expects from them, and how
much depends on them. He will set his class to study-
ing together in their homes, two by two, a brighter
scholar — a member of the nucleus — with one that is
duller or more careless. He will get these brighter
scholars to write little essays on topics connected with
the lessons, prepare sets of questions for propounding to
the class, put diagrams on the blackboard, hunt up pas-
sages in commentaries illuminating the lesson. In plan-
224 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
ning — far ahead — for every lesson, he will plan how to
get his scholars to help him teach that lesson.
This is not easy. No work of creation is easy. It
requires less skill to pile up a million bricks than to
make of one of them a purposeful, organizing life-centre.
But the true teacher is not seeking dead bulk ; he is seek-
ing life.
CHAPTER XXIX
WHAT TO DO WITH "THE HIGHER CRITICISM"
A Modern Parable. — They were rearing a beautiful
building. The architect's plans called for a structure of
magnificent proportions, massive in bulk yet delicate and
graceful in outline. It was to stand for time and
eternity.
For a tedious while the preparations had been making.
There was a large excavation, waiting for the founda-
tion, and great heaps of stone and wood lay ready for
mason and carpenter. At last, one lovely spring day,
the derricks all in place, the mortar mixed, the workmen
singing with a zest, they began to lay the foundations
with ponderous blocks of limestone.
Then strolled along three young gentlemen, all with
lofty foreheads, all with supremely self-satisfied air, and
all with spectacles.
" Hold ! " they cried, simultaneously, to the laborers.
" Don't lower that block till we determine its geological
age."
The puzzled workmen, confused, obeyed the authorita-
tive mandate.
Thereupon the young gentlemen with the spectacles
gathered arouncT the stone as it swung from the derrick,
and began to chip pieces from it.
225
22G SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
"Observe this trilobite," said one, proudly exhibiting
the fossil. "It is a Silurian trilobite, — Upper Silurian."
And he reeled olF a Latin name as long as his nose.
" I am sorry to differ," remarked another, cracking off
a large piece from a corner, " but this brachiopod is cer-
tainly Devonian. Observe it." And the Latin name he
gave his fossil was as long as his face.
" Gentlemen," said the third young man, viewing a
bit of the limestone through a pocket microscope, "I
grieve to note your errors, but you have failed to take
into account these traces of organic remains, certainly
ferns of a well-marked variety." And he introduced a
Latin name as long as a yardstick. " This limestone is
manifestly of the Carboniferous age."
" But," said the lirst, " it must be Upper Silurian,
because "
" Nonsense ! " exclaimed the second simultaneously,
" it must be Devonian, as any fool can see, because "
Thus they continued, with great vehemence, the Latin
names growing longer and longer, and the stone growing
smaller and smaller as they chipped away at it. In the
meantime, the dismayed and puzzled workmen looked on
with open mouths, and as for the building, it was at a
standstill.
N At last the contractor himself came bustling up.
"What's all this?" he cried indignantly. "Who are
you three fellows ? and what do you mean by cutting
that stone to pieces ? "
" We are professors of geology," they complacently ex-
plained. " We are possessed of scientific minds. These
ignorant workmen were about to lay a foundation com-
WHAT TO DO WITH "THE HIGHER CRITICISM" 227
posed of limestone whose age had not been determined.
Such an unscientific procedure is at variance with the
spirit of the times. It was of the utmost importance to
determine the period to which the block must be re-
ferred, and happily we have discovered that it is — Upper
Silurian," said the first ; " Devonian," said the second ;
" Carboniferous," said the third. Then they went at it
■gain.
But the contractor was a plain, blunt man. " You
meddlesome braggarts," he cried, " get out of the way of
my derrick ! Leave my stone alone ! It's good founda-
tion stone, and that's all I want to know."
"But don't be so hasty, my friend," softly said the
first professor. "Some Upper Silurian is ill-suited to
your purpose. Only certain portions are adapted to
foundations. Just wait a while, till I have made a thor-
ough examination, and I can tell you whether, for in-
stance, this is the famous Niagara limestone, and pos-
sessed of hydraulic properties."
"How can it be," interposed the second professor,
"since it is manifestly Devonian? This brachio-
pod "
" O fie ! " interrupted the third professor ; " this is ab-
surd, for any tyro in geology can see that it is Carbon-
iferous. These organic remains "
And they went at it again as hard as ever, chipping
away on the block.
The contractor's patience was exhausted. "Clear
out ! " he shouted, inelegantly, and fell to belaboring the
professors with his walking stick.
Thereupon the three beat a hasty retreat, their eyes
228 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
shining with delight. " Now we shall be famous," said
they. "Now we shall get big salaries, and be asked to
give lecture courses around the country, for Ave have be-
come scientific martyrs."
But the workmen proceeded to erect the building.
The Parable Applied. — And now surely no one of my
readers needs an unfolding of my parable. We believe,
all of us, that the Bible is the best foundation stone for
a young life ; nay, the best quarry of foundation stones.
Our belief rests not on our own inadequate opinion, but
on the uniform experience of centuries, the triumphant
testimony of all biography. We know beyond a perad-
venture that the men and women whose minds were
filled with the Bible in their youth, are those that have
built upon that basis the most noble and enduring struc-
tures of character and accomplishment. We have found
good foundation stone in all parts of this Bible quarry.
Some of the blocks sparkle with crystals while others
are plain ; some are flinty while others are pure lime-
stone; but all are solid, substantial blocks, good for the
loftiest building that can be erected upon them, and for
as long a time as the building will endure.
Knowing this, and being eager to lay the founda-
tions, since lives are building ceaselessly and will not
wait for us, but will build on the sand if we do not lay
the firm foundations, — this being the case, can any one
wonder that we grow impatient with these endless de-
bates as to the age of this or that portion of our Bible
quarry, the way in which such and such strata were laid
down, whether by one sea or two or many successive
seas, and that we are sometimes gruff and perhaps un-
WHAT TO DO WITH
mannerly in bidding the disputants step aside and let us
do our work ?
Not that for a moment any one of us would wish to
teach the young an untruth, about the Bible or anything
else. Surely, if any one has a right to the truth, it is an
awakening intelligence, first looking out upon our com-
plex and difficult life. I can conceive no blacker treason
to God and man than to teach a child a lie.
But, even granting that these theories of the destruc-
tive critics of the Bible are true, it does not follow that
they should be laid before the young. What would have
been the result had the boy Gladstone been given to
study a Polychrome Homer? When Edward Everett
Hale, the brilliant lad, lay out on the ridgepole of his
father's house and translated six books of Virgil's
^Eneid in the three hours of one afternoon, what would
have been the result if he had had to take cognizance of
the variant readings? Suppose Charles Lamb, on his
first acquaintance with the Shakespeare he came to love
so ardently, had been confronted with a zealous and
crafty advocate of the Baconian theory ; should we ever
have had the " Tales from Shakespeare " ? We talk
much of pedagogy. It is the most vicious of pedagogy
to invert the order of nature, to place the analytical be-
fore the synthetical, to generalize before we particularize,
to discuss geologic eras before the pupil knows limestone
from granite.
The wise teacher in the grammar school does not de-
bate the theories of evolution, but he sets his scholars to
hunting for snails, and noting how they move, and how
their shell grows, and how they work their strap-like
230 SUNDAY SCHOOL PROBLEMS
tongue. He does not teach them the nebular by pothesis,
but bids them observe the moon, and look for Jupiter's
satellites through an opera glass. He gives them no les-
sons in the calculus, nor speculates concerning the fourth
dimension, but grounds them in the multiplication table
and in long division. His classes do not study compara-
tive philology, but they build simple English sentences;
nor do they bother their heads with diatoms, but learn
to tell petals from sepals. So in our Sunday schools the
wise teacher will not discuss theories of inspiration, or
dates of composition, or unity of authorship, or authen-
ticity of manuscripts, but he will teach the ten command-
ments and the eight beatitudes, illustrating them by the
lives of all the heroes and renegades, the saints and sin-
ners, from Adam in Eden to John in Patmos.
When one speaks in this way, one is very likely to be
misunderstood. Let me repeat. No one wants the
young taught anything that is not true. It would be a
sin knowingly to teach a child anything that he must un-
learn in later years. That process of unlearning is the
most dangerous of processes. It is building a house on a
rotten foundation, and being compelled to move it bodily
to another foundation, or to lift it and put another
foundation below. The process is long and costly.
Moreover, it is certain to rack the house.
But if a child is not to be taught untruths, neither is
he to be taught guesses at truth. He is to be taught
nothing that must be taught apologetically, shrinkingly,
as if afraid. AVe must teach new truth, if we teach it at
all, with boldness and enthusiasm. If, for example, we
consider the theory of a second Isaiah to be proved, we
WHAT TO DO WITH "THE HIGHER CRITICISM " 231
must not talk about it with regret or even cautiously and
defensively, but with exultant delight in the addition of
a splendid new prophet to the long line of men of God.
We have no loss in Messianic prophecy, but rather a sub-
lime and unexpected gain. So will it be with any Bible
discovery when it is actually proved. It will manifest
its divine origin by confirming our faith rather than
weakening it, and increasing rather than diminishing our
zeal for Holy Writ. Until a theory or an assumed dis-
covery can be taught in that spirit to young people, it
should not be taught to them at all.
The young, we must remember, have no skeptical
tendencies. They do not naturally test and discriminate,
but believe. To lay before them different theories and
bid them weigh and select, is only to confuse and perplex
them. Careful, courageous, independent examination of
truth is an ability they win only later, through long proc-
esses of education. What is doubtful and debatable has
no fit place in a child's curriculum, — only what is sure.
This is not to say that the young cannot see fallacies.
Their minds are frank and honest, and instinctively
abhor the disingenuous. If some of the modern theories
of the Bible are true, the books to which those theories
apply have no proper place in our Sunday schools. If,
for example, we are to believe that the writers, or, if you
prefer, the compilers, of the books of Samuel and the
Chronicles deliberately falsified the record, and, to gain
their ends, whether to exalt the priesthood or what not,
wrested the facts from their true setting, modified this,
enlarged upon that, imagined the other, omitted here and
inserted there, — if we are to believe this falsification of
232 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
history to serve the purposes of party, then let us keep
such literature from the eyes of children. Explain as you
please, you can never persuade boys and girls that mo
tives that would be dishonorable in writers to-day were
any less dishonorable twenty -five centuries ago. Their
pure minds cannot be made to admire what is tricky and
false. Tell them — and it will be true — that it is from the
Bible that we gain all our ideals of inflexible integrity,
and they will ask in their hearts, if not in words, " Doth
a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and
bitter? " If such scholars are right as those that wrote
the Encyclopedia Biblica, if the Bible is a farrago of
myths and misrepresentations, we have no further use for
Bible schools ; we might far better set our children to
studying Socrates in the past and Emerson and Tolstoi in
the present. At least so far as the young are concerned
there is no midway course; it is either the rejection of
such theories with horror, or the rejection of the Bible as
a guide for the young along ways of uprightness and
truth.
This is an age of cynicism. We need to teach the
young the blessed power of faith. Trust men, trust your-
self, trust your God, — hardly could three more valuable
lessons be inculcated. But what message for an age of
cynicism has this contemptuous criticism, that does not
Hesitate to ascribe to the authors of Scripture motives
that would forever dishonor a modern gentleman ?
Those that are taught in such a school might well carry
forth the blasting maxim, "Every man has his price."
And not only is this an age of cynicism ; it is an age
of materialism, of bowing before the seen. Against this
WHAT TO DO WITH "THE HIGHER CRITICISM" 233
our religious education must arm the young, if they are
to be armed against it at all. It is the chief count
against the destructive critics of the Bible that they are
either open or secret disbelievers in the supernatural.
At every turn they minimize it. That a passage in
Scripture reports a miracle or tends to substantiate one,
is to their minds conclusive evidence against its genu-
ineness.
Now the young have no difficulty with miracles and
other manifestations of the supernatural. They see the
reasonableness of the supernatural. They are not yet
sense-bound. Miracles appeal, not to their love of the
marvelous, but to their fresh and untrammeled instincts,
free thus far from the yoke of the visible universe. The
Bible is the book of the young and of the old because it
reveals most clearly the unseen world to which young
and old are nearest. Too soon the yoke of dollars will
press upon our children's necks. Let us teach them to
throw it off, and gaze straight up into heaven. One
thing, one thing above all others I would have a child of
mine taught, and that is the vivid reality of the super-
natural, the certainty of the spiritual world, so that he
shall be more conscious of God's eye than of any human
countenance, more sure of God's leading than of any
human opinion. I would rather my child should be a
believer in special providences than in the Pythagorean
theorem. That my child's life should be interwoven with
the supernatural will be of infinitely greater advantage,
mental and practical, than a knowledge of history and
science and art.
Many modern tendencies in the Sunday schools contra-
234 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
vene all this. Men are talking about Sunday-school les-
sons as if the teaching of conduct, the making of Chris-
tians, were secondary, while the prime purpose should be
a mastery of Hebrew history and literature. I am ready
to be counted an old fogy. I am ready to admit my be-
lief that if you eliminate from Hebrew history the story
of the Cross, as the vitalizing nerve of it all, our scholars
would get more good from a history of America ; if your
study of Hebrew literature is only a simplified edition of
the International Critical Commentary, if it is to be
studied apart from the life and not as our only and ade-
quate rule of faith and conduct, then I think our Sunday
schools would better turn to English literature.
What the young need most is trust to conquer cyni-
cism, the spiritual and unseen to conquer materialism,
Calvary to conquer Yanity Fair. In these three things
their safety consists, and not in any furbishing of the in-
tellect with strophes and antistrophes, priestly code or
Maccabean era.
What shall be our Bible-teaching, that these strong
ends shall be gained from It ? What Bible-teaching is
safe for the young, and will give their lives a safe foun-
dation ? It will have six elements.
First, Bible history, but Bible history taught for the
purpose of showing God's clear leading in the history,
and therefore, less evidently but no less really, in all his-
tory. It is this great and constant purpose that should
characterize all our teaching of Bible history in the Sun-
day school.
Second, Bible literature, but Bible literature taught as
God's words to men, his authentic message, the fountain
WHAT TO DO WITH "THE HIGHER CRITICISM" 235
and test therefore of all other literature, in beauty, va-
riety, and worldwide, perennial power. All lesser teach-
ing of Bible literature is like using gold to paint a
barn.
Third, Bible ethics, but as the source, the authoritative
source of our human laws, as the one sufficient guide of
human life. To teach it as we would teach the ethics of
Plato is to place modern London on the level of modern
Athens.
Fourth, Bible revelation, the teachings of the Bible
about hidden things, about immortality, heaven, and hell,
about the nature of God, about conscience, sin, penalty,
conversion, regeneration, sanctih'cation, inspiration.
These great truths should be taught as coincident witli
reason and approved by experience, but yet as issuing
from the very mind of God, who alone could conceive
them and reveal them to us.
Fifth, Christ, the climax and sum of revelation, his
character, in all its appealing grace, its convincing maj-
esty, the one enfolding miracle of all miracles.
And sixth, the history of the Book, how it was made,
its unity, the impossibility that such men as its writers
and such circumstances as surrounded its production
could have yielded such a book unaided by the controlling
will and immediate guidance of God such as no other
book has had ; and then its transmission, the wonderful
story of the manuscripts, of the Vatican, of Sinai, of
Egyptian sands and Babylonian hills, the translations
and versions, the martyrs, the Wycliffes and Tyndales;
and finally the Bible at work in the modern world, the
marvels of missions, and the vast and beneficent civiliza-
236 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
tions built upon the Book, — a structure such as only the
Immutable Rock of Holy Scripture could sustain.
Ah, let us teach our children these six things before
we trouble them with the question of two Isaiahs or the
date of Deuteronomy ! And what I say of children I
say also of those childlike, undeveloped minds found,
often preponderatingly, in all congregations. Too much
preaching is for the handful of scholars that may be in
the church. For their sake topics are treated that do not
shake their well-founded faith, but for the large majority
send the entire fabric of religion tumbling down. An
iconoclastic impression is given rather than an edifying
one. We need a sense of proportion. We need to learn
how ignorant of the Bible the masses really are, how
poorly founded in their faith, and we need to set to work
on fundamentals.
I long to see more teaching of Christian evidences, more
proofs in sermons and Sunday schools. Not proof texts,
observe, but proofs of proof texts. The world, young
and old, can readily spare a recital of what we do not
believe ; they need to be told what we do believe, and to
be made to believe it. It would be a vast gain, for in-
stance, if our ministers would take half the meeting hour
of their young people's societies for definite instruction
in Christian evidences, with such a text- book as Robin-
son's or Fisher's. If there are doubts, the young should
be shielded from them. If there are realities, confidence,
conviction, the young have a right to them. So far from
being introduced to infidelities, unconsciously to them-
selves they should be armed against them. The founda-
tions of our holy faith should be laid in their young lives
237
so securely that no assault of the devil should in later
years batter them down.
The walls of the New Jerusalem, that John saw in his
vision,--— I think of them as still a- building, and as made
of the Christ-inspired deeds of men. Course upon course
they rise into the celestial azure, sapphire and jasper,
emerald and chrysoprase, the enduring counterpart of
lives lived rightly here on earth. Some day they will
descend out of heaven, all these heaped-up stores of
divine grace and human obedience, and will surround and
capture and transform till we shall have a new earth after
the pattern of heaven. In that day we shall see, I think,
that of all the fair blocks laid in the celestial walls none
are fairer, none more resplendent with enduring lustre,
than those that mean the teaching of God's truth to the
children. If we would have a share in that divine up-
building, we must teach as God's wisdom teaches us, our
work must be without the flaws of pride and presump-
tion, the fool's gold of worldly vanities. With the hum-
ble heart of a child we must seek what God would have
us teach the children, and he who hides himself from the
wise and prudent but reveals himself to babes will gra-
ciously guide us into all truth.
CHAPTER XXX
THAT EASILY POSSIBLE TEACHERS' MEETING
Not everywhere is it possible to form a normal class
in which teachers shall be taught, but it is possible every-
where to hold a teachers'-meeting in which teachers shall
confer. Nor even when, from geographical limitations,
the teachers cannot actually meet, would I grant the im-
possibility of a teachers'-meeting, since a "round robin "
could be passed from one to another, each relating in
writing his perplexities and successes, and commenting
on the letters that have preceded.
The teachers'-meeting is a sort of Sunday-school stock
exchange, to which every teacher contributes what he
knows about the school, the lesson, and how to
teach it, and from which he goes enriched by all that the
others know. For its leader there is needed, not a super-
lative 4 teacher, but a good executive, able to draw from
each, in an orderly and attractive way, whatever he can
contribute to the aid of all.
If this simple ideal were kept before us, more teachers'-
meetings would be undertaken and fewer would be aban-
doned. The trouble generally is that the teachers'-meet-
ing is conducted by some teacher of an adult class, and
as an adult class. It is forgotten that the majority of
teachers are teachers of children, and the children's
needs are ignored. The meeting is too old ; no wonder
it dies.
238
THAT EASILY POSSIBLE TEACHERS'-MEETING 239
" As iron sharpeneth iron, so man sharpeneth the
countenance of his friend." Though all the teachers are
commonplace, that need not prevent their helping one
another ; and those that avail themselves of others' help
do not long remain commonplace. If you think your-
self unable in the least to inform or inspire your fellow-
teachers, you think too lowly of yourself. If you think
you do not need the help of even the least of them, you
think too highly of yourself.
One of the most valuable kinds of teachers'-meeting
requires from the teachers no originality whatever, merely
wise selection. Simply let the teachers conspire together
to own as great a variety of teachers' helps as possible, —
Peloubet's, Hurlbut's, Monday Club, the rest of the an-
nuals ; Westminster, Pilgrim, Journal, Baptist Teacher,
the rest of the monthlies ; The Sunday School Times, In-
ternational Evangel, English Sunday School Chronicle,
the rest of the weeklies, — and let each bring to the les-
son discussion the best plan and brightest thought from
his own book or periodical. Then add, for the teacher's
art and the general conduct of the school, such books as
Dr. Trumbull's wise "Teaching and Teachers," a chapter
a night, with free comments. What school would not
be blessed by a teachers'-meeting like this, so easily pos-
sible ?
Many teachers'-meetings come to be abandoned because
they are one-man meetings, and when the one man yields
to nervous prostration, they also die. Now there are a
number of ways of dividing the work required by a
teachers'-meeting. One is, to make each teacher in turn
responsible for the conduct of a meeting, with liberty to
240 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
get his work done for him, if he can, by some skilled
teacher from a distance.
An excellent method is to persuade each teacher to
adopt a specialty. Mr. Cadwallader may decide to be-
come local authority on Hebrew customs. Miss Ben-
thorp may take up the work of collecting attractive and
telling anecdotes and illustrations. Mrs. Ogleby may de-
cide to perfect herself in blackboard work. Others will
look after the course of history, the practical applica-
tions, the side-lights from other Scriptures, and so forth.
Each will polish his specialty on every lesson until it
shines, and some day they will all trade specialties with
one another.
The same end, the division of labor, may be gained by
the lavish appointment of committees of one, — a com-
mittee to read the newspapers, and bring to the lesson
the light of current events ; a committee to visit other
schools and correspond with them in quest of fresh
methods ; a committee on suggestions from papers and
books ; a committee on Sunday-school conventions, to at-
tend in person or to read the reports and glean from
them, and the like. Of course, all the teachers would
serve on these committees in turn.
The executive committee, however, the planning and
managing committee, might well be permanent, after
you get a successful one. Among the factors of their
success will be their power of drawing out plans from
others. There might well be a regular time, in every
meeting, to invite new ideas for the conduct of future
meetings. Indeed, though the teachers'-meetings should
be methodical, and should proceed, at least for a period,
THAT EASILY POSSIBLE TEACHERS'-MEETING 241
according to a well-digested system, yet they should be
to the teachers a model of varied ingenuity, since, if they
fall into a rut, the school will certainly tumble after.
For example of possible variety, take the opening
reading of the lesson text. Two teachers might read it
antiphonally, one giving a verse in the Authorized Ver-
sion, the other following with the same verse in the Re-
vised Version. Now the text might be read in a para-
phrase, and now in a poetical rendering. Some German
scholar might translate it from Luther's Bible, or some
classical scholar from the Greek. The conversational
and dramatic selections could be arranged as dialogues.
The reading of verses might be interlarded with brisk,
revealing comments.
Indeed, though the outline of exercises may remain
constant, let the emphasis continually vary. This week
make a specialty of the study of questions, next week of
illustrative applications, next week of reviews, next week
of the important matter of lesson outlines. There might
even be a short paper on the evening's specialty, followed
by a discussion and examples; and thus, though the en-
tire lesson is always studied, every meeting will mark a
distinct pedagogical advance.
Next to promptness in arriving, the meeting's vigor
will depend on the leader's celerity in grappling with the
main subject. A vast amount of time is wasted in teach-
ers'-meetings in clumsy efforts at thoroughness, leading
to the relation of much that the teachers know perfectly
well already. A good leader will consider first of all
how much may safely be omitted and taken for granted.
A verse- by- verse treatment is seldom needed. The best
OF VHE
UNIVERSITY J
242 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
introduction to most divisions of the lesson is the simple
query, " Has any one a question to ask on this point ? "
Occasionally make a special request that each teacher
bring to the next meeting one difficulty he has encoun-
tered in the study of the lesson, and then attack these
difficulties at the very outset.
Get the Teachers to Question.— Broadly speaking, the
more the teachers themselves can be persuaded into the
interrogative mood the better. Distribute slips of paper
now and then, that the teachers may write out their per-
plexities for discussion at the next meeting. Occasion-
ally get a skilled worker to preside over a " question-
box," or get a skilled questioner to plan queries for an
" answer- box," to be filled by the teachers. Sometimes
appoint a teacher who will prepare himself to stand up
and be questioned on the lesson, and sometimes appoint
a teacher to prepare a set of questions for use at the next
meeting. This last will be an especially valuable exercise
if you will criticise these questions, regarding both form
and matter, as they are used. Sometimes select a printed
set of questions, and make them the basis of the study,
criticising them also. Few of our teachers'-meetings
give sufficient drill on the teacher's fundamental art, the
art of questioning.
As another general rule, the more the teachers'-meet-
ing is planned to draw out all the teachers, especially the
retiring ones, the more useful and attractive will it be.
There are many methods. For a while, appoint one
teacher each week to tell how he proposes to teach his
class on the next Sunday. Then let the whole meeting
criticise his plan, favorably or unfavorably. Now and
THAT EASILY POSSIBLE TEACHERS'-MEETING 243
then, for a change, ask Miss A to tell how she would
teach the lesson to Mr. B 's class, getting the primary
teacher, for instance, to describe her ideal of an hour in
the adult class. One week, ask all the teachers to come
ready to name what each will make the leading thought
in the lesson as he teaches it. Another week, divide the
verses among the teachers, requesting each to bring the
brightest thought he can find on his verse, original or
selected. Occasionally assign to each teacher one or
more verses of the lesson text, that he may lead the dis-
cussion of that portion at the next meeting. Once in a
while, not often, persuade a teacher to treat the other
teachers as children, and teach the lesson to them as she
would teach her own class, that she may profit by help-
ful criticism. Urge the constant use of notebooks, and,
that the points of especial helpfulness may not be lost in
a swarm of details, select for each week a summarist,
who will close the session with brisk reminders of the
best suggestions. In many other ways besides these the
members of the class may be set to work.
Do not, in your zeal for the lesson, forget the general
interests of the school. At regular intervals you might
make time for papers on the several problems of your
school, each introducing a thorough discussion. It would
be an excellent plan to fix a " problem time " in every
teachers'-meeting, — a time for the statement of difficulties
connected with school management or with teaching.
The themes thus brought up will be treated in their turn
as soon as is convenient. The same end may be gained,
if the teachers are in earnest, by a " suggestion box," or
a " problem box," placed at the entrance of their meet-
24-4 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
ing-room. It will prove a great gain if now and then the
teachers'-meeting shall resolve itself into a prayer meet-
ing at the close, and carry these perplexities to the Teacher
of teachers.
Hold Closely to the Lesson. — It is certain, however,
that the teachers will be held most closely to the meeting
if the greater part of each session, though the general
interests of the school are not forgotten, bears practically
and directly on the next Sunday's lesson, giving them
what they can utilize in their classes. For example,
open each teachers'-meeting with few preliminaries, little
singing, a brief prayer. Manage to present always at the
start some broad view of the lesson, which will act as a
solvent, a combiner, an organizer. Every school should
own some manifolding contrivance, and by its use a copy
of such an outline might be made for every teacher
together with copies of some illuminating poem, useful
for distribution among the scholars, or even of some
clarifying diagram, or suggestive sketch, or map. Indeed,
it would be easy for this teachers' organization to
gather and own a large and increasingly valuable col-
lection of pictures to illustrate the lessons, and even
of " curios " illustrating the customs of Eastern
countries.
At the opening of each quarter, a "looking forward"
meeting should be held. The outline of history to be
studied might be fixed by diagrams and a paper or a
talk. The logical succession and interdependence of the
lessons should be brought out. A series of lesson key-
words might be adopted. The quarter's Golden Text
might be studied, and the teachers should decide what
THAT EASILY POSSIBLE TEACHERS'-MEETING 245
are the main truths to be evolved from the three months'
lessons, and what facts, as well as what spiritual impres-
sions, the scholars may fairly be expected to carry from
the quarter's study.
Midway through the term (I am merely giving sample
outlines) the teachers might hold a " question meeting,"
in preparation for which the following comprehensive
queries might be printed on a manifolder, and distributed
among the teachers : " How are you going to review the
last lesson ? How will you bring out the connecting
links between the last lesson and this ? How will you
introduce this lesson ? How bring out its facts ? How
impress them ? How illustrate its truths ? How apply
them to the lives of your scholars ? How set your
scholars to studying the next lesson ? " Eight teachers
should be appointed, one for each of these questions, to
lead in the discussion of it.
Then, at the close of the quarter, there should be held
a " looking-backward " meeting, in which, at all events,
one plan for review day may be illustrated. For in-
stance, the teachers might practice describing for each
other the various scenes studied during the quarter,
omitting all proper names and other manifest designa-
tions, the rest of the teachers to guess what scene in each
case has been described. The week before, — on another
occasion, — each teacher might be asked to prepare a set
of twelve questions, which, in his judgment, will best
draw out the facts and truths of the quarter, and from
these sets the teachers would put together a model dozen
of questions. At other times, the meeting might con-
sider what simple outline would best fix the course of the
246 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
history studied, or the teachers might prepare a scheme
for written examinations in all classes.
And now I have sufficiently illustrated my idea of a
teachers'-meeting, — a meeting so simple in its elements
that any set of teachers may successfully conduct it, yet
so expansive and enticing in its possibilities that the
wisest and most skilful may find in it the amplest scope.
It is not to take the place of individual study, or of special
plans suited to the needs of individual classes. Its pur-
pose is information and inspiration, not adaptation.
There is no short cut to Sunday-school success, and no
teachers'-meeting can convert a lazy man into a teacher.
But wherever a company of earnest, teachable Christians,
longing after the garner of souls, meet together with the
single purpose to become better teachers, there will the
Teacher be in the midst of them, and there will he him-
self conduct a school of the prophets.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE RIGHT BAIT
When I go fishing up in the Maine wilderness, I find
that it makes all the difference in the world what fly I
put on my line. Certain conditions of water, weather,
and time of day call for a " dusky miller." Certain quite
different conditions call for a " silver doctor." When a
trout wants a " Parmachene belle " he wants just that,
and nothing else. Except a worm.
There is one problem that is foremost in the thoughts
of all earnest Sunday-school workers, and that is how to
catch and hold the boys. This anxiety overmatches all
other anxieties combined. And the question, as I look at
it, is primarily one of the right bait.
When I go fishing for trout, I do not consider what I
liked for breakfast nor what I want for dinner; I con-
sider what the trout's mouth is watering for. When the
average teacher goes fishing for a boy, however, I fear
that she bases her campaign entirely on her own likes
and dislikes. She is interested in pretty little stories
with lovely morals, and she takes it for granted that the
boys will be interested in the same thing. She is fasci-
nated with a volume of Mr. Meyer's noble expositions,
and she jumps to the conclusion that the boys will be glad
to have her read a chapter to them. She is delighted to
discover the hidden symbolism of the Bible, as that
Goliath typifies worldliness and David the quiet power
247
24S SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
of Christian faith, and she is entirely oblivious to the
boy's concentration of interest on Goliath's armor and
David's sling. In short, when the trout wanted "dusky
millers" she has been baiting her line with "silver
doctors," and the trout swim scornfully away.
No one can win a boy except with what a boy likes.
The teacher's first task, therefore, is to discover what
the boy likes. The discovery may be made in four
ways: (1) by intuition, an instinctive sympathy with
boys; (2) by living with boys and watching them; (3)
by intelligent and patient experimentation, trying this
and that and developing what is found effective; (4) by
the careful reading of sensible books on the question.
Number 1 is a gift of heaven ; number 2 is a gift of cir-
cumstances ; all of us have the beginnings of both within
our power, and can go on to develop them. I see no rea-
son, therefore, why the teacher may not work simulta-
neously along all four lines of approach to the boy.
Thus working, he will discover three fundamental facts
about the boy: (1) that he is gregarious; (2) that he is
play-loving ; (3) that he likes to do things. The teacher,
man or woman, (and it may be a woman quite as success-
fully as a man, though it usually isn't,) that wins the
heart of the boy, will deal not with the boy but with the
boys. He will get up a club of some sort, and ally it
with his Sunday-school class. It may be a walking club,
or a natural history club, or a tennis club, or a checkers
club, or a debating club. Some way or other, he will
utilize the social instinct of boys. What he could never
in the world accomplish with one boy he can easily
achieve with twenty.
THE RIGHT BAIT 249
Then, he will put his Sunday-school work itself as far
as possible in the form of play. Contests to see who can
learn the most verses, draw the best map, answer most
questions. Bible puzzles to solve. The "spell-him-
down " scheme applied to the lesson facts. Wooden
models to whittle out. Diagrams to construct. Home
studies to draw by lot. Why, if the teacher fairly
enters into the idea, she can make Bible-study as fasci-
nating a pursuit as foot-ball.
And finally, the boy-winning teacher will remember
that the boy would always rather do things than say
things or hear things or even see things. Every boy
will have a pencil tablet and pencil. Much of the recita-
tion will be written, or drawn. Colored pencils will be
at hand, for brightening maps. A blackboard will bo
part of the class furniture. Bible-marking will become a
fascinating pursuit. Sand-maps will vivify Bible geog-
raphy. There will be Bible biographies to write.
There will be charts to devise. In all her work the
teacher will ask herself not, " What shall I do ? " but,
" What can I get the boys to do ? "
Of course, these three suggestions run into one an-
other. Of course, too, they cover only a part of the
ground. But they cover a very important part of the
ground ; and I am quite certain that attention to them
would double the number of boys in our Sunday schools.
CHAPTER XXXII
HOW TO USE DECISION DAY
A Teacher's Dream.— The teacher was dreaming.
Sunday-school teachers often dream, and sometimes their
dreams are nightmares.
But this dream contained the Lord Jesus. He was
standing with his arms stretched out, and in his eyes was
an eager look.
" Where are the souls of my children ? " he asked the
teacher.
" Here are their bodies," the teacher was able to re-
ply. " They come to school very regularly and promptly."
Jesus took the bodies, and they turned to dust in his
hands.
" Where are the souls of my children ? " Christ in-
sisted.
" Here are their manners," faltered the teacher. " They
are quiet and very respectful ; they listen carefully. In-
deed, they are beautifully behaved."
Jesus took their manners, and they turned to ashes in
his hands.
Our Lord repeated his question, " Where are the souls
of my children ? "
" I can give you their brains," the teacher answered.
"They can name all the books of the Bible forward and
backward. They can repeat the list of the Hebrew
kings. They know in order the seventy events of your
250
HOW TO USE DECISION DAY 251
life on earth. They can recite the Sermon on the Mount
from beginning to end. Really, they are excellent
scholars."
Jesus took their brains, and lo ! they dissolved to
vapor, and a puff of wind blew them away.
"Where are the souls of my children?" urged our
Lord with sorrowful longing.
Then the teacher was filled with an agony of shame
that broke the bands of sleep.
" Alas ! " cried the teacher, " I have done much for my
children, but it is all nothing because I have not also
done the One thing. Henceforth my teaching, though it
traverse many ways, shall have One goal, and perhaps it
will be given me to dream that dream again."
What it means to bring a soul to Christ few realize, or
many would be about it. For that soul it means peace,
exultant and growing. It means power, assured and in-
creasing. It means honor and prosperity, on the whole,
even in this troubled world. It means this for the com-
ing year, and those months multiplied by the long years
of life, and that life multiplied by the unimagined
stretches of eternity, and glorified by the unguessed joys
of Paradise. It means this for one soul, and for all the
others whom that one may reach, and for the myriads
these may reach, through nations and generations. This
is only a hint of what it means to bring a soul to Christ.
To do this work is the main business of every Sun-
day school. I fear that sometimes the most applauded
scholarship of these recent days forgets this, and seems,
at least, to consider the mummy of dead facts more im-
portant than the living spirit that has risen from those
252 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
cerements. Let us teach our scholars in the proportions
that will seem fitting to us a thousand years from now.
In the clear light of eternity we shall perceive how the
least accretion of divine character enormously outweighs
all encyclopedias in the world, and that the details of
scholarship are of value only as they build character and
confirm it.
This is why Decision Day is the one great day of our
school year. Not that decisions for Christ are to be
sought only then ; they are to be sought any day, and all
days. Not that they are to be announced only then ;
they are to be announced as soon as made. But on De-
cision Day this great thing will be accomplished : it will
be rendered certain that, at least once this year, every
unsaved scholar of the school has been urged to decide
for Christ.
I want to tell you how I would go about it.
Imprimis, begin now. The first decisions of Decision
Day must be made by the teachers. Hold a meeting,
teachers and officers together. Let each teacher tell how
many scholars in his class are yet outside the church.
By the time this list is completed, you will have formed
a sufficient argument for Decision Day. You will decide
to observe it.
Next, decide that each teacher will have in private a
frank and full talk with each unsaved scholar in his class.
Do not yield to the temptation to call in some earnest
soul who will "draw the net" in the school. Let no man
reap your harvest ; gather it yourselves.
Excuses are so easy to find !
Your scholars mill raise doubts that you cannot answer.
HOW TO USE DECISION DAY 253
But you can obtain answers from others wiser than
you, and always you can hold your scholars to the main
question, the character and claims of Christ. Always
you can show them that deciding for Christ means trust-
ing him for all things, the honest intention to obey him
in all things, and saying this before men.
You have already asked them to confess Christ and
join his church, and they have refused.
Then there is the more likelihood that the next time
will win them ! Let them understand that you will ask
that question again and again, until it is answered for
God and heaven and happiness.
They are careless and indifferent, and not ready to join
the church.
Christ came to call the careless and indifferent. They
most need Christ. And beneath this mask of bold de-
nial, they, for all you know, are most ready to come to
Christ.
Others would have more influence than you.
That does not absolve you from using your influence.
And even if they refuse you now, in the coming years
the very memory of your faithful pleading may draw
them, as such memories have drawn thousands, to yield
to the Saviour they now reject.
Still, call to your aid the influence of others. Get
the help of the parents. Interest the Christian scholars
in the winning of their friends. The pastor, the super-
intendent, some other church-member, may be asked to
speak a word to this or that. A sermon should be called
for, — a brave, tender, ardent appeal. A church prayer
meeting and a young people's prayer meeting should be
254 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
given up to the theme. Especially, since the young peo-
ple are both timid and gregarious, if some are plainly
Christians, but shrink from joining the church, approach
one after the other with the suggestion that they come in
a glorious company, a united class.
If in this way, by appeals and discussions during the
lesson hour, and especially by quiet talks of teachers and
friends with the scholars, the time is spent during the
weeks before Decision Day, then thai day will be what
it should be, less a day for making decisions than for an-
nouncing those already made. During the session on
Decision Day I would have a roll-call of classes. Each
teacher in turn would rise and announce the number in
his class, the number who are already church members,
and the number of those that have decided for the Chris-
tian life and wish to join the church. Each announce-
ment should be received with some appropriate comment
by the superintendent, and at the close the pastor, or
some other Christian honored by all, should give these
new confessors a word of hearty greeting.
As to the question whether at this time a general
appeal should be made calling for immediate decisions
and public confession of Christ, pastors and teachers and
churches will differ. In churches not a few, most blessed
and permanent results have been gained from just this
step, following the thorough preparation I have outlined.
If, as each class is called, the Christians and those now
ready to confess Christ should rise together, and if class
after class should thus rise and remain standing, and if
at the beginning and close of the roll-call a loving invi-
tation should be given for instant decisions, to be shown
HOW TO USE DECISION DAY 255
by simply standing with the rest, many would be swept,
by the current of feeling and action, over their doubts
and difficulties, which, once surmounted, would never
trouble them again.
Only, one caution : let nothing be done or said that
would fix a soul in denial, and place it definitely in op-
position to Christ. This is Decision Day, and they have
not decided yet,* that is all. They must think it over.
They must talk it over with their teachers. They must
pray about it. They must never call it a closed question
till the right decision is made. And they must remember
that to-morrow may be too late.
CHAPTER XXXIII
BIBLE-MARKING IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
Put a medicine chest, the bottles all unlabeled, in a
backwoods cabin, and how far will it go toward tilling
the place of a doctor ? Set a man with a box full of
unmarked keys before a locked door, and how long will
the door remain closed ? Every day men's hearts are
sick with troubles for which the Bible contains specifics.
Every day confronts us with difficulties to which the
Bible holds the keys. But we go to the blessed Book
and turn its pages aimlessly, far more likely to hit upon
the wrong passage than the right one.
In what chapters would you find answers for a man
that doubted Christ's divinity ? Where would you find
comfort for a mourner? From what part of the volume
will you gain courage to undertake a difficult task ?
AVhat verses are sunshine for the " blues " ? These are
practical questions. Of what use is your Bible unless
you can use it? And the need for it does not often
come with a concordance in its hands.
Every one that has tried it, knows that a marked Bible
is twice and thrice a Bible; and if our Sunday-school
work can furnish the scholars with this tool, it will do
much toward making them Bible-lovers and Bible-users.
Therefore I am an advocate of Bible-marking as a
regular class exercise ; but other considerations also lead
me to urge the practice. For one, it insures the presence
256
BIBLE-MARKING IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 257
of Bibles in the class. To attempt to teach the Bible
merely from lesson leaves is like trying to get an idea
of an oak from a dried oak-leaf. Moreover, this Bible-
marking renders it quite certain that the Bible will be
taught as a whole; David will supplement John and
Isaiah will talk with Paul, and neither Proverbs nor Ha-
bakkuk nor the Cana miracle nor Timothy will be allowed
to stand as the Bible's sole temperance teaching.
The exercise of Bible-marking fixes the attention of
the class. It creates a novel interest, born of eye and
hand as well as brain. It focuses the entire scholar on
the lesson.
By Bible-marking the teaching is rendered definite. You
must settle on the main theme, and all your Bible-mark-
ing must center on that. When review day comes, and
these twelve definite and emphasized points pass before
you, the culminating advantages of the plan will be most
clearly shown.
For Sunday-school use — and for home use, too, for that
matter — I believe in the simplest form of Bible-marking.
I would use ink, for permanence, though an indelible
pencil is nearly as good. I would not use colored inks
or pencils, — nothing but black. I would never confuse
the eye with markings in the text, but would make all
markings in the margin.
A Suggested System. — Every teacher will do well to
make his own system ; he can work his own best. My
system is exceedingly simple. Opposite each text I write
a letter or letters indicative of the thought I find promi-
nent in it. Texts on faith all receive an F in the margin ;
on fidelity, Fi. G is for God ; Go, for goodness ; Gr for
258 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
gratitude, and so on. Every main theme has its subdivi-
sions, which I number. Gl, for example, is God's omnip-
otence; G2, God's omnipresence ; G3, God's omniscience.
Finally, for each of these subdivisions I fix upon a key-
text, the first of a chain of texts which I carry through
my Bible. Underneath the Gi that stands in the margin
opposite my key-text for God's omnipotence, I write the
number of the page where I will find the second text
on that subject. Opposite that text I write Gl, and
beneath that I write the number of the next page that
contains a text of the series, and so on in a chain that
will not be completed till I cease to find in the Bible any
words on that theme. Since I have no financial interest
in the sale of the book, and since it is the only work of
the kind, I venture to say that in "The Bible Marks-
man," sold for thirty-five cents by the United Society of
Christian Endeavor, Boston, Mass., I have written out
this entire system, embodying the fifty-two leading Bible
themes, each with its symbol and seven sub-topics, and
with thousands of texts thus classified.
I recommend that the class write on the fly leaves of
their Bibles their key-texts and symbols, placing after
each the number of the page where the chain begins.
Only a few texts should be marked each Sunday. Do
not try to exhaust the subject. Remember, there are
other Sabbaths, and the same theme is certain to come
up again. Adding to the chain on other occasions will
perpetuate the interest.
Make use, in your marking, of complete stories and
entire passages as well as single verses. When you wish
to refer to more than one verse, write " vs. 6-10," or
BIBLE-MARKING IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 259
whatever it may be, underneath the symbol, closing the
whole with the number of the next page.
For the proper carrying out of this plan, the teacher
will find it best to look ahead over the quarter's lessons
or the year's, choosing among the many topics involved
in each lesson the one that fits into the Bible-marking
course; the one, that is, which is not duplicated by les-
sons soon to come. It is necessary, also, to keep on hand
a supply of pens and ink, blotters, erasers, and whatever
else is required for the exercise.
As the teacher continues this practice of Bible-marking,
many gains will show themselves, additional to those that
1 have already detailed. Each scholar will want his own
Bible; and, since so much work is to be put upon it, this
should be a Bible worth keeping all through life, a Bible
with good paper, large type, wide margins, substantial
bindings. The parents may easily be interested in pro-
viding such Bibles for their children.
Neatness may be taught, — nay, must be, — and some
reward may be given for the most beautiful work.
A practical knowledge of the books of the Bible is
gained, and the scholars rapidly become familiar not
only with the order of the books, but even with the con-
tents of many books whose very names were formerly
almost unknown to them.
The exercise may be used to promote committing the
Bible to memory. Get the scholars each Sunday to vote
on the verses they have marked, selecting their favorite,
and then learning it by heart through the week, so that
each one can say it, with book, chapter, and verse number,
on the next Lord's day.
260 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Best of all, perhaps, the teacher may use the Bible-
marking to promote home study. Tell the class in ad-
vance around what theme the next Sunday's Bible-mark-
ing is to center. Show them how to use Bible index
and concordance. Urge them to make at home a little
collection of texts suitable to be marked, each text to be
read by the class, voted upon, and, if adopted, incorpo-
rated in the class chain of verses.
I have indicated only a few of the ways in which a
live teacher may make use of Bible-marking as a class
exercise. Consecrated ingenuity will discover and invent
many other ways, to the great profit of the class, and
their decided advancement in Bible knowledge.
CHAPTER XXXIV
HOW TO INSPIRE LOVE FOR THE BIBLE
This, after all, is the great problem for Sunday-school
workers. When our children become Bible-lovers, they
will attend the school regularly, they will study the les-
sons at home, they will be attentive to the teaching and
orderly in the class, they will be led with inspiring cer-
tainty into the way of life. We believe all this ; that is
why we have Bible schools. We believe it ; but ah, how
may we bring it about ? This is the problem that in-
volves all other problems, — to make the children Bible-
lovers.
And first, — a very simple principle easily overlooked,
— you cannot inspire love for the Bible unless you love it
yourself. Many a teacher may find in these words a
reason for partial or complete failure. If your love for
the Bible is feigned or forced, if you read it from duty
and not from adoration, if you rather postpone it than
anticipate it, how can you expect your scholars to be
otherwise ? They will inevitably follow your character
in preference to your words, if there is any divergence
between the two. And your real feeling will show itself
plainly, protruding through the most correct speech.
But if, on the other hand, you are a Bible-lover
through and through, then it makes little difference what
you say, your scholars will be quite certain to catch the
blessed contagion. If the Bible is your favorite, instinc-
261
202 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
tive reading ; if you are saturated with it, familiar with
all its parts, quoting it unconsciously and often ; if you
love even the material volume, love to have it near you
and to handle it ; if, next to the Book itself, books about
it are your delight; if this is true of you, the children
will reflect these feelings as surely as they answer to
your smiles. You must be yourself the kind of Bible-
lover you would have each of them become.
But I see that I am taking for granted that you will
frankly show your love for the Bible, which some
through false modesty foolishly would conceal. If you
would lead the children to love the Book, you must carry
it openly and proudly, — and well-bound copies, too ; you
must handle it reverently, not thumbing it, and rumpling
its pages, and breaking its back ; you must quote it lov-
ingly ; you must speak of it enthusiastically, not critic-
ally ; you must not be afraid to use those old-fashioned
terms, " the precious Gospel," "the dear old Book,"
" Holy Writ," " inspired Scriptures," "the glorious Word
of God"; whatever your theory of inspiration may be,
you must show that you believe in the Bible with all
your heart. Only as your own love for the Bible is thus
frank and open will you make expressive Bible-lovers of
your scholars.
Next, if the young folks are to become men and
women of the Book, they must possess Bibles whose out-
ward appearance is attractive. How can we expect our
children to love the small-type, broken-backed, dingy,
dog's-eared Bibles that many of them carry ? You, my
dear sir or madam, still love your wife or husband in
whatever rags arrayed ; but, outside of fairy stories, one
HOW TO INSPIRE LOVE FOR THE BIBLE 263
does not fall in love with a dirty-faced tatterde-
malion.
Still more unlikely is it that the bits of Bible that our
scholars find on crumpled lesson leaves and torn quarter-
lies will lead them to love the massive Volume itself, or,
indeed, to gain any conception of it as a book. One
might as well give a pupil Bartlett's Quotations and ex-
pect him therefrom to develop a fondness for Shakespeare.
See that the children have good copies of the Bible,
all their own. If they are bound in cloth, let it be red
cloth, or bright blue; if in leather, let the edges shine
with gold. Stamp their name upon the cover. Let the
type be as clear and large as may be. That cruel saying,
•J Young eyes don't mind small type," has started many a
young eye toward premature age. But children do love
small books, and therefore, while each child should have
his complete Bible, I would make generous use also of
the Bible portions, copies of the separate books in large
type. For this purpose the Modern Reader's Bible and
the Temple Bible are admirable.
It is good to give a child a picture Bible, if the pictures
really aid his imagination and do not impede it! Far
more necessary is it, however, to see that his Bible is in
the Revised Version. In a myriad places that version
has removed the stumblingblocks out of the way of the
child's understanding. And of the various editions of
the Revised Version those are best for children that re-
tain the verse divisions of the King James version, be-
cause they enable the children more easily to " find the
place," and especially because they render the pages
more open and interesting to the eye.
264: SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
But all these matters are preliminaries. Given your
own love for the Bible, and their possession of copies of
the Bible that they can fall in love with, the first step is
merely to introduce them to the Book, get them ac-
quainted with it. Children do not fall in love with a
stranger.
It is astonishing how children enjoy learning the mere
names of the books of the Bible. Those mouth-filling
musical words, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Thessalonians, and
the rest, fascinate them before they have the least idea
of their meaning. My little girl is, at this particular
moment, perfectly delighted with the Minor Prophets,
merely as a series of beautiful names. She likes to
"bound" the various books, — tell what book comes be-
fore and what after. She is keenly interested in Bible
hand-drills, finding chapter and verse at call ; finding the
shortest verse, the longest chapter ; finding the Beatitudes,
the Ten Commandments, the Shepherd Psalm ; hunting
up the Christinas story, the story of Joseph, the story of
David and Goliath. Unconsciously, she is getting book-
out lines and history outlines. She is learning that
Christ's words and deeds are to be found in a certain
part of the Book, and Solomon's in another, and Abra-
ham's in another. She is slowly grouping histories and
prophecies and poems and letters. She is committing
bits to memory here and there. She thinks it is play,
and so it is ; but it is also something more : she is getting
her introduction to the Word of God.
After the children, by long, patient, and persistent
drill, have gained this introduction to the Bible, what
next ? Then, just as in the second step of a personal ac-
HOW TO INSPIRE LOVE FOR THE BIBLE 265
quaintance, throw them as much as possible together
alone. Let them browse in the Bible. What if they do
hit on the hard parts ? They will understand more than
we think they do, and feel what they cannot understand.
As likely as not, Daniel or even Jeremiah will become
their favorite book of the Old Testament, and Revela-
tion or even Romans, of the New.
It is a good plan to form your class into a Bible-
Lovers' Club, just for the purpose of reading the Bible
straight through. Some reward, such as a Red Letter
Testament, may be given to every child that completes
the reading. Let them write the date at the close of
each book as they finish reading it. Let them print an
X in the corner of each page if they think they under-
stand it, and go over their Bibles with them now and then
to increase the number of pages thus marked. If you
question the value of such a course in Bible-reading for
children, read what Ruskin says about it in the second
chapter of his " Praeterita," how his mother read the
Bible with him, verse about. " She began with the first
verse of Genesis, and went straight through, to the last
verse of the Apocalypse ; hard names, numbers, Levitical
law, and all ; and began again at Genesis the next day.
If a name was hard, the better the exercise in pronunci-
ation, — if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in
patience, — if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that
there was some use in its being so outspoken." And
Ruskin counted his mother's Bible drill " the one essen-
tial part" of all his education.
I think it quite important that as early as possible the
child should be led into the romance of the Bible. I do
26f) SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
not mean the wonderful stories it contains — those, of
course ; but in addition to them the wonderful story of
the Book itself. The child should be brought to see it
as a whole, and to realize God's interest in it as a whole,
and not merely his care for Isaac and Samuel and
Timothy.
To this end much should be told the children of the
way the Bible came to us, the story of the manuscripts
and their discovery, so full of absorbing interest ; the
story of the versions and of the successive English Bibles ;
the great stories of Luther and Wyclif and Tyndale, the
King James version, the Victorian revision. When the
children come to see how much God cares for the Book,
what a wonderful network of providence he has thrown
around it, they will come to care for it themselves.
Then, while the scholars are thus browsing in the Book,
encourage them to tell what they find. Set apart a few
minutes in the class for regular reports of the discoveries
made during the week. Any passage that strikes a child
as beautiful or helpful he should mark. As he tells
about it in the class, the others may wish to mark the
same passage in their Bibles. For the purpose of inspir-
ing their enthusiasm for the Bible, one discovery of
theirs is worth a hundred of yours, and one report from
them is worth a dozen hours' talk from you. What you
want is to be pedagogic, — child-leaders, — and not didac-
tic, — child-lecturers.
All this, without forcing the children, or passing for
an instant out of the region of their natural enjoyment.
But what if they are not naturally inclined toward the
Bible ? They are naturally inclined toward such employ-
HOW TO INSPIRE LOVE FOR THE BIBLE 267
ments as I have outlined. All children like to explore,
all children like to show what they have found, all chil-
dren like stories and are captured by romance. They
may not be naturally inclined toward the higher results
of love for the Bible, but if they once feel that love,
though on the lower plane, it will grow — never fear — to
the highest outreachings.
Do not expect it all at once. Growth is slow into any
good thing. How gradually, as the fruit of what long
patience, does a baby grow into an understanding love of
the mother! And we are all at first but babes in the
Book. These childish markings of tiny texts, and fum-
blings after the story of Gideon, and learning of the order
of books, and plodding through chapters, are little things
to us but great to them, — the narrow path to the moun-
tain peaks of mighty doctrines, — inspiration, sanctifica-
tion, justification by faith. They are babes now, but our
reward is sure, for they are to become men and women
of the Book !
CHAPTER XXXV
PENCIL AND PAPER
Few Sunday-school teachers realize how great aids are
a pencil and a piece of paper in the teacher's hands, and
in the hands of each member of the class. Probably, for
most purposes, a blackboard is better for the teacher's
use. Not many classes, however, can have that luxury,
while not even its presence renders unnecessary the
scholars' own use of writing materials. Whatever holds
the hand holds the head. There is no attention-winner
like a pencil tablet. Work with it overcomes the fidgets
of the most restless scholar, while at the same time it
may be made delightfully to clarify the lesson facts and
teachings, and fasten them in the memory.
The teacher's first aim is to get attention. There is no
better way than by placing a piece of paper where all can
see it, and putting on it a striking fact or question, or a
simple sketch or diagram. If the teacher has planned
this opening well, he will gain his scholars' eyes and
brains without speaking a word.
The wise teacher, too, has in his mind a lesson analysis,
— some simple outline which presents the facts and truths
of the lesson as concisely as a picture. For example : —
by the wayside = careless
among thorns = sinful
in stony ground = shallow
in good soil = thoughtful
2G8
Seed
Sown
Hearts.
PENCIL AND PAPER 269
Such a synopsis, if written upon the teacher's pencil
tablet as the lesson progressed, and copied, step by step,
by every scholar, would fix forever the central truths of
the Parable of the Sower.
Paraphrases. — If the scholars have not studied the les-
son, an admirable introduction to it may be given in the
following way. Explain what a paraphrase is, and get
each scholar to read over the lesson text and then write
it out in his own words. As the class become more ex-
pert in this exercise, the teacher may read the lesson to
them, and their paraphrases may be entirely from
memory. Let each read his paraphrase aloud, the others
telling what has been omitted in each case. By the time
this exercise is completed, the lesson facts will be very
familiar to all ; and attention, moreover, will have been
held throughout.
That may be done, if the lesson has not been studied
at home; but the pencil and paper may be made to
emphasize and direct home study. For this purpose, at
the close of each lesson the teacher will dictate to the
class a statement of the subject of the next lesson, and
how much of the Bible should be read in connection with
it. He will follow this with a few comprehensive ques-
tions or themes for study, or he may dictate to each one
a separate subject for research. For example, if the sub-
ject is the resurrection, references will be given to all the
Gospel accounts of the resurrection, and to a few of the
leading references to that great event made in the Epis-
tles and the Revelation. Then, to the whole class or to
individuals, he will dictate such themes as the following:
" Make a tabular statement of the events connected with
270 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
the resurrection. " "Why do you believe these accounts
of the resurrection ? " " What was the effect of the
resurrection upon the disciples ? " " What results should
follow in our living if we believe the resurrection?"
Once in a while — I would not recommend the method
except for occasional use — each scholar may be asked to
Write a two-minute essay on his theme, to read before
the class. If you have a bright class, it will even be pos-
sible, after a short discussion of the lesson, to give them
pencil and paper, and ask each to write an essay on the
spot, the same general topic being assigned to all, or each
receiving a slip of paper appointing him to a theme of
his own.
It is evident that such drills as these, and the mere use
each Sunday of pencil and paper for any purpose, will
make a written examination seem the natural thing.
The scholars will not receive the suggestion with in-
credulous, blank dismay. And if a teacher really wants
to discover whether his scholars have made any per-
manent gain, no method of discovery is to be compared
with the written examination.
A Summary. — If pencil and paper are useful at the
opening of the lesson and during its progress, they are no
less useful at the close. You want to bind together what
has been taught. You want to be sure of some per-
manent and adequate impression as the result of the les-
son half-hour. No lesson is well taught till it is well
summed up, and no summary is quite so good as that put
upon paper by the scholars, either at your dictation or
each for himself.
As you make use of pencil and paper, uses for them
PENCIL AND PAPER 271
will multiply. Now you will draw a sketch map, which
your class will copy as you draw. Next Sunday, they
will draw the same map from memory. Now you will
all make diagrams, of the Herod family, perhaps. Now
you will illustrate the lesson truths with a simple picture,
every eye in the class being intent on your pencil tablet.
On their pencil tablets the scholars will write down the
bright quotations you want them to remember. For a
season, they will record there one Bible fact each Sun-
day. Indeed, there is no end to the usefulness of pencil
and paper, — if you only have them to use.
Keep on hand, therefore, in the place where your class
meets, as many blocks of paper as you have scholars, and
a few more. Let the paper be rough, that the pencil
marks may be black. The pencil tablets should have a
stout backing, that the scholars may write on their knees.
Have always ready a supply of soft pencils, nicely sharp
ened. Some teachers will be able to make profitable use
of colored pencils also.
Indeed, though what is written in the class will be of
value even if thrown away immediately, serving effi-
ciently to fix in mind the lesson facts and teachings, yet
it is a decided advantage if the sheet used each Sabbath
can be made so attractive that it will be preserved as a
souvenir, and referred to constantly. Their usefulness in
reviews is especially obvious. The sheets should be of
uniform size from week to week, and at the end of the
year they might be bound neatly in strong covers.
In short, like all teaching methods that are based on
the fundamental likings and needs of the young, this
method is susceptible of endless applications, and wise
272 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
use of it in one way is certain to suggest further use.
There are the richly-freighted leaves of the Bible; there
are the waiting tablets of your scholars' brains ; there are
the beautiful tablets of white paper. So utilize these
paper tablets that upon those mysterious brain tablets
may be inscribed God's words of salvation, and they may
become living Tables of the Law.
CHAPTER XXXVI
WORKING WITH THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY
The young people's society and the Sunday school are
sister-organizations, closely akin in their histories and
largely sympathetic in their methods. How shall they
be brought into harmonious and mutually helpful rela-
tions ?
Separate Fields. — In the first place, negatively, the
young people's society should not undertake to do the
distinctive work of the Sunday school, which is instruc-
tion in the Bible, nor should the Sunday school attempt
to carry on the distinctive work of the young people's
society, which is training for the mature work of the
church.
Many are constantly urging the young people's so-
cieties to supply this or that deficiency, real or imagined,
in the Sunday school, but the temptation to enter this
field has been, in the main, resisted. The only approach
to aggression on Sunday-school domains has been the
somewhat wide use by the older societies of Taylor's
text-book on the life of Christ, a work originating in the
Epworth Leagues but largely used by Endeavorers also,
and the use by Junior societies of a life of Christ for
young people, published by the Christian Endeavor So-
ciety and written by Dr. Stewart. In addition, the
present series of Junior Christian Endeavor topics will
spend four years in a regular progress through the Bible.
273
274 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
The decided tendency is to make the prayer-meeting
topics, both of Junior and older societies, more systematic
in their selection of Scripture passages and more orderly
in their survey of Scripture doctrines; but always this
distinction holds, that the Sunday-school work with the
I>ible is educational, the Bible work of the young people's
society is devotional and practical ; in the Sunday school
the scholars take in, in the society the members give out;
the Sundav school is chieflv for understanding and be-
lieving, the society is for applying. If this reasonable
and profitable distinction is held, the two agencies will
be kept from clashing even where they approximate most
closely, and the society will supplement the school at a
point where the very exigencies of time, if nothing else,
will always render it deficient.
A Practice Ground. — In the second place, positively,
t-he young people's society will find in the Sunday school
the nearest, the most natural, and therefore the most
fruitful field for the practice of those activities to which
its members are serving apprenticeship. Most of our
societies recognize this relationship by the regular ap-
pointment of Sunday-school committees. These com-
mittees, usually consisting of the older members, are
called on by the superintendent for a variety of services.
They often act as substitute teachers, and, indeed, this
is their most frequently performed duty. They some-
times constitute a normal class in the school, studying
each Sunday the next Sunday's lesson, with a special
view to teaching it if called upon.
In addition, these committees often canvass the town
or neighborhood for new Sunday-school scholars. They
WORKING WITH THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY 275
often act as the teacher's aids in looking up absentees.
They organize Sunday-school choirs, and help the super-
intendent prepare Sunday-school concerts. In short, in
a multitude of schools, the superintendent draws upon
the young people, through this committee as intermedi-
ary, for a variety of helpful services, which train the
young people and provide Sunday-school workers for the
future, at the same time that they contribute to the
school's immediate prosperity.
Cognate Subjects. — The young people's prayer meet-
ings often add to the Sunday-school interest in a way not
always recognized, because few outside the societies per-
ceive the frequent dependence of the young people's
prayer-meeting topic upon the Sunday-school topic that
lias preceded it. Certainly half the time the latter is
derived from the former, taking up some important prac-
tical theme which the teachers in the school have had all
too little time to develop, illustrating it'with other Scrip-
tures, and setting the young people to discussing it in the
light of the historical studies in the Sunday school. I
have found that, though this connection of topics is never
advertised, the young people themselves always recognize
it and utilize it admirably.
Mutual Helpfulness.— In the third place, if the young
people's society should thus aid the Sunday school, cer-
tainly the latter has some duties toward the former. It
is plainly to the interest of the school that all its scholars
should be members of the society, and both teachers and
officers should work to this end. Especially, however,
the Sunday school can aid the society by using it. Noth-
ing is more certainly fatal to the progress of a learner
276 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
than not to be allowed or compelled to practise what he
is learning ; and the school is one of the practising
grounds of the society.
If teachers and superintendents would everywhere
utilize to the full the members of their young people's
societies, enduring at the start their necessary crudities
for the sake of the final gain, they would do the socie-
ties the best of services, and would themselves in the end
reap great profit for their schools.
CHAPTER XXXVII
WHY DO WE TEACH IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL?
Most work is made or unmade by its motive. If the
motive is unworthy, the work is sure to be below its pos-
sibilities. If the motive is lofty, it will often change a
dwarf to a giant.
This is true even of manual labor, true even of drudg-
ery. A swineherd may so tend his pigs that the sty be-
comes a cathedral. A king may so rule a nation that his
palace becomes a sty.
But if it is true of the lowliest toil that it may be
transformed or degraded by its motive, still more is it
true of work in the spiritual realm. It is not always
easy to tell whether a mason is cutting stone with his
soul or only with a chisel ; it is always possible to tell at
a glance whether a teacher is putting his soul into his
task.
A clear purpose gives force to a man's work. It is like
a rifle bore to a bullet. Knowing why one does a thing
helps to do it. A walker will always go farther if he
has some goal than if he is aimlessly strolling. Sunday-
school teachers, in the main, persist magnificently in
their self-appointed task. Certainly the average length
of service of Sunday-school teachers equals that of sec-
ular teachers, though the Sunday-school workers are un-
paid. This persistence is due to the inspiring purpose
that animates most teachers in the Sunday school.
277
278 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Nevertheless, there are many Sunday-school teachers
that lack this worthy and impelling motive, and their
service is correspondingly weak and wavering. They
have in view no exhilarating goal. A comparatively
slight barrier will stop them altogether.
What, then, is an adequate purpose? Why do we
teach in the Sunday school ?
And first let us clear the way with a few negatives.
It is not our main purpose to teach Hebrew history.
A knowledge of Hebrew history is valuable, but without
a purpose beyond and above it, we should do better to
teach the history of our own country.
That purpose, which is to vitalize every step of our
historical studies in the Sunday school, is to exhibit
Christ as the climax of Hebrew history, the summit to
which all before him rises and from which all later events
receive their significance. If, for example, we cannot
relate the exodus to Christ, we might as well study in
our Sunday schools the ways of God in the abolition of
modern slavery. If our scholars do not get closer to
Christ at every point in their Hebrew history, we might
as well use our Sundays for any other history.
Neither is it our main purpose to teach Hebrew litera-
ture. It is a noble literature, the Bible is a glorious book ;
but there are other noble literatures and glorious books.
Unless the literature and book are unique, unless they
come from God as no other writings do, and lead to
Christ as no other writings do, there is no more reason
why on Sunday we should hold Bible schools than
Shakespeare schools. The Bible has no special perti-
nence for Sunday schools unless we teach it, not as
WHY DO WE TEACH IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL? 279
fine writing, but to make fine characters, Christly
lives.
Neither is it the chief object of our Sunday schools to
give instruction in ethics, in morality. Most of our
scholars, probably all of them, know what they ought to
do, but they do not do it. Unaided by Christ, they will
not do it, they cannot do it. Except as we bring Christ
into our lessons, and attach to him all our instruction in
duty, we are building a factory and leaving out the
engine room. There are Sunday schools that have
courses in Emerson, and his rules for the conduct of life;
but they are consistent, for they belong to churches that
consider Christ a mere man.
Nor is it the chief object of our Sunday schools to
teach the Christian philosophy, on such themes as sin, im-
mortality, heaven, the nature of God. Without Christ,
we have no interpretation of these teachings, no proper
understanding of them. Without Christ, we have no
authority for them.
No ; if our Sunday schools have not as their one over-
mastering object the eager purpose to make Christians,
we might as well be up to date ; we might as well have
Tolstoi schools, and Carlyle schools, rather than Bible
schools. Studying the Bible for its literature is carving
a statue; for its history, unwrapping a mummy ; for its
philosophy, painting a picture ; for its morality, dressing
a dummy ; for its Christ, making a man. When we
study the Bible for its history, it becomes a text-book ;
for its ethics, a law-book ; for its literature, a picture-
book ; but when we study it to make Christians, it be-
comes a Book of Life.
SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
This principle is the chief test to use in selecting lesson
helps. Do they exalt Christ ? With all their discussions
of history, literature, customs, languages, is this one pur-
pose always uppermost, to make Christians ? If it is not,
I care not how learned and brilliant are the editors and
how attractive the contents.
This principle governs also the teacher's preparation
for his teaching. If his motive is merely to give infor-
mation, he will plan how to pour facts into his scholars'
minds but not how to pour life into their souls. He will
study over his lesson, but not pray over it. He will ex-
amine his class, but not inspire them. His will be a
ministry of lore, not of love ; to heads, rather than hearts.
But if, on the other hand, it is the one passionate de-
sire of his teaching to make Christians, he will hold this
purpose in view throughout his preparation for the class.
He will ask himself every week, "How can this lesson
be made to show forth Christ ? to bring him nearer to
my scholars ? " He will look over the lessons far ahead,
and plan his campaign for souls. He will make one
evangelistic point each Sunday. One lesson will intro-
duce a bit of Christian evidence from miracles ; another
lesson, from prophecy ; with another lesson, he will make
a direct appeal for the Christian decision. There will be
no lesson without the Lord.
The same principle controls the mode of teaching after
the preparation has been made. In this matter the
teaching of the Bible is different from the teaching in
secular schools, and neglect of this difference is respon-
sible for many misleading comparisons between the two.
For no one teaches zoology in order to make his scholar
WHY DO WE TEACH IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL ? 281
a bird or a lion, or botany to make him a tree, or geome-
try to make him a triangle, or geology to make him a
rock. But one does teach the Bible to make the scholar
a rock, a Peter ! At the most, one teaches geology to
make the scholar a geologist, an assayer, a mine superin-
tendent ; but that is only to give him a working knowl-
edge of geology. Now a knowledge of Christianity is
not enough ; our scholar must be a Christian.
So that it is not enough for the teacher to find Christ
in a lesson ; he must set his scholars to seeking him and
finding. He must interest them in relating all the les-
sons to him. For example, he may have them mark their
Bible margins red wherever he comes in, as at the pass-
over, the brazen serpent, the ark of the covenant.
And so the wise teacher will test his teaching — partly, to
be sure, by what his scholars know about the Bible, because
that knowledge is part of the raw material of character ;
but chiefly by the Bible they have already built into
character. Constantly he will ask himself regarding
them, " Are they growing more unselfish ? more prayer-
ful ? more obedient? more trustful and happy ?" And
if he can answer those questions in the affirmative, he
will care comparatively little whether they can tell
when Ahab reigned or who Philemon was. His test of
his teaching is Christlikeness.
But this motive includes all others, and emphasizes
them. In proportion as we get our scholars to love
Christ and his service, they will want to know more
about his words, his book, his land, his people. The
most ardent and successful students of the Bible have
been impelled by love to Christ. Indeed, except to those
282 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
that love Christ, the Bible is not an especially interest-
ing book.
This motive, the purpose of character-building, dignifies
the work of the Sunday-school teacher, and gives it per-
manent value. A\ r e are not sure that Paul's letter to
Rome or the epistle to Ephesus will be published in
heaven, or that the Hebrew Psalter will be printed there ;
but we are sure that Paul will be there, and David,
speaking more marvelous thoughts, singing more won-
derful songs. The question is not so much as to our
scholars' remembering the dates of Paul's life, though
that is well, or the details of David's campaigns, though
that is well, as it is whether our scholars will carry to
heaven the soul that can join with Paul and David in
the celestial converse and the great new song. It is for
this eternal result that we are aiming.
And, finally, this desire to make Christians gives zest
to Sunday-school teaching. That is why men and
women toil in the Sunday school without pay. You can-
not get unpaid teachers of geology, of secular history, of
English literature. As soon as you leave out the evan-
gelistic element, and put Sunday-school teaching on the
plane of the secular schools, you must bring in hired
teachers and hired superintendents. The glory of our
Sunday-school work is that it is free service ; and that is
also its prosperity.
I was talking last week with an estimable lady who
described to me a Sunday-school class of seven boys,
wild, restless youngsters, whom she had taken up, years
ago, when no one else wanted them. She told with keen
delight how she had won them, and how, now that they
WHY DO WE TEACH IN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL ? 2S3
were married men in business, they still came back to
see her almost as if she were their mother. And how
her face shone as she came to the climax of the story :
u Six out of the seven have joined the church, and I think
the seventh will, some day !"
Ah, that is the goal which every Sunday-school teacher
worth the name keeps full in view ! This is the record
he keeps, amid all his records of attendance, and strives
to complete. This is the object of his eager prayers, his
self-sacrificing toil. With an ardor more strenuous than
a hunter's for the chase, with ambition more engrossing
than any Caesar's, with longing keener than a miser's, he
pursues this spiritual quest. And if he can be sure that of
all his class a single soul — still more if the entire class —
has made definite choice of Jesus Christ, so as to serve
him and enjoy his blessedness through the endless ages,
then our Sunday-school teacher has received his exceed-
ing great reward.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
HOW TO TELL A BIBLE STORY
"Of all the things that a teacher should know how to
do, the most important, without any exception, is to be
able to tell a story."
Those are the words of President G. Stanley Hall, the
eminent educator. They urge a qualification that many
teachers are slow to seek, and exalt an ideal that many
teachers belittle. Hut they hold up as our pedagogical
model the great Teacher, who taught many things, and
at one time all things, in parables. If we desire his suc-
cess we must study his method, and imitate it as well as
we can.
Of course it is not merely Bible stories that a skilful
teacher is prepared to relate with effectiveness, but stories
from a wide range of sources will be introduced, to illus-
trate the teaching from modern life. Bible stories, how-
ever, are the wise teacher's staple, and if he can tell
them well he can tell any story well ; therefore I have
narrowed my subject to them.
The outline of the art of telling Bible stories is very
simple; the practice is not so easy! But the outline
is merely six points : (1) You must know the story.
(2) You must know more than the story. (3) You must
imagine more than you can know. (4) You must know
the children and love them. (5) You must know the
284
HOW TO TELL A BIBLE STORY 285
Saviour and love him. (6) You must practise. Let us
consider those points in order.
And first, you must know all of the story that the
Bible tells. Its outline must be firm in your mind, and
every recorded detail must be fixed in its proper place in
the outline.
Try to rehearse to yourself any " familiar " Bible story,
and see how vague is your conception of it, how con-
fused your memory. Take for example the striking con-
test on Mount Carmel between Elijah and the prophets
of Baal. Where did Elijah come from ? Are you quite
sure? Where did he meet Obadiah ? Who spoke first,
and just what was that conversation ? What did Ahab
say when Obadiah brought him the news? Or did he
say anything that is recorded ? How many priests came
to Mount Carmel? How soon did they come? Does
the Bible say ? Who spoke first, up there ? What was
done first? And what next? What did Ahab have to
say ? Did he say anything, so far as we know ? When
did Elijah take matters into his own hands? What did
he do first? What did he say first? How many of us,
though we have read the account and heard it read many
times, could answer such questions as those ? And yet
they must be answered, and many more of the same sort,
before one is prepared to tell that story to the boys and
girls.
We think we know so much more about the Bible
than we do know ! Our first step, if we want to become
able to tell any of the Elijah stories, must be to master
thoroughly all that the Bible tells us about that remark-
able man and those around him. We must compare
286 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
Kings and Chronicles. With the aid of the concordance
and Bible index we must ransack the entire Bible for
references to him.
And we must know the facts perfectly. They must
become instinctive. We must not be obliged to think
what is coming next. First we must go over it again
and again with the Bible before us, referring at every
step to the record. Then we must go over it apart from
the Bible, on our walks to and fro, while sitting in the
twilight, the first thing on awaking in the morning. We
must make it a road we can travel with our eves
shut.
It is useful to commit much to memory. The graphic
Scripture words will set forth the story, when we come
to tell it, far better than any words of our own. It is
well to draw a diagram of the course of the story. It
is well to write it all out from memory. It is well to go
over it with other learners, associating yourself in the
endeavor with teachers whose aim is the same. It is
well to allow some time to elapse and then go back to
the story, to see how tenacious is your grasp upon it.
In all these ways, and in many others that you will per.
force discover for yourselves, you must make the Bible
outline of the story an ineffaceable part of your mind.
But it is only an outline, even then. The Bible is a
wonderfully condensed book. Stories that a modern
author would stretch through three hundred pages are
crowded into a chapter or six verses. Moreover, the
Bible, we must never forget, is a foreign book, — foreign,
at least, to our outward experience, though grandly
native to our hearts. Its scenes are anions: distant lands.
HOW TO TELL A BIBLE STORY 287
Its characters are people of strange races, of customs,
speech, and habits of thought that differ largely from
our own. Before we can really tell a Bible story we
must fill in the details of common experience that did
not need insertion before an Oriental audience, since they
were supplied instinctively ; but with us, and especially
with children, their absence leaves the narrative either
bare or quite misleading.
It is the heedless way of some teachers to supply these
details out of our own modern life, as Christmas Evans,
in his graphic recital of the Gadarene miracle, makes
the astonished family of the restored demoniac view his
orderly approach (clothed and sane) — from the window,
altogether oblivious to the fashion of Jewish architec-
ture. Thus the famous painting, da Vinci's "Last Sup-
per," pictures our Lord and the twelve seated, upright,
at a modern table. There are features of that account,
as also in the story of the woman with the alabaster box
of ointment, that cannot be understood until we know
how they reclined at table in those days, and the shape
of the tables.
And so, before we can properly tell a Bible story, we
must fill in the Bible outline, we must know more than
the story. As we talk of the "lilies of the field" we
must not be thinking of our lilies. As we tell of the
wheat and the tares, we must not have in mind our trim
fields and our reapers and threshers. Before we can
relate the Cana miracle we must know about Eastern
marriages ; or the Nain miracle, we must know about
Eastern funerals. We must not try to tell the story of
Elisha and the Shunammite, still less the story of Christ
288 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
and the man borne of four, without understanding how
they built houses in those days.
Sport is made of the old woman who had read the
dictionary through, and had found it very pleasant read-
ing, but disconnected. There is one such volume that
every Sunday-school teacher should read through, and
that is the Bible dictionary ; at least, its articles of gen-
eral applicability, such as "Writing," "Houses," "Agri-
culture," "Money," "Time." Along with that should
go much reading of volumes of travel and accounts of
ancient social life, such as Smith's " Historical Geography
of the Holy Land," the works of Trumbull and Tris-
tram ; vivid commentaries like those of Geikie, Farrar,
Edersheim, Maclaren ; stories like "Ben Hur," "Come
Forth!" and "The Pillar of Fire." As we go on in
such reading and study, filling in the Bible outlines with
a fuller knowledge of Bible times, places, and people, the
Scriptures will begin for the first time to be contempo-
rary with us, and we can relate the Bible stories almost
as if the events had come under our own eyes.
Almost, but not quite. For that climax of story-tell-
ing power we need not only to know the story, and more
than the story, but, in the third place, we must imagine
more of it than we can know.
And here is where so many fail. This is why so many
Bible teachers, well informed and industrious, do not
grasp the hearts of their scholars : they lack the creative
faculty of imagination. They have fixed the outline, the
bones, of the story. They have even filled in the outline,
laying flesh upon the skeleton ; but they have not
breathed into their figure the breath of life.
HOW TO TELL A BIBLE STORY
For example, you may wish to tell of Jeremiah in
prison. The first step is to read all you can find that re-
lates to the matter, in Kings and Chronicles, in Jeremiah
and Lamentations, and even in the Psalms. The second
step is to learn all you can about the prisons of those
davs, the darkness, the foulness, the utter horror of them.
Bat the third step is to put yourself in the place of the
prophet and try to think his thoughts: "Oh, if Josiah
had not gone to Megiddo ! Oh, if I had been captured
with 1 >aniel, or tarried away with Ezekiel ! lias my God
forsaken me? What is Baruch doing now, I wonder.
Perhaps he is trying to persuade the guard to give me a
little fresh air, or a ray of light. Ah, for a breath of the
breeze on Olivet ! What is that noise — drip ! drip ! drip !
And what is that long, slimy thing I just touched with
my bare foot ? Is it a water snake ? Verily this is a
land of serpents, and they are coiled around my nation,
from the feet to the head ! "
Is all that going beyond the Scripture ? Only beyond
the letter of it. For Jeremiah must have had such ex-
periences, and he must have thought such thoughts. It
is by such imaginative entering into the Bible stories and
living there that the great preachers, such as Moody and
Spurgeon, have gained their spiritual triumphs. It is by
such " fancies," as the Dryasdusts sneeringly call them,
that the Bible becomes alive to us, and we can make it
vital to other souls.
How shall we become able thus to vivify a Scripture
narrative? Only by long thought. We must brood
over it lovingly. We must take up character after char-
acter, and persistently try to put ourselves in his place.
200 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
We must ask ourselves at every turn in the story, " Now
what would I do, if this should happen to me? What
would I say ? If this were said to me, what would I
think? How would I answer? How would I feel?
What would I do next ? "
Suppose, for example, you wish to enter imaginatively
the story of Zaccheus. You might first go through the
scene in the person of Zaccheus. Picture him to your-
self — a short, stubby little Jew. His hair is bristly ; one
lock sticks straight up. His eves are small and calculat-
ing. Put in the little touches, — the tear in his clothes
that he got in his hurried slide down that sycomore.
Stop. View the scene through the eyes of others. Peter
saw it. What would he think, as he noticed the eager,
red-bearded face thrust through the branches ? Judas
saw it. Ah, what did that scene mean to Judas? Zac-
cheus's wife was looking on in amazement, and with a
wildly rising, unreasonable hope. There, in the crowd,
is Isaac bar Daniel, who has just been driven to beggary
by Zaccheus's exactions. What black rage fills his heart
as he sees the active little man wriggling along the syco-
more branch ! There was a small boy in that tree —
why, of course there was ! And Zaccheus pushed him
aside with a curse, and almost threw him to the ground.
What did young Ben think, and say ?
In that way let your fancy play around the scene.
Can you not see Zaccheus boastfully bowing Christ into
his fine house, the little figure almost tall in his sudden
good fortune? And perhaps our Lord said sadly to the
tax-gatherer : " Whose is this fine house, Zaccheus ? "
Then, as the publican lowered his head, our Lord may
HOW TO TELL A BIBLE STORY 291
hare added, gently, " My friend, I would rather abide
with you in a hovel, that was all yours."
Dwell with sympathetic insight upon every detail of.
the entertainment, as it must have occurred. Imagine
the steps by which Zaccheus rose. At first, perhaps, he
thought to himself, " I must — yes, I must give back that
money I screwed out of Jacob bar Jonathan." Then :
"I must go into this thing more thoroughly ; I must re-
store every penny." Then, the splendid outburst of re-
pentance and of promise in which all the story has its
crown.
This poetic ability to enter other lives is the third
essential for the real understanding of a Bible story ; but
the understanding of a story is not the telling of it — ah,
no ! In unfolding the art of narration I must hasten to
add a fourth requirement: you must know and love the
children to whom you are telling the story. You must
enter the hearts of the children, as you have already en-
tered the heart of the story. You must catch their eager
spirit. You must see how their fresh vivacity demands
movement from you, briskness, energy, a whiff of fun.
You must understand how little will arouse their imagina-
tion, how quickly they catch an idea. You must sympa-
thize with their youthful passion for life, their capacity
for all amounts of preaching if it is incorporated in life,
and for no amount of it if it is detached from life. You
must see how they need and enjoy repetition, — the repe-
tition of thoughts and phrases in a story, the repetition,
endlessly, of the story itself. You must try to see why
Joseph is a favorite with them and Paul usually is not,
and you must seek to present the story of Paul with
292 SUNDAY-SCHOOL PROBLEMS
those elements of romance and of simple, dramatic action
which exist there, but do not lie on the surface as they
do in the famous tale of the Old Testament. In fine,
you must disburden yourself of your years, of your adult
ways of thinking, and you must put yourself in the place
of your youthful auditor, as you have succeeded in put-
ting yourself in the place of your characters.
I am writing to Sunday-school teachers, and so I need
only mention the fifth essential of the art of Bible story-
telling : You must know and love Christ, the greatest
teller of fascinating tales. You must get his insight into
truth ; you must have his love for children. You must
draw near to him ; there is no other way of drawing near
to his children, or of drawing them to him. Especially,
in all your story-telling you must seek to exalt him, and
you must seek nothing else. Self-forgetfulness is one of
the great secrets of the story-teller's art, as self-conscious-
ness is his certain failure. The way to success in story-
telling, as in all things, is the way of the cross.
And my last injunction of the six needs also only a
word: Practise! It will go clumsily at first. Art is
long ; the story-teller's art is very long. Imagination
will be dull, facts will escape your memory, relations
will be confused, you will seem to be acting a part; and
since you do not convince yourself with the tale, of
course you will convince no one else. But persevere,
persevere ! Study results. If you fail, see why you
fail, and thus lay the only foundation for success. Study
different methods. Listen to others that know how to do
it. Catch their points of effectiveness. Above all
things, practise ! practise ! practise !
HOW TO TELL A BIBLE STORY 293
And as you go on, month after mohth, telling the old,
old stories, telling them with a love for them and for the
children and for your Saviour, crowding into them an
ever-growing wealth of knowledge, inspiring them with
an ever more vivid insight, thus, as the months go by,
you will increase in the power of a teacher, what has
become real to you will become real to your scholars, and
the wonderful Bible story, from cover to cover, will be
to you and to them the words of eternal life.
INDEX
Acquaintance with the scholar, 23
Acrostics, 14, 17, 120
Adult classes, 132
Analyses of the lessons, 14, 268
Apologies, 58
Applications, 32
Attendance— increasing it, 40, 55,
68, 118, 132
Avocation, The Sunday school as
an, 124
11 Baby talk," 165, 166
Backward scholars, 22
Badges, 41
Bible dictionary, 288
Bible drills, 151, 264
Bible foundations, 228
Bible, loving it, 261
Bible-marking, 13, 154, 256
Bibles for home use, 8
Bibles in the class, 40, 138, 150
Bible stories, how to tell them, 284
Bible-teaching, what it involves,
234, 278
Biographies, home-made, 11
Biography, 161
Blackboard work, 17, 40, 41, 55,
75, 90, 116
Boy problem, 79, 247
Calisthenics, 43
Central point of the lesson, 31, 209
Chalk talks, 75
Charts, and their use, 10, 121
Christ in all lessons, 211, 235, 251,
279, 292
Christian evidences in the Sunday
school, 173, 236
Christian Patriot's League, 162
Christmas exercises, 202
Christmas festivities, 171, 198
Classes in Christian evidences, 190
Class nucleus, 222
Class organization, 46, 136
Class rooms, 132
Closing the lesson, 16, 33
Closing the school, 95
Clubs for boys, 79
Collections, 171
Commentaries, home-made, 13
Committees in a class, 137
Comparing Scripture with Scrip-
ture, 12
Completeness in our work, 12, 35
Comradeship with the scholars, 22,
42, 100
Correspondence classes, 113
Curios, 244
Day schools and Sunday schools,
26,50
Decision day, 250
Definite tasks, 24, 35, 38, 138
Diagrams, 14, 17, 45
Doubts, 176, 182, 231, 252
Drawing, 90, 117, 119, 122
Duty books, 13
Early comers, 47
Easter lesson, 192
Enjoyment of our work, 39, 58, 64,
97, 110, 126, 282
Essays, 146
Examinations, 38, 270
Exchange of classes, 26, 148
Excursions, 83, 101
Exhibitions of work, 39
Expelling scholars, 43, 50
296
INDEX
Fisher's "Manual of Christian
Evidences," 190
Fun in Sunday-school work, 89, 97
Goals, 25, 34, 283
Golden texts, 52, 244
" Gospel of Peter," 193
Hall, President G. Stanley,
on story-telling, 284
Hand-work for the scholars, 44, 54
Harder lessons, and how to teach
them, 141
Helps for Bible-study, 8, 148, 239
Higher criticism, 187, 225
Home departments, 23, 73
Home study : how to get it, 7, 35
223, 260, 269
Home work with the scholars, 10,
22, 23, 45, 83, 84, 115
Hopkins's "Evidences," 175
"Hop, skip, and jump" teaching,
170
Illustrations, 15. 19, 103, 220
Imagination, 25, 105, 288
Imitation in children, 57
Keywords, 12
Last five minutes, 10
Lectures, 75, 135, 147
Lesson hour cut short, 27
Lesson leaves, 263
Lesion perspective, 207
Letters to scholars, 18, 108
Library, 108
"Looking forward" meetings, 244
Love for the Bible, 261
Manifolding devices : how to
use them, 13, 90, 244
Manner in teaching, 44, 57, 99
Maps, 14, 38,45, 121
Membership committees, 71
Memorizing Scripture, 52, 259
Men in the school, 139
Merrill's "Parchments of the
Faith," 190
Mi nicies, 233
Motive for teaching, 42. 124
Music of the school, 70, 75, 168
National aspects of the lessons,
160
National holidays, 163
NewsjKijMi-s, 19, 159
Normal classes, 129
Notices, 86, 117
Nucleus of the class, 222
Omnibus, 7(5
Opening exercises, 70, 95
Orchestras. 70
Order in the class and school, 43,
98
Order of service, 48, 95
Outside classes, 75
Outside the school, 22, 79
Over-promptness, 47
Paraphrases, 12, 45, 145, 269
Parents and home study, 10. 23
Parents helping the teacher, 46, 50,
112, 150, 253
Partitioning off the classes, 133
Pastors helping 39, 72, 113, 253
Patriotism in the Sunday school,
158
"Pearls l>efore swine," 218
Pencil and paper in the class, 17,
19, 268
Fert replies. 107
"Philosophy Four," 97
Photographs, 15
Picnics, 170
Pictures, 17, 18, 45, 162, 244,203
Planning the work, 28, 2!), 30, 44,
53, 66. 102, 109. 129, 208
Poems, 18
Porch committees. 137
Postal -card invitations, 77
Praise, 25
Frayer in the class, 19, 46
Prayer in the school. 4S, 103
Preparation tor teaching, 42, 129,
144, 219, 2-0
INDEX
297
Printing for the school, 76
Programmes of recitations, 146
Promptness, 48
Proportion in teaching, 29, 189, 207
Purpose of the Sunday school, 78,
277
Puzzling questions, 176
Questions, and how to use them,
13, 18 19, 20, 32, 45, 66, 67, 119,
146, 223, 242, 245
Quotations, 18, 19
Recitation^ 70, 162
Reporting the attendance, 77
Reports of home study, 8
Reverence, 46
Reviews, 14, 25. 38, 39, 53, 148,
MS, 271
•d version, 263
K< wards of Sunday-school work,
131
Rice's "Our Sixty -six Sacred
Books," 190
"Right Bait," 247
Bound robiaa, 110
BCHOLABS helping one another, 23.
46, 223
Bebool -rooms, 69
Scolding, 23, 69
Scrap-books, 15
Beoolai history, 161
mt girls' classes, 74
Social committees, 137
Soul-earing. :;>. KH, 250,279
Souvenirs, 18, 271
Bp nken from outside, 2 »
Specialties in teaching, 130
Starting the lesson, 43
Stewart's life of Christ, 273
Story-telling art, 20, 105, 284
Study bees, 23
Substitute teachers, 63
Summaries of the lesson, 270
" Sunday-schooly, " 164
Superintendent helping the teacher,
46, 47, 143, 853
Superintendent's blaeklioard, 116
Superintendents manner, 94
''Superintendent that needs a
muzzle," 213
Superintendent, the talkative, 27,
49, 118, 123, 213
Supernatural, 233
B* ing of the school, 93
Symbols, 17
Sympathy with the scholars, 22,
144, 291
Talking to the school, 27, 28, 118,
165
Tardiness, 27, 41
Taylor's life of Christ, 273
Teachers' meetings, 69, 129, 143,
215, 238
Titles of chapters, 37
Trumbull's "Teachers and Teach-
ing," 239
Verse comments, 66, 145
Voice in teaching, 44, 100
Why do we teach ? 277
Young people's society, 63, 71,
273
REVISED AND ENLARGED
WAYS OF WORKING
OR, HELPFUL HINTS TO SUNDAY-
SCHOOL WORKERS OF ALL KINDS
By Rev. A. F. Schauffler, D.D.
232 pp. Cloth, $1.00
The new edition contains a chapter on the Relation of the Pastor to
the Sunday School, a supplementary chapter on The Blackboard (illus-
trated), and one on the Home Department. Everybody should have
this book. It covers every phase of Sunday-school work in a clear,
instructive manner, and cannot fail to be of marked benefit to every
worker. It has received the highest commendations from the relig-
ious press and the leading Sunday-school men. Below we give a
proof of them.
44 The appearance of a really helpful manual for Sunday-school teachers
or superintendents is a noteworthy event. Dr. Schauffler has given us the
ripe results of his experience as superintendent and a teacher of teachers. He
takes up the various phases of a superintendent's work, and shows what
constitutes success, how success is often lost, and how it may be won." —
S. S. Times.
"This is a capital book. So far as the teacher and the method go, it
leaves nothing unsaid. Dr. SchaufHer's book is the very best book for
teachers, and on teacher's methods, that we have seen." — The Independent,
New York.
44 It unlocks the door to the treasure-house of Sunday-school success."—
F. N. Peloubet, D. D.
44 The best all-around book for a Sunday-school worker I know of." —
Marion Lawrence, Sec'y Ohio State S. S. Association.
" Cannot foil to be of value in the hands of all Sunday-school workers."
— W. If. Hall, Sec'y of Conn. State S. S. Association.
44 Dr. A. F. Schauffler, who is widely known as one of the most expert
and distinguished Sunday-school men of our time, has prepared a book en-
titled ' Ways of Working.'
44 As the title suggests, it is a statement of methods, and abounds in prac-
tical suggestions concerning all departments of Sunday-school work, the
duties of every officer, and all particulars which are likely to suggest them-
selves. It is based upon long and varied personal experience and observa-
tion. It is written in a clear, simple, telling fashion, and will take rank at
once in Sunday-school literature as a standard publication."— Tfu Congre-
gationalist.
W.A.WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON AND CHICAGO
The Teacher, The Child
and The Book
OR, PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS AND METHODS
FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORKERS
By Rev. A. F. Schaujjler, D.D.
2S3 pp. Cloth, $/.oo
" Not many men among us are better able to teach teachers
than Dr. Schauffler. His life has been devoted to the work, and he
lias done it well. This book is full of good things. Its aim is to
give the teacher information concerning methods of work which have
been found practical and helpful. The book is heartily commended
to teachers who desire to make the most possible of their ability and
of their opportunity." — The Westminster Teacher.
'•All the promises of the title page are fully kept. This volume
gives to teachers a variety of carefully selected information concern-
ing methods of work which have been found practical and helpful by-
others. Rarely indeed have we made the acquaintance of a book
that has a better claim to be regarded as practical. The suggestions
that are offered have the backing of sound common sense and the
recommendation of successful trial. A teacher that is capable of
learning anything at all from such a book as this cannot fail to get
new strength and quickening for his great work from these rich
pages." — Sunday School Work.
" Teachers who really wish to teach, and so instruct the child in
the precious truths of the divine word as that a lasting impression
shall be made, will find this volume of very great help in the wise
performance of their sacred task." — The Examiner.
" This book is exceedingly practical as well as very attractive.
Each chapter gives a definite view of some important truth. Dr.
Schauffler does not aim at exhaustiveness, but rather at clear impres-
sions. The volume is one that is sure to energize any Sunday school
whose teachers will read it." — The Christian Endeavor World.
" This book is not visionary, nor theoretical, but intensely practi-
cal ; it tells an average teacher how to do things with just what may
be at hand with an average class of little ones, or with larger
children." — The Baptist Teacher.
W.A.WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON AND CHICAGO
The Front Line of the Sunday-
School Movement
THE LINE OF THE VANGUARD OF SUNDAY-
SCHOOL PROGRESS, WITH A GLIMPSE OF
IDEALS BEYOND
By Rrv. F. N. Peloubet, D.D.
287 pp. Cloth, $/.oo
" These chapters are filled to the brim with helpful suggestions,
which are given point and illumination by striking illusions and tell-
ing quotations. The arguments are ably sustained and finely wrought
out. Notes of progress are sounded all the way along. Workers
who desire to find the front line of Sunday-school work and to keep
on it may read this book to their profit. It is notably free from the
1 ologies ' that overload some of our modern books treating the Sun-
day school. The meat that is here will afford strength for many
days." — Sunday-School Work.
" This volume is the ripe fruit of long and intimate observation
and the fullest practical knowledge. It discusses the topics that are
most important and most vital at the present time, such as teacher-
training, the grading of Sunday schools, organization for
Bible-study, the historic and other methods of Bible-study, Sunday-
school rooms and their equipment. The entire volume in each
chapter and pag* is helpful. No Sunday-school worker but will count
it worth its weight in gold." — The Christian Endeavor World.
" The aim of the book is to show the best that has been accomplished
la Sunday school, and help others to attain that standard. The
character of the building, grading of the school, training teachers,
prepiration of lessons, and methods of teaching are all discussed in
an illuminating and practical manner; and no one can read these
chapters without benefit. Every Sunday-school officer and teacher
should possess and study this book." — W. A'. Moody.
" Dr. Peloubet is a master in this realm, and a careful observer of
methods. Superintendents ought to secure several copies for their
Sunday-school library, and encourage young men and women to
read it, instead of books that merely amuse but give no practical
instruction. The pastor will find this work invaluable while he
seeks to train his teachers. In fact, every official in the school
ought to become familiar with its teaching and carry out into prac-
tice the lessons taught therein." — The Baltimore Methodist.
W.A.WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON AND CHICAGO
THE BLACKBOARD IN
THE SUNDAY SCHOOL
By Henry Turner Bailey, State Super-
visor of Drawing of Massachusetts
Price, bound in cloth, 75 cents, fast/aid
"Henry T. Bailey is peculiarly fitted for the task of writing on 'The
Blackboard in Sunday-school, 1 being at once an ardent Sunday-school man,
a student of teaching methods, and officially the State Supervisor of Draw-
ing for Massachusetts. The manner of ihe book is in Mr. Bailey's most
winning vein, clear, lively, informing, indept nrftnt. and original. 1 1 is par-
ticularly designed to teach the uninitiated some oi the fundamentals of draw-
ing, and especially blackboard drawing, including lettering, of cou^e. The
book is full of clever little turns of expression, sometimes direct, and some-
times aside. That the blackboard has been badly abused and overdone in
some of the Sunday schools is beyond question. Mr. Bailey is careful to
adminster the caution that the 'acrostic may be easily overdone.' Many
a person who is not a Sunday-school superintendent or teacher will derive
enjoyment, to say nothing of profit, from this learned beautiful, abundantly
illustrated, and otherwise admirable book."' — The Sunday Si hool Times.
"This new book on the blackboard is beautifully Rotten up and most at-
tractive. Much of the matter that deals with the principles of teaching is
first class."— Rev. A . F. Sthaujfler, D.D.
THE BLACKBOARD CLASS
FOR PRIMARY SUNDAY-
SCHOOL TEACHERS
By Florence If. Darnell
Price, 25 cents, postpaid
The purpose of this little book is to aid those teachers who desire to illus-
trate their work, and yet feel that they have n t the ability to draw. Believ-
ing that " the power to draw is innate in every one." the author has prepared
a series of lessons which develop this ability by easy stages The lessons
begin with simple drills in straight lines anrt' circles. Cradually thev prow
more difficult, until the pupil who has practised faithfully is abieto draw any
ordinary picture.
The Twenty-third Psalm, the Parable of the Sower, and other special il-
lustrations are carefully taught.
" By easy and gradual steps the learner is shown how to use the cravon,
thus gaining, by daily practice, skill in simple illustration of the lesson. This
little book is suggestive not only to primary teachers, but helpful to mothers
who seek to interest the children at home." — flte Sunday SJtool World.
" I would say that Miss Darnell's experience in giving directions f< r b'ack-
boards to Sunday school Primary Teachers has enabled her to make a most
practicable book for all teachers. It is just such a book as Primarv Sunday-
school Teachers desire to have and greatly need." — Mrs. Wilbur F. Crafts.
W. A. WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON AND CHICAGO
" rT VIY i
CALIFORNIA LTf
GENERAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA— BERKELEY
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