Far above concordance, Bible index, Bible dictionary, commentary, I count the monotessaron the very best help to Bible study. The monotessaron, it might be parenthetically remarked for the benefit of the lexicon-lazy folk, is a harmony of the four Gospels, so arranged as to make one continuous and complete story, in Scripture words alone.
"Fie!" says one reviewer of a recent monotessaron, "we have no use for such compilations. God gave us the gospel in four separate books. He could have put it in one if it had been best that way." This is an argument which would make a heretic of the locomotive, printing-press, and any other rearrangement of God-given matter. Having the four Gospels, we may have one. If God had given us only one, we could not have the four.
Christians will always read the four separate Gospels, in order to see Christ from four separate points of view, through four separate individualities, thattheir differences as well as their agreements may make the picture stand out more vividly, much as the two diverse flat portions of a stereoscope view combine into perfect perspective and reality.
But this combining is necessary; and it may be truly said that what we lose, in reading the monotessaron, of the personality of John or Luke, we more than gain in the increased vividness of the person of Christ. Speaking for one, I may say that through my first acquaintance with a monotessaron that matchless life has shone upon me with an entire splendor of beauty and majesty before unimagined.
Never before was the life a whole, like Washington's or Lincoln's. The imprisonment of John was an event in the fourteenth chapter of one Gospel, the sixth of another, the third of the rest; the call of Matthew now in the ninth chapter, now the second, now the fifth; the parable of the sower in the thirteenth, fourth, and eighth chapters. Nothing was in a clear, definite relation to the single life. The talk with Nicodemus is now no longer to me an event of John 3, but of the beginning of the first year of Christ's ministry, at the Passover. No longer would I be puzzled to tell which came first, the healing of the nobleman's son of John 4, or the stilling of the tempest of Mark 4, but place the last a year later.
Not only has the narrative become clear and orderly, not only has the wonderful history parted itself into the true and helpful time-divisions so diverse from the confusing chapters, but the placesnow stand out, and journeys are distinct. Take any diatessaron—that is, any parallel arrangement of the four Gospels—and note the wide blanks in each book, filled out by others, so that between contiguous verses of one Gospel must be inserted whole chapters of another, complete journeys, many deeds and sayings, the location in the meantime greatly changing. A geologist will think of the helpful triumph of taking from the full rock record here to fill out the unconformable strata there, until a geological column is built up.
A further inestimable advantage is the appreciation of surroundings. What light is cast, for example, on the story of Lazarus in John by its insertion in Luke! The contact of these parted elements of the gospel story sometimes rouses a current of thrilling thoughts, making a veritable electric battery of the monotessaron.
Still another priceless gain is an understanding of proportions. Matthew's parallels, Mark's deeds, Luke's miracles and parables, John's sermons—in reading any of the four Gospels peculiar elements come into prominence, and we are left with no idea of the relative proportion of these elements in the one life. What emphasis did Christ place on the doctrinal, and what on the practical? Just how much of his teaching concerned himself and his character? What space in the New Testament is occupied by miracles? Just what part of Christ's preaching was parabolic? What is the prominence of missionary effort and proselytism? How much is there of consolation,and how much of stern rebuke? What measure of promise? What quantum of theology? What share of ethics?
These and scores of other questions which occur at once to every Christian thinker, the monotessaron makes possible of easy and rapid answer. Indeed, almost its chief advantage is the spur it affords to the spirit of investigation. Those who are statistically inclined can even get at precise ratios by the exact process of counting lines.
Well, that is my experience of the value of a monotessaron. It has given the life and person of Christ marvelous vividness, setting facts in their due order, location, relations, and proportions, while the facility it affords is constant inspiration to fresh, delightful study. This is the experience of thousands, and yet I am sure that among the readers of this book will be many who are yet unacquainted with this Bible help. Not only every Sunday-school teacher, but every Bible scholar, should own one.
The single year in which I wrote this chapter saw the publication, in quick succession, of four of these monotessarons, one the improved edition of an older work. Each of these four has its peculiar features of value, and I have compared them carefully to get at their characteristics.
1. "The Interwoven Gospels." Rev. William Pittenger. (5 × 7½ inches, pp. 245. New York: John B. Alden. Price, 90 cents.) Five plates give clearly the various journeys. The Gospel fullest in each event is taken as the standard, and itsverse-numberings given, while sentences and phrases interwoven from other Gospels are preceded by an inconspicuous letter, to designate the book from which they come. This seems to me the ideal plan. There is a table for finding in the monotessaron any verse of any Gospel. There is a very distinct synopsis. The time is indicated only at the heads of the five divisions of the story. The place is given at the head of each one of the one hundred and seventy-one sections. The index is scant. The typography is excellent. The American Revised Version is used.2. "The Gospel Commentary." J. R. Gilmore ("Edmund Kirke") and Lyman Abbott, D.D. (5 × 7 inches, pp. 840. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert. Price, $1.50.) This monotessaron is combined with an excellent and very full commentary, selected from the works of three hundred authors. These multitudinous notes somewhat mar the impression of unity and continuity for which the monotessaron is peculiarly valued. No maps. Information as to sources of the combined text is given only by references at the top of the page—an indefinite way. There is a table for finding in the monotessaron any verse of any Gospel. There is a chronological synopsis, but no diatessaron table. There is a good index of thirty-two pages, and a marginal synopsis. The time is minutely indicated at the head of each page, and the locations shown irregularly, in notes, chapter headings, or marginal synopsis. There are forty-three chapters. The typography is clear. The King James Version is mainly used.3. "The Fourfold Gospel." J. G. Butler, D.D. (5 × 7½ inches, pp. 212. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Price, 75 cents.) This is taken from Butler's "Bible Work." The sources of the text and transitions are indicated as in Pittenger's, but not quite so minutely. Places are given at the head of the one hundred and sixty-six sections. Times not shown. A good diatessaron synopsis, and a table to find in the monotessaron any verse from any Gospel. Two sketch-maps. No index whatever. King James Version.4. "The One Gospel." A. T. Pierson, D.D. (5 × 7½ inches, pp. 203. New York: The Baker & Taylor Company. Price, 75 cents.) This monotessaron contains the gospel story in forty-seven sections, with no section headings, and no indications whatever of times, places, or sources of the various portions of the text. Valuable for reading, but unsatisfactory for study. A capital index. No table for finding verses, no synopsis or maps. King James Version. Retains more than the others nearly equivalent words and phrases.
1. "The Interwoven Gospels." Rev. William Pittenger. (5 × 7½ inches, pp. 245. New York: John B. Alden. Price, 90 cents.) Five plates give clearly the various journeys. The Gospel fullest in each event is taken as the standard, and itsverse-numberings given, while sentences and phrases interwoven from other Gospels are preceded by an inconspicuous letter, to designate the book from which they come. This seems to me the ideal plan. There is a table for finding in the monotessaron any verse of any Gospel. There is a very distinct synopsis. The time is indicated only at the heads of the five divisions of the story. The place is given at the head of each one of the one hundred and seventy-one sections. The index is scant. The typography is excellent. The American Revised Version is used.
2. "The Gospel Commentary." J. R. Gilmore ("Edmund Kirke") and Lyman Abbott, D.D. (5 × 7 inches, pp. 840. New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert. Price, $1.50.) This monotessaron is combined with an excellent and very full commentary, selected from the works of three hundred authors. These multitudinous notes somewhat mar the impression of unity and continuity for which the monotessaron is peculiarly valued. No maps. Information as to sources of the combined text is given only by references at the top of the page—an indefinite way. There is a table for finding in the monotessaron any verse of any Gospel. There is a chronological synopsis, but no diatessaron table. There is a good index of thirty-two pages, and a marginal synopsis. The time is minutely indicated at the head of each page, and the locations shown irregularly, in notes, chapter headings, or marginal synopsis. There are forty-three chapters. The typography is clear. The King James Version is mainly used.
3. "The Fourfold Gospel." J. G. Butler, D.D. (5 × 7½ inches, pp. 212. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Price, 75 cents.) This is taken from Butler's "Bible Work." The sources of the text and transitions are indicated as in Pittenger's, but not quite so minutely. Places are given at the head of the one hundred and sixty-six sections. Times not shown. A good diatessaron synopsis, and a table to find in the monotessaron any verse from any Gospel. Two sketch-maps. No index whatever. King James Version.
4. "The One Gospel." A. T. Pierson, D.D. (5 × 7½ inches, pp. 203. New York: The Baker & Taylor Company. Price, 75 cents.) This monotessaron contains the gospel story in forty-seven sections, with no section headings, and no indications whatever of times, places, or sources of the various portions of the text. Valuable for reading, but unsatisfactory for study. A capital index. No table for finding verses, no synopsis or maps. King James Version. Retains more than the others nearly equivalent words and phrases.
Each of these excellent compilations has its own field, and the student who can afford the luxury will rejoice in them all. Happy times in which we live, wherein the person of Christ is brought with such clearness and fullness and beauty as never before to the poorest and busiest and most unlearned!
I was once sergeant of a college military company that was being trained by an officer of the regular army from the nearest barracks. In one evolution it was made my duty to march at the head of a long column, shouting at the top of my voice: "Hep—hep—hep—hep!" This was to give the time; we had no drum. I conscientiously obeyed orders and strutted off, shouting the required "Hep—hep—hep—hep!" But alas! at a critical turn, thinking more of my glory than of my duty, I marched to the right, while the column, more heedful, turned off to the left. So there I was, a long, lank figure, strutting off by myself over the field, shouting "Hep—hep—hep!" How many times since, when standing before inattentive classes, have I repeated that mortifying performance, less obviously, but none the less really!
How often teachers are bent on planning what they are to say and how they are to say it, but omit to consider how they may induce people to attend to it;just as if (to change the figure) a locomotive engineer should polish and oil his engine and turn on full steam, but forget the little coupling-pin that hitches the engine to the train! It is a very little thing, this coupling-pin of attention, and often the teacher goes puffing a long way before he perceives that it is left out; and it is a great humiliation, as well as a great loss of time and steam, to go back and hitch on.
The first thing to be considered, if we would win attention, is the room. Poor janitors spoil more Sunday-schools than poor teachers. You remember how the Peterkins tried to take their drive, shaking the reins, clucking at the stationary horse, whipping and coaxing him by turns, and all in vain until the lady from Philadelphiaunhitchedthe obstinate beast. We make Peterkins of ourselves every time we try to take an intellectual journey with our pupils when they are tied down by hot air, poor ventilation, uncomfortable seats, and surrounding noise and bustle. All our pedagogical ingenuity will fight in vain against the fiendish ingenuity of a bad janitor.
Having made it possible for the children to pay any attention at all, the next thing is to get it. Attention has something to do with tension. Now it takes two to stretch a cord, and there are two parties to every act of attention. How about the second party in this case—the children?
Imprimis, when you appear before the children, leap at once into your theme. Older folks rather like to doze along through the preliminaries of a speech,economically saving their enthusiasm for the end, if not for next time; but the attention of children is lost or won for good by the opening sentences. Our sharp boys and girls discover very quickly whether a veteran or a raw recruit is calling "Attention!"
There are some beginnings which are sure to offend them. There is the bagpipe beginning—the long, droning prelude, which advertises a teacher set out on a mud-turtle to catch these lively colts. There is the jack-in-the-box prelude: "Eh! Now, children! What's lesson 'bout? Quick!" There is the crape-dirge beginning, which solemnly hopes the children have studied their lesson and will recite better than they did last Sunday. There is the plead-guilty beginning: "You'll have to teach me to-day, children. I've been unable to look at the lesson."
But it is by no means easy to give affirmative rules. The best of beginnings, if stereotyped, becomes inefficient. No general can plan a campaign in advance. And yet a general must understand the art of war, and a teacher must study his tactics.
In the first place, attention is won partly by position and attitude. Happy the teacher whose class is a semicircle, himself at the center! And luckless the teacher whose class, fixed on straight, fastened pews, sees past him the distracting background of a crowded, bustling school! He struggles against strong odds.
But whatever may be the position of the class, any one can see that his own attitude shall command attention. Let him be straight, alert, confident, quiet—notflabby, nervous, and diffident. Let his face and voice and bearing expect attention, and he will get it.
The opening sentences must be businesslike. There must be no indecision, no "puttering." The teacher must leap at once to that hand-to-hand combat with the theme which tells his scholars that there's purpose in it. The opening sentences may sometimes best catch the class by directly addressing one person in it, the most restless, indifferent one, and nailinghim.
A paradox is good to begin with, some statement of the lesson theme so startling as to spur to discussion, possibly to opposition. Then the next Sunday, perhaps a quiet picture of the historical setting of the story, or a description of the landscape surrounding the event, or a compact review of the last lesson. Then the next day you might begin with a bit of personal experience bearing on the matter in hand. Nothing wins attention better than the first person singular. Or your introduction might be a whiff of fun, for which the youngsters are so eager that the most witless piece of jollity, if it spring from a merry heart, is certain to reach theirs.
You are sure of their attention if you can get them to do something for you—open their Bibles, repeat something in concert, find a verse, or look at something. For this purpose maps, diagrams, pictures, all material objects connected with the lesson, are invaluable. Scholars yield their wills to yours through theirhands or their eyes more readily than through their ears.
And none of this must be done with manifest purpose. Surely in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird. Woe to the teacher who shouts the word "Attention!" He will get nothing but the echo of the word from stony cliffs of indifference.
And finally, woe to the teacher who relies at bottom on any skill of his own to draw young hearts to his teaching; whose main dependence is anything but the attention-winning power of that incarnate Sympathy and Love who promised to draw all men—and children—to himself.
We are likely to think that the attention of children is hard to get; but the very opposite is true. The minds of children, like their tongues, are hung in the middle. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn them in any direction. No teacher need spend much force on his introduction. Merely appear and begin to talk—that is enough. A fresh voice and presence and a new theme will draw all eyes and all hearts. If grown people are your audience, the situation is somewhat reversed. They are the heavy weights—hard to move, but just as hard to stop. An attention-forcing prelude will hold them attentive to a good half-hour of platitudes.
The teacher of children, however, flattered by the eager listening given at the start, is likely to relax his efforts and deem the crown of the children's interest already attained. But alas! soon here a little tot wriggles, and there another whispers, and yonder a third giggles, and now a fourth turns around to seewhat's up, and the teacher might as well be talking to a school of young fishes.
Demosthenes once said that if whatever a man got he took care to keep, he was grateful to the gods; but if he spent it, he spent with it all his gratitude. How many teachers are so prodigal of the attention given at the beginning that toward the close, dismayed at the listlessness, they forget ungratefully their initial capital of bright eyes and eager ears! There are many ways of squandering this attention capital. We may waste it on those long exhortations so very valuable (when omitted), on side issues, on quibbles. We may choke it with dullness, drive it off with scolding.
The only way always to keep attention is always to be expecting to lose it. Be prompt to note signs of its vanishing in drooping eyelids, wandering gaze, jerking in the seat, uncertain answers. The teacher whose ingenuity can always recall stray-away minds need fear few other recitation problems. How to do it?
The best provocative of attention is variety. The skilled teacher brings as many suits of manner to the class as the bulkiest clown wears costumes to the circus. Before one suit becomes wearisome he strips it off, and presto! a fresh teacher before the wide-eyed children. If he has been sitting, he rises; if erect, he leans eagerly forward. His utterance becomes rapid from slow, impetuous from drawling. He darts from generalizations into personalities. If motionless before,he begins to gesticulate. This is acting? No. It is only doing what the facile children themselves do on their kaleidoscopic playground, where no one goes to sleep.
Again, a teacher must learn to emphasize his important points, not by enlarging on them, but by reverting to them. Slight impression on a wall by holding a battering-ram against it! Nor can you impress a child's mind by holding a fact up against it. It is intervals which make blows possible.
So the child will attend to two things or three better than to one. Concentrate on one matter, burning-glass fashion, but only while the sun of interest is shining. With the first mist of indifference the wise teacher will drop the burning-glass. More teachers fail from having too few points to make than from having too many.
But to retain attention, you need less to multiply points than points of view. A teacher can usually fix the attention of his class upon one subject while using in succession six different methods of treatment. Passing swiftly from questioning to formulating principles and illustrating them, from Bible quotations to personal experiences and exhortations, he will hold his audience delighted, though a single method would have wearied it. Note how a skilled cook presents the Thanksgiving turkey on different days. It is a lordly brown biped, a plateful of nice slices, a salad, a pot-pie, hash. Teachers will be able to hold theyoungsters' attention as well as cooks, if they learn thus to put things in different lights.
Furthermore, let it be remembered that no one was ever dignified with a child, and won its attention. And some teachers are too staid to be useful. Startle into inattention by a smart slap of the hands together, sharp extension of the finger, abrupt turns upon the floor. Preachers use such artifices when pews grow somnolent, and why not teachers? Never forget that the slightest inanimate object wins attention better than the greatest animation of the teacher. A pencil-tablet will rivet all eyes. A finger laid upon a map is cynosure for the most fidgety scholars. If you have a picture which can be brought into connection with the lesson, it is a pedagogical sin to omit it. A chart is as necessary to the Sabbath-school teacher as to the sailor, albeit the teacher's is best home-made. I used to hesitate to take time to use such helps; but I found that the poorest picture did better work than my most vivid word-paintings, and that my clearest statement was inefficient beside the clumsiest diagram.
The beginner in this fine art of attention-holding is likely to derive the word "attention" thus: fromteneo, "I hold,"ad, "on to";attention, "I hold on to" him. He tries to hold attention, therefore, by main strength. He grapples with his audience as a bulldog would. His nerves are tense. His voice is imperative. His eye glares. He is rapid, impetuous, strategic. This is power, he thinks, and this is skill;but his audience astonishes him by going to sleep. Abashed, he tries milder means of holding on to them. He begins to buttonhole his audience. He uses soft and flattering tones. He coaxes. He wheedles. He jokes. He chucks them under the chin. And then his audience gets up and goes out.
The real meaning of the word "attention" contains an invaluable hint for all who are trying to win others by speaking or teaching. It isteneo, "I hold, I stretch,"ad, "toward"; and it is not by any means applied to the speaker, but to the listener. To get your audience, whether of little folk or big folk, to stretch out toward the same goal of truth that you are seeking is the true art of winning attention.
This understanding of the matter implies that the teacher also is really in pursuit of truth himself. The failure of much teaching is because it cries "Go on" instead of "Come on." The speaker that you follow with most difficulty is the speaker who has the air of "knowing it all," while the speaker who succeeds best in holding your attention gives you the impression of a chase.
There's the game before you—that elusive truth slipping away through the thicket yonder. The huntsman's eye flashes. He whistles up the dogs. We all leap to the saddles. Off we go, over upland and vale, swamp and rock, fence and ditch, our leader far in the van, pointing here, waving there, and hallooing the huntsman on. And when the game is tracked down, and our leader stands above it, drippingknife in hand, our veins tingle with his, and we shout with delight at our triumph.
This is the first principle in the art of winning attention. The speaker must give the impression of a truth-seeker, if he would win others to seek truth with him. What Edward Everett Hale once said of a sermon applies to this. Every Sunday-school lesson should start out to prove something. It should have some goal. It shouldintendsomething.Intentionmust precedeattention.
But though there must be this element of pleasing uncertainty and suspense, we all have difficulty in attending to a speaker who does not appear to have himself well in hand or to be quite sure what he is about. Have you not caught yourselves, teachers, talking as if in your sleep? Have you not sometimes waked up at the end of a sentence, a question, or a harangue, and wondered what you had been talking about? Did you suppose that any one else knew? Did you expect to hold on to them when you had no grasp of the subject? Can listeners pay attention to any one who does not pay attention to himself?
Teachers make the mistake of dividing attention between the class, to watch that they hear; and themselves, to see how they are getting along; and the little attention left goes to the theme. Not unnaturally, the attention of the class is divided in the same way—much to themselves, less to the teacher, and least of all to what is being taught. Of course it is a teacher's business to hold his scholars' attention, but he willnever do it by worrying and wondering whether he is succeeding.
Nay, I even go so far as to say, if one of your pupils pays no attention, then pay no attention to him, provided the mischief is not spreading. A teacher should not fritter away his attention on inattentive pupils. If he cannot win their attention by his own interest in his theme, he cannot win it at all. Not that I would imply for a moment, however, that the teacher is to rest satisfied while a single one of his pupils remains inattentive. If your chicks are average chicks they are gregarious, and one stray-away is enough to carry the whole flock with him into foreign parts. While you have a single inattentive scholar you should conduct your lesson with a view to holding him. You will hold the rest then, as a matter of course. I am only speaking of the best way to win attention. It must be won, or you are beaten to some extent; and the attention of allwillbe won in the end if you are deeply enough in earnest yourself, if you do not allow your attention to be side-tracked by the inattention of a few. If you wish to win and hold the attention of others,win and hold your own.
Ever since Socrates, conversation has been the soul of teaching, and ever since Adam and Eve the question has been the life of conversation. A teacher's success depends, in about equal measure, upon inspiration, cogitation, and interrogation. Let the first be the great gravitative forces; let the second provide the truth, the liquid; then the interrogation-point is the curved siphon, which transfers from the full to the empty vessel!
Many, many a teacher has failed, thinking himself not wise enough, or not energetic enough, while in reality he has simply failed to be wisely and energetically quizzical.
But what is a question? Is it not a fish-hook for pulling out, rather than a siphon for putting in? Yes, later; but you cannot fish successfully in a dry pond. Any bungler can examine and test. The nice art is to use your interrogation-points as instruments of addition, rather than of subtraction.
But why is it often better to insinuate instruction through a question, in preference to pouring by direct harangue? Well, does not a question imply community of interest, and hint at equality or similarity of attainment? The question is neighborly; the discourse mounts a platform.
The helpful lesson commentaries fail, practically, to reach many a class, because its teacher in reading has failed to translate from the declarative into the interrogative. If Doctor Somebody writes tersely, "A sin that is born of your own will is tenfold more dangerous to you than your own sin that is born of your neighbor's will," Johnny will not get the point unless the teacher transforms it somewhat thus: "If you are out in the country all alone, Johnny, jump over a fence, steal a pocketful of apples, is that a sin just as much as if some other boy should be along and persuade you to do it? Yes? Well, now, which sin is the more dangerous to you?"
So important does this seem to me that I always carry pencil and paper to the perusal of my lesson helps, and write out, as a point pleases me, the form in which I wish to bring it up in the class, ranging these questions under the numbers of the verses to which they apply.
The teacher who does not write out his questions, or do the equivalent of that work, is as sure to be defeated as the general who fights without a plan of campaign.
Should those questions be read in the class? Notunless your ideal of teaching is the company drill, instead of the conversation.
It is well, however, to ask the scholars to write out questions for you on verses assigned, and read these questions before the class. The teacher's work is grandly accomplished when he has induced the scholar to ask his own questions, and work out his own answers.
I often find that a general call for questions on some apparently exhausted topic brings the richest results of the half-hour.
Few verses are completely treated without Lyman Beecher's "snapper,"—the appeal to experience. The question, "Is it I?" must be raised, no matter by how direct urgings, in every heart. That question is truth's barb.
There is a questioning face and attitude, indicative of a real and personal interest in the thing considered, without which a question will always fall dead, and deservedly.
Nor, on the contrary, will a live manner avail to foist upon the attention of a class a dead question. And a question is "dead" to your scholar which does not touch his own world of interest at some point, no matter how close connection it may have with your life and experience.
The questions on the lesson leaves make a good aid in study, but do most pitiably convict a teacher of unfaithfulness if he use them in teaching.
Most genuine of all questions, and most likely tobe helpful, are the doubts, perplexities, and difficulties which attend a thoughtful teacher's first careful reading of the text itself. Then is the time when the cream of that lesson should rise.
Leading questions are always better than harangue, and are not to be despised, on a pinch. See what use Socrates made of them! And, by the way, modern teachers could learn much as to methods from the dialogues of that old pagan.
By all means we must learn to link our questions, naturally developing one from the other. Read a page of miscellaneous proverbs, and you will carry away from it the same bewildered brain much Sunday-school sharp-shooting produces. Use the solid phalanx!
Infinite harm is done our teaching by "questioning down." Do you know how tiresome it is to talk to a man up in a third-story window, you in the street? Our "level-best" teaching must be on a level.
The novice at questioning, when first he becomes well satisfied with himself in this line, will probably be making his chief mistake,—will have hit upon an interrogative phraseology in which his thoughts run easily, which he uses incessantly. The artful questioner will rack his brains to the utmost stretch of ingenuity to devise striking and novel ways of quizzing, to hold the restless young minds.
Of course, no skilled questioner will take the class in order. Of course, he will name the person who is to answer, at the end, and not at the beginning, of hisquestion. Of course, he will understand the use of long and attention-holding questions, interspersed with short, quick, attention-exciting questions. Of course, he will be ready with a varying form of the question if he has to repeat it, lest the class fail to listen the second time. Of course, he will train himself to become ready with a "catch" question,—a question with a quirk in it, to punish mildly the inattentive. Of course, he will know when the class needs unifying by the general question addressed to all, and when the subject needs unifying by the general question reviewing all. And, of course, he will have learned that the best teacher of this, as of all arts, is He whose boyish questions in the temple grew to such mighty answers that no man thereafter dared question him, save only his true disciples.
If I were asked to name the chief fault of the average teacher, I should say, "Asking questions that can be answered by 'Yes' and 'No.'" Among my acquaintances was once a teacher in a secular school whose method of questioning was invariably this. He would have before him the statements of the text-book, copied out with painstaking care, and would develop the subject thus: "Is it true or is it not true, Mr. A——, that"—and here would follow the statement or definition of the text-book. The ambiguous answer, "Yes," was amply satisfactory. Unfortunately, when such teachers gain a foothold in the Sunday-school, they are not so easily dismissed as from secular establishments.
Now, a good question merely furnishes the starting-point, and pushes the scholar out along the course toward some goal of truth; but in a question that can be answered by "Yes" or "No" the teacher himself ambles amiably up the track, and condescendinglyallows the scholar's monosyllable to pat him on the head after he himself has reached the goal. A question that can be answered by "Yes" or "No" merely formulates the truth as it exists in the teacher's mind, and invites the scholar's assent to it; a good question, on the contrary, provokes the scholar to formulate truth for himself.
Now, it is much easier to express what we see to be true than to get any one else to express original thought. There is also, to the unwise, more glory in laying down principles to which others must agree than in getting others to lay down principles to which we must agree. It will always be true, therefore, that the lazy and the pompous will have no aim beyond educing monosyllabic answers. Most teachers, however, are earnestly desirous of the best, but do not know how to frame wise questions. What must be said to them?
First, that they must not go to school before their scholars. Expert questioning is not learned in the class-room, but in the study. A lead-pencil is the best teacher. A sheet of paper is the best drill-ground. As I have urged before: Let the Sunday-school worker who aspires to the high praise of a good questioner sit down persistently, after studying the lesson, and write out a set of questions. Nay; on each point, so far as he has time, let him write several questions, criticise them, fancy what kind of answer each will be likely to elicit from the scholar, and choose what appears the best question. Tryit on the class, and learn valuable lessons from the result.
This method, laborious as it is, must be kept up until skilful questioning has become instinctive. That there may be hope of this happy result, by the way, the written questions must never be used in the class,—only the memory of them, and the drill the preparation has given. It surely will happen, sooner or later, that the careful student of practical pedagogics will be able to get along without writing, merely formulating fit questions in his mind as he studies the lesson. After a time he may dispense even with this, and look simply after the points to be presented, trusting to extemporaneous question-making.
Not wholly, however. The best questioner in the world gets into ruts. The best forms of questions ever invented are worse than the worst if they are used with dull reiteration. No one can devote careful attention to the form of his questions without falling in love with some particular way of questioning; and this will not always be the best way, but will probably be the most original way. A form of question that is irreproachable the first time will be unendurable used six times in succession. It is necessary, then, even for the trained questioner, to revert now and then to his old lead-pencil drill, in order to study variety.
But how may the uninitiated know a good question when they see it, or make it? As said already, it must not be such that a lazy monosyllable may answerit. As said already, too, if one is in doubt, he has but to try it on the class, and note results. But further. A good question will be likely to have something piquant about it, if the subject admits. For instance, "James was killed, Peter was freed; why was that?" is better than saying, "How do you account for the fact that while the apostle James was beheaded, the apostle Peter was delivered from the hands of his persecutors?"
Furthermore, the difference between a poor question and a good one may often be a mere matter of length. "Why did the Christians at Antioch keep the inferior leaders for work in the city, but send away the most prominent men in their church to labor as missionaries?" That is abominable; it should be, "Why did the Antioch Christians send away their best men?"
A good question will contain as much as possible of the personal element. "What do you understand by the phrase 'remission of sins'?" is much better than "What is the significance of the phrase 'remission of sins'?" Because the personal question puts the expected answer in a more modest light, the answer will be more unconstrained and full.
And, by the way, there are few forms of questions more zealously to be avoided than the form I have just used, "What do you understand by—?" It is the unfailing resource of the poor questioner. A verse will be read, a phrase quoted, a doctrine or a principle named, and then will follow, as the nightthe day, the tiresome old formula, "What do you understand by this, Miss A——?" One would be quite safe in declaring, at any particular instant during common Sunday-school hours, that one-fourth of the Sunday-school teachers of the world were repeating, with united breath, that Methuselah of a query, "What do you understand by this?"
Again, a good question must be swift. It must come so quickly that there will be no time to get out of the way. Some questions that, if written out, would not be bad, are prolonged in the utterance of over-deliberate teachers like foggy illustrations of the law of perspective. Good questions leap. You feel their buoyancy as you read them or hear them. It is like the huntsman springing into the saddle and shouting, "Come on!" No one with an atom of thoughtfulness is dull to the exhilaration of spirited questions. They have inspired all the wise thinking of the world.
And, finally, good questions should be absolutely clear. There is one thing in the world that must always be faultlessly perspicuous and distinct, and that is a marching order in time of battle. Now, questions are the marching orders of our scholars' brain regiments, in a battle of infinite moment. Let them ring clearly as ever bugle-call was sounded. Questions mumbled, hesitant, caught up and patched over, confused and slovenly,—what wonder if these get slow and mumbled answers? A question clearly put, not only proves that the questioner has clearideas, but it wondrously clarifies the ideas of the answerer.
Good questions, then, are thought-compelling, varied, short, personal, piquant, unhackneyed, brisk, and clear. Do I ask too much? Nothing that all may not acquire, if but a tithe of the zeal and labor claimed by the trivialities of a few years are spent upon these issues of eternity. Let every teacher consider what characteristics of a good questioner he may add to his pedagogical outfit.
I use this title advisedly, because I believe that it requires more genuine inspiration to lead the average scholar to ask questions than to perform any other part of the teacher's difficult task. How easy to ask our own questions, to put in our own answers in order to draw them out again, were that all of it! But to transform the passive into the active, the auditor into the investigator, the questioned into the questioner, that is the goal of the true teacher's endeavor.
Shall we count a recitation successful when the teacher has been earnest and zealous in his inquisition, the scholars ready and full in their responses? A single question, borne, it may be, on a voice so timid that it is scarcely audible in the buzzing room, yet sprung from some young heart just moved with the sudden desire of truth, is worth all the rest.
If the teacher wishes to carry his scholars beyond the parasite stage, which is just as dangerous intellectually as physically, both to the parasite and its supporter,he must learn first that this weaning comes not without thoughtfulness and design. He must learn that, even more carefully than he plans the questions he is to ask his scholars, he must plan to inspire them to ask questions themselves. He will be most successful if, from the many matters which could be brought up in the lesson, he selects two or three of prime importance, and schemes to elicit the questioning enthusiasm of his class along those few lines. But how to do it?
In the first place, the teacher must be a questioner himself. An old hen can hardly teach the eagle's brood to fly. Do not hesitate to tell your scholars of the doubts you once had, and how you won certainty from them. Show them by example that doubt is never a thing to be afraid of or ashamed of, unless it be a lazy doubt, viciously pleased with its own fog.
Then there is a question-inspiring face and attitude. If the teacher assumes the manner pontific and speaksex cathedra, and has the air of one who says the ultimate word, he will smother every question. A sympathetic, open face, and the hearty spirit of good-fellowship, are the best invitations to inquiries.
Nor must the teacher be in a hurry, hastening from verse to verse with the nervous dispatch of an auctioneer. How many times must even a wise man look at a beetle, and how long, before he is moved to ask a wise question concerning it? Don't we sometimes make the recitation a mere exhibition of shooting-stars?
Then, too, be on the watch for questions. How far ahead can you see a question coming? Before the scholar has made up his mind to ask it, if you have seeing eyes. An almost imperceptible quiver of the lips: "Question, Thomas?" Eyes suddenly wider: "What were you about to ask, Mary?" Forehead wrinkled: "Anything to say on that point, Edward?"
And if the question is a good one, why, "A capital question, Thomas!" "I hoped that some one would ask that, Mary!" A good question is more to be praised than a good answer, because it is rarer and more original; but does it always receive our hearty commendation?
Though the question leads you far out of your way, turn aside for it as gladly as you would turn from the road to pick up a diamond. Though you must leave the climax of the lesson unreached, see in this the climax. Though you are in full harangue, eagerly showing forth some great truth, stop short at once. A question in hand is worth a whole system of theology in the bush.
And even if the question be trivial, or pointless, or utterly irrelevant, in anticipation of other possible questions, this one is not to be scornfully or slightingly waved aside. Don't kill the goose that lays golden eggs when she chances to lay one of pewter!
Half-statements, when shrewdly managed, will often elicit questions. "Yes, God was terribly angry with the Jews,—terribly. Think how powerful Godis, and how awful his anger must be! You want to ask something, Billy? Whether it is right for God to be angry? Well, I am glad you asked that, because I want to tell you the difference between his anger and ours."
An over-statement will often draw out the longed-for inquiry. "When John urged every one with two coats to give one to some person who had no coat, what did he mean but this,—that, as long as any one in the world is poor, those who have more than they need ought to keep giving to those who have less than they need? I see that you have a word for us, Lizzie. What is it? How about the lazy people and the bad men? I hoped some one would bring up that point!"
And when your half-statement or over-statement is accepted without remonstrance by your scholars, a little jolly scolding as you make the correction yourself, and a warning that they must do better thinking the next time, will work wonders.
Sometimes the best plan is a direct call. "What do you think about that statement, now? Haven't you some question to ask about it? Don't you want to know something more about it?" If not a question follows, at least the scholars will know that you are expecting them to originate lines of thought and inquiry; and that is one thing gained.
This question is sometimes asked: "What modern teacher is so successful as Socrates, who made his scholars teachers in their turn?" The questiontouches a fundamental truth in pedagogics,—that the teacher's goal is the scholar's independence of the teacher. By brave example of sturdy thought, by sympathetic insight into the doubts and needs of the opening mind, by enthusiasm and winning tact, let us strive in this direction, as in all others, to be worthy followers of Him who made of his disciples teachers at whose feet the great Greek himself would have been glad to sit.
The hard-working Sunday-school teacher picks up his cartridge, proudly carries it to the desired destination, and there explodes it. The shrewd Sunday-school teacher uses the scholar as a rifle, and simply pulls the trigger. Some teachers, that is, consider themselves as big guns. Other and better teachers seek to make practical working guns of their scholars. Between the two styles of teaching there is this difference, that the trigger-teaching usually hits the mark, while the big-gun teacher finds that the mark, if it is a live one, has taken itself out of the way by the time he has carried the cartridge to it.
In big-gun teaching the teacher does everything for the scholar; in trigger-teaching the teacher does nothing for the scholar that he can help. In big-gun teaching the teacher thinks; in trigger-teaching the teacher thinks how to get his scholars to think. Big-gun teaching parades; trigger-teaching stays in the tent and issues orders. Big-gun teaching is amusing;trigger-teaching is suggestive. Big-gun teaching develops the teacher; trigger-teaching develops the scholar. The teacher's true work is to educate, and "educate" means "to draw out," and not "to carry to."
"Oh! our scholars are not loaded," I hear many teachers object. "If we should pull the trigger, there would follow only a ridiculous click."
But your scholarsareloaded, objectors. Though they may not be loaded with precisely the information you have been seeking from them, they are loaded with experiences,—all their short lives will hold. They are loaded with temptations and troubles and needs. They are loaded with questions and curiosity. They have information, too, any amount of it, that may be brought into suggestive connection with the lesson, if you know how to make shrewd use of their public-school history and geography and science.
To be sure, they probably know nothing definite about the time of the lesson's events, or the place, or the persons, or the circumstances. Well, make them load themselves. As you rehearse these facts concisely, make your scholars write them on slips of paper. Send one to the board, to set down what you dictate. Get one of their number to read aloud some brief and comprehensive summary of the lesson details. In one or all of these ways make them load themselves, and then—nothing is accomplished if you stop here—pull the trigger!
More than on any other thing save the help ofthe Holy Spirit, a teacher's success depends on the use he makes of the fact that his scholars are already loaded to some effective purpose; and the wise teacher will always ask himself, in the course of his preparation for the lesson, "What experiences of the members of my class will help them understand this lesson and its truths?" One has been sick lately. One is studying geology. One has a father who is a banker. One has just seen the Mammoth Cave.
If these things are to be likened to the bullets and shot, what is the powder? Must the teacher depend for that, too, largely on the pupil? Yes.
To be sure, much of the powder of successful teaching is the zeal and eagerness of the teacher himself. But his interest is a smokeless powder like the fulminating powder of the cap, whose value is solely to set fire to the powder of the scholar when the trigger is pulled. The scholar's interest, the scholar's powder, it is that must be relied upon to do the work, to carry the ball.
And so in trigger-teaching, much depends on the teacher's ability to excite curiosity and arouse interest. He will study his scholars' likings, and appeal to them in his illustrations; their needs, and refer to them in his applications. Sometimes he will state the matter too strongly, sometimes too feebly; in each case, with the express intention to draw out their protest. He will know how to use paradox so as to arouse, but not confuse. He will study different methods of emphasis, and will not use one alone. From eachlesson he will select one truth, and one only, which he will treat with all the ardor of a lawyer arguing a matter of life or death. Above all, he will remember that the Spirit alone quickeneth, and will earnestly pray that fire from heaven may be added to his own little fulminating cap.
But many a teacher, conscious of all that I have been saying, does not know how to pull the trigger. It is not so simple in the Sunday-school as in the school of the battalion. The artful teacher will find many ways of trigger-pulling, suited to the diverse and changing needs of his class and of his topic. Sometimes he will put in the scholars' hands paper and pencil, and set them to writing or drawing. Sometimes he will send them in turn to his blackboard. Sometimes he will elicit the entire story from one, sometimes from ten. Sometimes he will introduce pictures for them to talk about, or maps for them to travel over, or objects for them to group their words and thoughts around. Always, however, he will remember that his best trigger is the little trigger-shaped interrogation-point. He will ask questions himself with the effectiveness born of careful preparation. Better than that, he will get his scholars to ask questions. In all these ways, and as many more as there are Sundays in the year, the wise teacher will pull the trigger.
Let no one pass from big-gun teaching to trigger-teaching with the idea that the latter will prove the easier. It is far more difficult to make the cartridgethan to pick up and carry the ball which the cartridge would propel; but, for effective and profitable teaching, better ten minutes' work done by the class than an hour's work done by you in the presence of the class, even though to do the latter is far easier than to elicit the former.
If—as those who have been doing it all themselves will doubtless find it—this trigger-teaching comes especially hard at first, let them begin with getting their scholars to dosomethingat first hand, though only a little, and let them work their way slowly to the pedagogical perfection of getting their scholars to do everything.
And does any one fear that this will destroy the personality and personal influence of the teacher? On the contrary, the trigger-teacher has to put ten times more of himself into every lesson than the big-gun teacher. The scholars get more of his personality, at the same time that they are gloriously, though unconsciously, developing their own.
In his exceedingly suggestive book entitled "Before an Audience" Mr. Shepard insists strenuously on what he calls "physical earnestness" in a speaker. It is not meant by this that we are to go before our scholars with our nerves a-quiver, with headaches coming on, with our brains throbbing and our muscles drawn tight. A speaker must be, as Mr. Shepard insists, an animal galvanic battery on two legs. He must be at something corresponding to electric tension. He must be in earnest with his body, not lazy with it. No teacher who is not spirited will succeed with children, or with any one, long.
Nothing will more quickly win and permanently hold a child's attention than earnestness. Children's capacity for serious thinking is greatly undervalued. There is more philosophy in them than you dream of. They are very much in earnest themselves, and they rejoice to see other people very much in earnest.
I do not mean by this that one should always beserious with them. Nothing will gain their attention more than a joke; but joking with children is as dangerous as feeding them candy. They have no more taste henceforth for anything else, and to keep their attention you must continue to feed them candy and deal out jokes. The most successful teachers of children, judging not by the interest of the children so much as by permanent spiritual results, are those that are always deeply in earnest; and yet their earnestness is shot through and through with the sunshine.
The intensity I am advocating must not be the intensity of an auger, that bores. Oh, if teachers only knew enough not to teach too much! If one good idea is got into the heads of the children as the result of the lesson half-hour, then you have scored a victory. If you try to get in eight good ideas, you will not score one-eighth of a victory. Some teachers that I know want to get the whole body of theology and the entire system of ethics into each lesson. They skip with haste from truth to mighty truth, crowding into a lesson twenty weighty points, each one of which would be amply sufficient for the half-hour. The result is an impossibility of attention, for not enough is given about any one thing to fix it and hold it down.
Our Sunday-school teaching reminds me sometimes of a daily paper—all cut up into paragraphic articles; and if there is any topic of universal knowledge omitted, it will appear in the evening edition. A confirmed newspaper reader has become incapableof following an extended discussion, or of reading a book. I have stood before Sunday-school classes to which their teacher was in the habit of propounding a series of disconnected questions from a book or paper, and I have found it quite impossible to hold the attention of such classes for any length of time on one matter. They were anxious for another paragraph, for fresh head-lines, for a change of subject.
Most Sunday-school lessons are fruitful of multitudinous suggestions. Let us not teach so much that we teach nothing, or, worse than nothing, instruct in mental dissipation instead of mental concentration. We prepare for teaching with the lesson hour in view; we should rather have in view the hour following the lesson hour. What impression do we intend the lesson to make? How are we going to make the lesson stand out in relief?
I must now set off against the law of intensity the complementary law of motion. A mesmeric patient is sent into the hypnotic trance by continued staring at the same stationary object. This looks like perfect attention, but it results in sleep. There is a verbal hypnotism that is very common when teachers are trying to impress an idea by holding it up stolidly and persistently before the eyes of their scholars. That is not what I mean by intensity, and it is one of the commonest ways of destroying attention.
If you are anxious to impress a truth and yet hold attention, you must do it by presenting now this side of the truth and now that, now with parable and nowwith allegory, now with appeal and now with testimony, experience, quotation, objects. Arrived at the end, do not press the point against the scholars and stick it into them, but if they do not see it, go back and pass over the matter in a different way.
Moving bodies draw and hold the eye. Every one must look at a shooting star, a jumping horse, a running man, a flying bird, a rising kite. To keep attention, our lessons must have what the critics of novels call "movement." There is to be no still life in our pictures. Everything must be stirring, dramatic.
An accomplished teacher must have the power of painting word-pictures. It is not a difficult art. Hard study and zealous "putting yourself in his place" will accomplish it. Some way or other we must get the persons of the lesson clearly before our scholars' eyes, the scenes as if the scholars were surrounded by them, if we would maintain their attention. And even if the lesson is impersonal, we must dramatize it, we must invent situations and persons to illustrate the abstract thought, or we must draw illustrations from real history. These must all be real to us, or they will never be real to our scholars. Pictures always hold the attention of children. Let us remember this when we talk to them. Children are fond of motion. Let our teaching move briskly, then.
There are short-story writers who are able to hold our attention charmingly for an episode, and there are other minds which are able to lead us entranced through the varied scenes of a long serial. So also there is short-story Sunday-school teaching and serial Sunday-school teaching. Short-story teaching treats each lesson as a separate unit; serial teaching considers each lesson a part only of a great, united whole.
Short-story teaching is far easier than serial teaching. It is concerned with but one set of circumstances, persons, and principles. For the serial teacher, on the contrary, every lesson must include a review and a prospectus. He must learn to see things in their relations. He must have a good memory, and a better imagination, to make his memory buoyant. This is not easy; and therefore it is that short-story teaching is much commoner than serial teaching.
And yet serial teaching is the right kind of teaching,for the following reasons. Just as a fine serial story adds to the enthusiasm for good numbers of a periodical, and tides over poor numbers, so, if you can get up a serial interest in your teaching, it will increase the interest of the good days, and will tide over with full seats and bright eyes the rainy, or cold, or hot, or sleepy days.
Besides, Christianity is a whole, and each of its many parts interdependent. We must not teach it, therefore, as if it were a patchwork, capable of being taken apart and put together as men will. We do wrong to the great system we teach, if our lessons do not leave the impression of a vast, coherent fabric,—too vast for one lesson to disclose, too coherent for one lesson to stand out apart.
Besides, however our lessons may change, our scholars are still the same; and this continuity of listeners should impart a serial interest to the teaching. Cause the scholars to feel that each lesson is to make definite contribution to their growth in knowledge and character. It won't hurt them if they are as mechanical about it as Peter, and enumerate, lesson after lesson, as in the apostle's famous addition-table, the virtues those lessons may add to their lives.
For these three reasons, then, our teaching should contain some strong element of serial interest. Many teachers err in using only one sort of connecting link, year in, year out, and are as likely to fail as the periodical which always prints serial stories of the same kind of plot, scenes, and characters. I willmention several serial elements which a wise teacher will use in turn, holding to one long enough for profit, but not too long for interest.
In the first place, it is often well to make the serial biographical. Your serial has then a hero. Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Daniel, John, Peter, Paul, Mary,—what glorious groups of chapters these names bind together! If we are zealous, patient, and imaginative, we can easily, with this magnificent material, construct for our classes serials whose absorbing interest will vie with any in their pet weekly story-paper. We can lead them to eager study of a man's development in character and in fortune.
At other times it is better to trust for the serial interest to history,—to study the evolution of a nation as before of a man. The wondrous tale of the rise of the Hebrews from Abraham, their metamorphosis under Moses, their consolidation under judges, their expansion under kings, their division, their downfall, their restoration, their subjugation, their new birth in Him who was before Abraham,—this story may be made to have a deep and constant serial interest.
Of course, with either the biographical or historical serial plan, great pains must be taken with that bugbear of the average teacher,—what the lesson-helps call intervening events, but many a scholar calls intervening mystifications. Often fully half the lesson-time should be given to them. Usually the antecedents they contain are absolutely necessary for an understandingof the lesson,—text, persons, and principles. With them you teach history; without, episodes. They mean work, to be sure; but all unifying and solidifying means work.
At still other times or with other classes it is well to let the serial interest center around principles. Treat one group of lessons as illustrating the manly or unmanly qualities; consider another group primarily as a commentary on truth and falsehood; let your binding topic for another set be "What is True Religion?" "Sin and Salvation," "Serving and Served," "Success and Failure,"—how many lessons could be clustered naturally about these topics! Children are characteristically philosophers, and a treatment of Sunday-school lessons as illustrating different phases of some great truth is a method very attractive to them. "What does the Bible teach about truth-telling, about penalty for sin, about the conditions of happiness?" Sunday-school scholars should be ready to answer such questions, not by haphazard impromptus, but by a careful presentation of events, characters, and sayings bearing on each point, and representing the whole Bible.
Another excellent way of binding lessons together is by the scholars themselves. As I said, however the lessons change, the scholars remain the same, with the same prominent troubles, faults, and needs. Both they and you should know what these are. I often have scholars who bring up, Sunday after Sunday, in connection with topics the most diverse, the samequestions, which are evidently stumbling-blocks to their minds and lives. These are usually practical matters wherein the Christian imperatives are strangely incongruous with worldly habits, such as the choice of a calling, absolute frankness of speech, public testimony for Christ, the careful observance of the Sabbath, sharp competition in trade. These are too big questions to be settled in a few minutes, and young folks who are seized by them in earnest have found for themselves a serial interest which will last for some time.
If we cannot take advantage of such a linking which our scholars discover for themselves, we can always bind lessons together by our own knowledge of our scholars' needs. If you have a young man in your class to whom the skepticism of the times is alluring, let him find something faith-inspiring and confirmatory of belief in every lesson. If you have a young girl burdened with sick-room duties and home cares beyond her strength, let her know that each lesson will bring her fresh energy and comfort. You need not tell your scholars that you know their struggles. Enough that you do know them, and link lesson to lesson for them in sweet chains of love and helpfulness.
When, by any of the four methods I have outlined, you thus establish a bond between your lessons, you have gained two great advantages besides the serial interest which you have aroused. In the first place, you study the Bible as a whole, not by extracts.You learn to interpret one portion by another. You find out the fallacy of fragments. You perceive that Christianity is a system, and not an anthology. In the second place, you have solved the review problem, for every lesson is now a review. If you were required to remember, in order, twelve words chosen at random, you would find it somewhat difficult; but it would be easy enough if those twelve words were arranged in a sentence. Serial teaching is building up a sentence, and the review is merely repeating that sentence. A serial teacher has no fear of review day. The short-story teacher is compelled to find for that day a new short story.
Now, have I not reserved mention of the one great tie of all our teaching? Whether Old Testament or New, history, prophecy, proverbs, or psalms, it is all one continued story, and the hero is Christ. By whatever unifying principle we group our lessons together, Christ unifies the groups. Year in, year out, if Christ is at the heart of our teaching, that teaching is consecutive, serial, solid. Without him, it is disjointed, fragmentary, frail. Not retracting a word I have written about the value of these other methods of arousing continued interest, yet it must be said that they are all worthless without Christ. In him each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.