The Lesson Committee often assigns us two or three lessons in a book, and from these few lessons the scholars must get some comprehensive knowledge of the entire book. A book study, therefore, will not be out of place in this series of suggestions to teachers, and I have chosen the Psalms, since they are likely to be most fruitful of hints as to the teaching of other books.
A systematic knowledge of the Psalms is rarely sought after. Only one book of the Bible is more loved: the Gospel of John; only one is read less methodically: the Book of Proverbs.
It is the fault of many teachers that they teach all books of the Bible in the same way. Prophecy, history, poetry, prose, Ruth and Revelation, John and Judges,—it is all one to them. The Psalms, like all other books of the Bible, are unique, and need their own especial mode of treatment. Here are some hints concerning this treatment.
Get first, from the Revised Version, a comprehensive idea of the five Books of Psalms, with their similar endings. Note their length and the total number of psalms. From the Bible dictionary learn what you can about the time when these books were collected, and the probable authors of the anonymous psalms.
Study the psalms by types. We have the First Psalm, which contrasts the good and evil. Psalms of the Good are 1, 26, 41, 72, 94, 101, 126, 127, 128, 144. Psalms of the Evil are 10, 14, 36, 37, 49, 52, 53, 58, 64, 73, 82, 109, 129, 140. The Second is a Psalm of Power. Others are 11, 21, 24, 29, 47, 48, 60, 76, 77, 83, 97, 108, 111, 114, 139. The Nineteenth and the One Hundred and Third are Psalms of Praise. With these study 8, 9, 18, 30, 33, 34, 44, 65, 66, 67, 68, 75, 85, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 100, 104, 105, 106, 107, 112, 113, 117, 118, 134, 135, 136, 138, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150. The Second and the Seventy-second are Messianic Psalms. So also are Psalms 45 and 110. The Twenty-third is a Psalm of Trust. Similar psalms are 4, 7, 16, 27, 31, 56, 62, 71, 91, 125, 131. The Fifty-first is a Psalm of Forgiveness. Such, too, are 25, 32, 39, 40, 80, 81. With Psalm 84, a Psalm of Worship, go 15, 42, 50, 57, 63, 87, 115, 122, 132, 133. Besides these, the following may be classified as Psalms of Help: 3, 12, 20, 35, 43, 46, 59, 61, 70, 79, 121, 124; the following as Psalms of Sorrow: 6, 13, 22, 38, 55, 69, 74, 88, 102, 120, 137, 143; and the following as Psalms of Prayer: 5, 17, 28, 54,86, 116, 123, 130, 141, 142. Psalms 78 and 119 are Psalms of the Law. Of course, this is only a rough classification of the psalms. It will be a pleasant and valuable task for you to classify them more elaborately.
Read again the life of David, found in the passage from 1 Samuel 16:1 to 1 Kings 2:11. In connection with each psalm you read, think what may have been the king's fortunes when he wrote it, or what experience of his may have prompted it. This psalm of sorrow may have had birth in Absalom's revolt; this song of trust may have welled from a rock of hiding in the desert; this hymn of triumphant strain may have celebrated some victory over Saul or the Syrians; this pleading for forgiveness may have been a wail over Uriah.
The psalms are all dramatic. Here, more than anywhere in the study of the Bible, you need to use imagination, to "put yourself in his place." The psalms are in the first person. Fancy yourself the psalmist as you read his songs. Pray his prayers, exult in his praise, beat your breast with his agony of shame, be calm in his assurance of forgiveness and peace.
In like manner, as you prepare to teach, fancy times in your scholars' lives to which these psalms will apply, times when it would be well for them to sing these psalms, and teach with these times in clear view.
Be sure thus to translate David's experience into that of your scholars. These psalms are of universal moment, as they come so directly from David's heart, and God's; and yet they need this translation, becauseDavid's surroundings were not ours. His foes, his sins, his exiles, his triumphs, were not ours in form, however much the same in reality.
There are frequent quotations of the psalms to be found in the later books of the Bible. These, especially those made by Christ and the apostles, constitute a priceless commentary. Search for them with the help of a concordance or a reference Bible.
Aside from this, the psalms are especially fit for illustrative quotations, and the children may be inspired to gather them eagerly. Assign to each scholar a verse for illustration from some other part of the Bible, in some such way as this:
"The Lord is my shepherd.""I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11)."I shall not want.""Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. 7:32, 33)."He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.""Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28)."He leadeth me beside the still waters.""Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water, springing up unto eternal life" (John 4:14)."He restoreth my soul.""I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25)."He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.""I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6)."Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.""Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (John 11:26)."For thou art with me.""Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20)."Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.""I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16, 17)."Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.""I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall not hunger" (John 6:35)."Thou anointest my head with oil.""Grace and peace ... from Jesus the anointed, ... who has made us to be kings and priests unto his God and Father" (Rev. 1:4-6)."My cup runneth over.""The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?" (1 Cor. 10:16.)"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.""These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be fulfilled" (John 15:11)."And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.""In my Father's house are many abiding-places.... I go to prepare a place for you" (John 14:2).
"The Lord is my shepherd."
"I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep" (John 10:11).
"I shall not want."
"Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. 7:32, 33).
"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures."
"Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28).
"He leadeth me beside the still waters."
"Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water, springing up unto eternal life" (John 4:14).
"He restoreth my soul."
"I am the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25).
"He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake."
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:6).
"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."
"Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die" (John 11:26).
"For thou art with me."
"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matt. 28:20).
"Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me."
"I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth" (John 14:16, 17).
"Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies."
"I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall not hunger" (John 6:35).
"Thou anointest my head with oil."
"Grace and peace ... from Jesus the anointed, ... who has made us to be kings and priests unto his God and Father" (Rev. 1:4-6).
"My cup runneth over."
"The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?" (1 Cor. 10:16.)
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life."
"These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be fulfilled" (John 15:11).
"And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
"In my Father's house are many abiding-places.... I go to prepare a place for you" (John 14:2).
In preparing for this exercise the children will learn how to use the Bible index and the concordance.
Watch the paragraphs of the Revised Version. They make useful indications of the passage from one thought to the other.
The psalms lend themselves well to the useful exercises of analysis, condensation, and paraphrase. Get your scholars to write out for you, one, a brief tabular statement of the contents of the psalm; another, the thought of the psalm in words of his own; a third, the substance of the psalm, with all superfluous words and repetitions omitted.
It is a capital plan to underscore in your Bibles, and get your scholars in the course of the lesson to underscore in theirs, the key-sentences of the psalm. In the First Psalm, for instance, you have in bold relief the main thought of the six verses if you underscore "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked. Whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The wicked are not so." There is your outline.
Do not rest satisfied until, for your scholars and for you, the psalm you are studying is a unit, and stands out in your minds with clear-cut individuality. It is especially necessary to get through with the entire text when your lesson is in the Psalms. It is not like a series of disconnected proverbs: it is a picture; and your understanding of it will lack some essential part until you have all the verses.
Indeed, I would go over each psalm with the class at least five times, rapidly: first, to remove stumbling-blocks of strange customs and expressions; second, to grasp the general thought; third, to get its application to David's life; fourth, to get its lesson for our lives; fifth, a verse-by-verse study for all possible side-lights and instruction.
Observe the parallel expressions. Use only the Revised Version, which correctly prints the psalms as poetry. Read them rhythmically; chant them; intone them; get the impression of songs. Come to feel the beauty and meaning of the frequent refrains.
Go on a tour of discovery, seeking for the noble metrical translations of these psalms found in our hymn-books and religious anthologies. For Psalm 19 read Addison's magnificent hymn, "The spacious firmament on high"; for Psalm 103, H. F. Lyte's "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven," or Isaac Watts' "My soul, repeat His praise"; for Psalm 72, James Montgomery's "Hail to the Lord's Anointed, great David's greater Son!" or Isaac Watts' "Jesus shall reign where'er the sun does his successivejourneys run"; for Psalm 84, H. F. Lyte's "Pleasant are Thy courts above," or Isaac Watts' "Lord of the worlds above"; for Psalm 23, Addison's "The Lord my pasture shall prepare," or others more familiar; and for other psalms the same writers, with Wesley, John Newton, Scott, and many more. Your scholars will be interested in searching for these, and bringing them in.
Suppose we were studying an English hymn-book. What would we ask first about each hymn? We would ask what sentiment it was capable of inspiring. The same question is to be asked about these inspired hymns; and throughout each of them we are to trace not so much a train of thought as a train of feeling.
The psalms are subjective, and for that reason are particularly hard, some of them, for children to appreciate. We must interpret them all the more thoroughly by objective illustrations. Here the ordinary problem is reversed. In our ordinary lessons the example from real life is given, and from it the teacher must draw spiritual lessons. Here the spiritual meditation is given, to be applied to real life.
Notwithstanding this, the psalms are eminently pictorial, and especially adapted to illustration. See how many pictures are suggested by the following words from the most famous of the psalms: "shepherd," "want," "lie down," "green pastures," "leadeth," "still waters," "guideth," "paths," "valley of the shadow," "rod and staff," "a table prepared," "enemies," "anointed," "cup runneth over." Allsuch pictures should be gathered, and used to make the lesson vivid to the picture-loving little ones.
There is especial need in teaching the psalms to explain how the force of imagery varies with varying conditions of climate and modes of life; how much more, for instance, was meant to David than to us by such symbols as "a rock," "shadow," "sun," "shield," "water-courses"!
Children are fond of metaphors, but they make comical blunders with them, and deal, unless we are careful, all too literally with such passages as "a table in the presence of mine enemies," "the wicked are like the chaff," "the congregation of the righteous," "break them with a rod of iron." If the teacher is in doubt just how far to carry these metaphors, I know no better example of the wise and beautiful use of them than Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." The reading of that book will make a capital preparation for the teaching of the psalms.
Few lessons in the seven years' course will be so admirable as these for committing to memory. If you want to inspire your class to better work in that line, now is your time.
Note that the psalms are all optimistic. Sound their key-note of peace and joy.
Here, if anywhere in the Bible, spiritual teaching is needed. An essential part of the preparation for teaching the psalms is devout prayer.
Intemperance is the church's greatest foe, missions her greatest task. Around these two topics cluster the highest chivalry, the most splendid romance, of our modern world. The shout of the battle is in them, the sweep of the regiment. No lessons are more important than those devoted to these two great themes, and none can be made more interesting.
And yet to many a teacher they are bugbears. To these eight lessons—one sixth of the whole—they go with dull hearts. They do wish the Lesson Committee would leave them out of the list.
What is the trouble? There is no life back of the lesson. They have "got up" their lesson as best they can; but a lesson is not got up, it grows up. They do not know enough about missions and the temperance reform to be interested in them. No information, no inspiration.
To be sure, there are few passages in the Bible suitable for use in temperance lessons, and but fewreferring directly to such enterprises as modern missions. The Acts record merely the beginnings of missions, and intemperance was scarcely a problem in New Testament days. Nevertheless, both temperance and missions find in the Book their fundamental and sufficient inspiration; and taking our starting-point from the lesson text, we may fairly launch forth into seas as wide as the world of men and action.
Indeed, so multiform are the phases of these two topics that to avoid confusion and leave clear impressions every temperance or missionary lesson should have a specialty. Let me indicate a few of the many possible themes.
1.A Bible Search.—Spend the hour hunting out everything the Bible says upon temperance, or all the leading passages bearing on missions. The scholars will read them aloud. Some verses they will repeat from memory. They will mark them with colored pencils in their Bibles. They will discover the central thought in each reference and write it on the blackboard, thus building up a compact summary. The exercise has an air of finality that will please the scholars.
2.A Biographical Lesson.—Let everything cluster around some great leader in missions or the temperance reform. For the latter, select John B. Gough, Miss Willard, Lady Henry Somerset, Father Mathew, Francis Murphy. For the great missionaries,—India: Carey, Heber, Martyn; Burmah: Judson; China:Nevius, Morrison, Gilmour; Japan: Neesima; Oceanica: Coan, Paton, Patteson; America: Gardiner, Eliot, Whitman, Brainerd; Turkey: Schauffler, Dwight, Hamlin; Africa: Livingstone, Mackay, Moffat, Taylor, Hannington. There is material enough for a lifetime of teaching!
Get as many scholars as possible to read beforehand in the encyclopedia a short account of the chosen life. One of the class may write a five-minute essay upon the hero. Characteristic anecdotes concerning him may be distributed among the scholars for each to relate. No better series of short missionary biographies was ever published than that sold by the publishers of this book at the low price of 50 or 75 cents a volume. Use them. If the class during the hour can really make the acquaintance of a great missionary or reformer, it will be vast gain.
Another and most profitable kind of biographical meeting may be based, not upon single lives, but upon a group of lives. Study "The Great Missionaries of the Bible," "Bible Heroes of Temperance," "Some Noble Lives Spoiled by Intemperance," "Some Magnificent Missionaries of Our Denomination."
3.An Historical Lesson.—The temperance reform has already a notable history, with many chapters worth careful study. Spend an hour with the Woman's Crusade,—its origin, its leaders, its many thrilling scenes, its notable results. The Washingtonian movement, the blue-ribbon movement, the World'sPetition, "temperance in the White House,"—these are themes for other studies.
And as for missions, the puzzle will be to know where to end, when there are, for instance, the "Serampore Brotherhood" to study, the "Lone Star" mission, the Madagascar martyrs, the China Inland Mission, the all-but-miracle of Metlakahtla, the conquest of Hawaii, the transformation of Fiji, the bloody chronicles of Uganda. With any one of these stories for a nucleus, your missionary lesson will be certain of leaving a deep impression.
4.An Organization Lesson.—Study one or more of the great temperance organizations,—its origin, its noble leaders, its methods and aims, its practical results. The W. C. T. U. and the "Y's," the Good Templars, the National Temperance Society, the temperance work of Christian Endeavor societies, may be studied in this way.
This plan is especially valuable for the missionary lessons, which should render your scholars familiar with the history and triumphs of each missionary board of your denomination, home and foreign. The remarkable circumstances of its founding, the heroic men and women it has sent forth (exhibit portraits), the places where it labors (show views), the periodicals it publishes (have samples to give away), a few round figures to set forth the results of it all,—that is a scanty outline. The larger work of the church would profit immensely by such use of an occasional missionary lesson.
5.A Newspaper Lesson.—In another chapter I discuss the use that may wisely be made of the newspaper in our Sunday-school teaching. Once in a while the specialty of a lesson may be a study of current events in their bearing on missions or on the temperance reform.
Some temperance orator has made a noble speech which you find well reported. The W. C. T. U. has just held its annual convention. Neal Dow's birthday has been widely celebrated. South Carolina has adopted its system of State dispensaries. A hot campaign for prohibition is in progress in Canada. The teacher that centers his lesson on one of these themes is sure of lively interest which may be led to practical result.
Or, if it is missionary Sunday, let the teacher utilize the most absorbing topics of foreign news. It may be the Spanish seizure of the Caroline Islands, the French capture of Madagascar, the Japanese campaign in Formosa or that of the English in Matabeleland or the Soudan, the Italian war with Abyssinia, the Indian famine, the troubles in Crete, the massacres in Armenia. What scholar, after a lesson shrewdly introduced by such recitals, will fail to see that missions are a topic very much alive?
6.A Map Lesson.—Few things condense, combine, and clarify bits of information like a map, provided you can put your information upon it. A map may be utilized in a temperance lesson in two good ways. If you are in a city, draw the streets of somesection, or of the entire city, if possible. Send your scholars out along all streets, dividing them up, and have them count the saloons in each block, locating also the churches and schoolhouses. I suppose, of course, that your scholars are of suitable age for this work. Next Sunday, as they report, put a black spot on the map for every saloon, and a blue spot for every church and schoolhouse. Your map will point its own moral.
At another time draw a map of the United States, and give a graphic view of the temperance laws of the land, coloring the prohibition States one color, using a different color to designate the Massachusetts plan, the South Carolina plan, and so on.
More can be done with a map in a missionary lesson. For instance, you may select a single country, say India. Provide "stickers" of bright-colored paper. Let some be large and circular. As you talk about the four or five great languages of that many-tongued empire, get the scholars to fasten these "stickers" in the centers of the various language areas. Let other "stickers" be cut into small stars. Three of these, of one color, fastened in the neighborhoods of Bombay, Madura, and Ceylon, will represent the Congregational missions. In the same way you will show the location of the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian missions and those of other denominations. Population "stickers" may also be used, and "stickers" with the names of great missionaries may show where they labored.
On another day you may take a map of the entire world, and thus indicate the location of all the mission fields of your denomination. If this map is kept before the class from that time, every item of missionary information will have fresh interest and point.
7.A Statistics Lesson.—At this lesson distribute, for the scholars to read aloud, slips of paper containing temperance or missionary statistics,—the numbers of saloons or missionaries, of drunkards dying or converts made each day, the cost of missions or of strong drink compared with other expenditures, and the like. Get the class to cut strips of paper of various lengths to represent graphically the comparative costs. Drill the scholars in temperance or missionary arithmetic. Telling them the number of heathen in China, ask how long a procession they would make, marching in single file one foot apart. Giving them the liquor expenditure for a year, have them measure a pile of silver dollars and calculate how tall a pile would equal the annual cost of drink. Such books as "The Missionary Pastor," published by the Fleming H. Revell Company, and "Weapons for Temperance Warfare" and "Fuel for Missionary Fires," published by the United Society of Christian Endeavor, will suggest many similar exercises.
8.A Quotations Lesson.—The teacher holds in his hand a bunch of papers, on each of which is written an interesting quotation bearing on missions or temperance. The collection will include longer anecdotes as well as brisk sentences. Many will bear famousnames. Each scholar will choose a quotation at random and read it aloud. The teacher will draw out its meaning by questions, will add illustrations and practical comments, will tell something about the author of the quotation, or will show the connection of the thought or anecdote with the day's lesson. In some classes the scholars themselves may be trusted to bring their own quotations or anecdotes.
Let me mention briefly a few more devices out of the many that may add interest to these lessons. Get a trained worker along temperance or missionary lines to come in and address the class. Carry out a series of simple experiments showing the physiological effects of alcohol. Make a study of the best missionary hymns, their authors, and the events that prompted them. Try a fifteen-minute debate on some missionary or temperance topic. Get the scholars now and then to write five-minute essays or give five-minute talks on appropriate themes. Let one edit a temperance or missionary paper,—in manuscript, of course,—collecting contributions from each scholar, and reading the result before the class as a sample number of the "Cold Water Herald" or the "Missionary Monitor." Some Sunday, call on every member of the class to sign the pledge. On a mission Sabbath make an appeal for tithe-giving and present a tithe-givers' pledge. Give the wonderful history of the Student Volunteer movement, and urge the scholars to consider the mission field as a possibility for each one of them. Enliven some missionary lessonwith entertaining accounts of the strange customs of the country under discussion, and get together all the illustrative material you and your scholars can find. The Sunday-school and the Christian Endeavor society will do well to make a collection of curios for such purposes.
It is an admirable plan to set each of your scholars to doing some steady work in preparation for these lessons. One may watch the newspapers and collect temperance facts and illustrations of the evils of strong drink. The various missionary societies of the denomination may be divided among the scholars, each to gather interesting bits concerning the work of the board assigned to him. In the same way the mission lands may be apportioned out, and "the gentleman from India" or "our representative in China" be called upon to report the latest news from his field. In this plan the children willcoöperate very zealously.
Of course it goes without saying (doesit, though?) that each teacher will be a subscriber to the missionary magazines of his own denomination, as well as to that common denominator of all the missionary magazines, the "Missionary Review of the World."
He will also take, if possible, a good temperance paper, such as the "Union Signal" or the "National Temperance Advocate"; and if he can afford them, he will not be without the temperance and missionary encyclopedias.
Indeed, the theme branches out into channels somany and so wide that, when once the teacher is started upon them, his greatest lack will be of time for exploration; and so far from desiring the temperance and missionary lessons fewer than eight, he will wish it were possible for them to come every month!
The Bible is so full of suggestion that it is impossible, in the brief Sunday-school half-hour, to view the many fields of thought opened before us with any degree of satisfying completeness. That fact, indeed, constitutes one of the greatest satisfactions of the Book.
Neither teacher nor scholar can go very far with earnestness in Bible study without feeling an intense desire to collate and compare, to go to the bottom, to take views single in purpose, but wide in reach. This wish to read the Scriptures as a whole has ever been held a sign of healthful growth in Christian endeavor. How may we encourage and satisfy this desire? Here is a method I have repeatedly found helpful to my class and myself.
I prepare for myself what I call topical lessons. I have noticed especial interest in some one topic,—the use of Sunday, say, or future punishment, heaven, prayer, abuse of money, missions, the nature of sin.On some Sunday, then, I announce that one of these topics is to be discussed at next week's meeting. I ask the scholars to think the matter over, and look up texts. Some do, some do not, as is usual in such matters. Sunday come, I have in large script, pinned to the wall in view of the class, an outline of the topic chosen, with the texts to be used indicated in clear figures. It is intended for a lesson in methods of Bible study as much as in Bible contents, and so aims to be complete and thorough in its range. The plan is explained, and the scope of the subject. We take it up by natural divisions.
All have Bibles, of course. The references are numbered. "Mr. Brown, please find No. 1; Mr. Jones, No. 2; Mr. Robinson, No. 3," and so on. In a few seconds we are ready for a discussion of the first division. I shall trust to the scholars' memory for the commoner quotations, and not trust in vain, if I have done my duty previously. This division disposed of, more or less to our satisfaction, we pass to another point, then to another, rapidly or leisurely, as the time permits, being careful that in the half-hour the general scope of Bible thought in the matter, its largeness and depth, its insight and minuteness of detail, be adequately exhibited.
May I show you a sample outline?
FAITH.
Manifestly, when this plan is carried out, there will be scant time for the regular lesson; probably no time at all. The next Sunday two lessons must be recited. But your topical study has grown out of the regular lessons, and in its turn will excite in them fresh interest.
It is obvious that each teacher must choose his own topics and make his own outlines, suited to his own methods of thought, and to the age and intelligence of his class. The above was used in a class of young men, college students in part. Themes of an entirely different nature might well be chosen,—aview of Christ's miracles or parables or sermons, of Old Testament miracles, or of sacred history in some one line. It might even be found profitable, as it surely would be interesting, to collate, arrange, and discuss Scripture references to the eye, the ear, birds, flowers, trumpets. To my mind, some such occasional excursion as this seems to lead the scholars, especially those approaching manhood and womanhood, to a more comprehensive and methodical knowledge of the riches of the best Book, and to one of the most resultful methods of studying it.
A little child once declared that she liked a certain sermon because there were so many "likes" in it. For the same reason, that same child would have liked Christ as a Sunday-school teacher. And we teachers will gain Christ's success in the same measure as we gain his power of putting the whole universe back of our thought.
For a thought comes forcibly from our minds in proportion as we see its relatedness. If we have put it into connection with a score of things, that score get behind it and push. An unrelated thought comes as tamely from the mind as a Jack from its box when the spring is broken. And so when a Sunday-school teacher would present a truth energetically, he must look all around the truth, crowd his mind with applications of the truth, fall in love with its beauty from many points of view; in brief, become thoroughly acquainted with the truth, and its enthusiastic friend.
How, now, shall we introduce the truth to the child? It is the manner of some to take the truth and the child, and bump heads together,—a process which very naturally develops a mutual shyness.
The true teacher, on the contrary, is a skilled master of ceremonies. From the crowd of likenesses, illustrations, and applications which have made him and the truth acquainted, he chooses one to go with it and act as mutual friend, to introduce the stranger thought to the child's mind, and put the two on easy terms together.
He does not make the common mistake of sending along the entire crowd, so that the introduced is lost in the throng of masters of ceremonies, so that the truth is confused, and acquaintanceship embarrassed by the parade of illustration. He knows that where one parable makes, two mar, and three ruin.
Nor will the shrewd teacher ever attempt introduction by something other than a mutual friend of both parties,—the truth and the child's mind. The myth of Alcestis may be connected with your own thought of the resurrection, but it is itself a stranger to the child's mind. The true mutual friend would be the metamorphosis of the butterfly.
Is that comparison stale? In seeking for fresh and brilliant illustrations, we are apt to forget that the longer the mutual friend has known both parties, the more apt will he be at furthering their acquaintance. The butterfly is truly to us a trite illustration of the resurrection, but not to the child.
Do not push forward the thought first, and after a ten minutes' awkward, floundering parley between it and the child's mind, proceed to introduce them by your illustration. After two people have talked together for ten minutes, they either need no introduction by that time, or have destroyed the possibility of acquaintanceship. Illustration first.
And after the introduction two mistakes may be made. The introducing illustration may keep on chattering, not allowing the truth and the mind of the child to say a word to each other. A master of ceremonies, who knows his business, knows when to draw quietly back, and leave the new acquaintanceship room to grow. The illustration is not the end, but the means.
The other mistake is in allowing the mutual friend to withdraw abruptly, before the two, the stranger thought and the child's mind, have broken the ice. Let him stay and put in a clever word now and then, until the acquaintanceship can stand by itself.
Nor is there any reason why, with every fresh truth, a fresh illustration should strut forward. Those social assemblies are best managed which are planned by one wise woman, and permeated throughout by her thoughtfulness, words of tact, and shrewd bits of engineering. One mistress to a party, as one cook to the broth. And so if you can find one illustration which is on good terms with all the truths in the lesson, and familiar also to the child's mind, by all means let that one illustration hold sway, as a genial host,throughout the entire half-hour, and associate the whole together.
But when the illustration ceases to illustrate, part with it, regretfully but promptly; as I, following my own advice, must here part with the illustration which has done duty hitherto.
In this whole matter, as in all others, only painstaking deserves or gains success. A genius for parable is rare. Gift here means the poet's power, his breadth of vision, his depth of sympathy, his tact and sense of fitness. But though it is a poet's gift, it need not be born in one. How may we gain skill in illustration?
In the first place, by gaining knowledge. How can we expect Jewish history to seem real, isolated, as it so often is, from all other history? We, too, have a Father Abraham. Cæsar crossed a river once, as, and yet not as, did Joshua. Compare Washington's farewell address with Samuel's. And, too, without science, such sciences as geology and astronomy, a Sunday-school teacher is but half armed. How wonderfully and inspiringly God's two books supplement each other, no one can guess who has not put the two together. In brief, for the theme is infinite, almost any fact, once learned, has constant surprises of usefulness, and in no ways more frequently than this of illustration.
In the next place, by gaining sympathy. No one can well use illustrations who is out of touch with his fellows. The best possible illumination of life questionsis the story of the lives around you,—their trials and triumphs. Do you know a child who has done a heroic deed, though quietly, for the Master? Have you a friend who has conquered some sore temptation? Have you met a good man struggling against some inherited evil tendency? Have you knowledge of the disastrous results of some single life? Life comes closest to life, and experience furnishes the best similes.
And then we may study books, and learn how effective writers have used illustrations. A note-book collection of these will be helpful, even though the making of it is the end of it; for this study will help us toward the teacher's chief goal,—the power of putting things in the best way.
The newspapers should be one of the most fruitful fields for the gleaning of illustrations; and so they will be, when they learn to chronicle the good as thoroughly and brilliantly as they now chronicle the bad.
Of course,—though an "of course" seldom practically accepted,—a Bible character is the very best illustration of a Bible character, the Old Testament of the New, the last lesson of this, Moses of Paul, and Sinai of Hermon.
And of course, too,—though again a belied "of course,"—the less the illustration given by the teacher, and the more given by the scholar in answer to questions, the more vivid the impression. Too often we teachers smack our lips at the coming of the similes, and launch out into harangue.
Let us see in all this much more than a scheme of indirections. It is no easy task to find the best way into a child's mind, nor quite without pains and difficulty is the imitation of the Teacher who spoke many things in parables.
Sunday-school teachers often make the mistake of confounding "lesson illustrations" with "practical applications." A lesson illustration is a picture of the truth you are studying as exemplified in spheres of life foreign to your scholars; practical application pictures the truth in their own lives. In other words, a practical application is an illustration that the scholars can practice. The point I want to make is, that the practical application should be used, in our own precious half-hour, not to the exclusion of the lesson illustration, but largely predominating over it.
For instance, if you were discussing the great cloud of invisible witnesses that compass us about, you might illustrate the truth by the famous story of Napoleon's speech to the troops in Egypt, "From yonder pyramids, my men, forty centuries look down upon us"; but, if you have not time for both, a practical application would be far better: "John, who is one of this great cloud of witnesses that is most tenderlyand anxiously watching your life?" "My father." "And who, Harry, is among your invisible guardians?" "My mother." That is more forcible than "forty centuries."
Again, one of the finest illustrations of devotion to principle is afforded by the conversion to the Baptist faith of one of our first American foreign missionaries, the immortal Judson, who, at the bidding of conscience and conviction, cast loose in mid-ocean from the only missionary society in America, and his only assured support. That is magnificent, but it is only an illustration, one needing to be translated into terms of child life thus: "Suppose you are in a school examination, and your neighbor on one side hands you a bit of folded paper to pass to your neighbor on the other side, and you are pretty sure it is to help him cheat in the examination, and suppose the whole school will think you mean and stuck up if you refuse to pass the paper, what are you going to do?" That is a test of devotion to principle such as the child is likely to meet.
To be sure, there are illustrations which come so close to average circumstances that they are also applications. For instance, to take another great missionary, William Carey, his boyish fall from the tree he was climbing, with the result of breaking his leg, and, on recovery, his immediate set-to at the same tree again; his saying that his business was preaching the gospel, but that he cobbled shoes "to pay expenses"; his bidding the Christians left at home to"hold the ropes while he went down,"—all these are very practical illustrations, quite within the children's sphere, since it is well for them also to have grit even about tree-climbing, since they are to hold their ordinary duties subordinate to their spiritual life, and since they have missionary money to spend and missionary prayers to make. If, however, I were teaching the passage in the Acts that relates how the disciples had all things in common, though I might tell about the splendid carrying out of that principle in Carey's Serampore brotherhood, yet, if I had time for only the one, I should certainly prefer a practical application of the text to the sharing of apples and the lending of bicycles.
It is helpful to a boy, of course, if he would cultivate patience, to have before his eyes the picture of that cave looking out over Scottish hills and heather, and of the spider at the cave's mouth teaching its beautiful lesson to the Bruce within; but the picture remains only a picture unless the spider of the boy's imagination is taught to run lines connecting every point of the picture with his geography lesson and his garden weeding. Far too many war stories are told in our Sunday-schools. They do not build up very rapidly the Christian soldier. Far too many illustrations are drawn from what is wrongly called the distinctive "heroic age" of the world. Not thus is the Christian hero furnished for his nineteenth-century toils.
A similar remark is to be made regarding illustrationsfrom science. They must not be permitted to detract from or exclude the practical application. If we are teaching our boys and girls how all things work together for good to those that love God, we may use the illustration of the rainbow, explaining that it is on the very raindrops of the storm itself that God paints his wonderful symbol of hope and trust. That is poetical and true, but the lesson remains as misty as the rainbow itself unless you go on to show your scholars how the lame boy among them gets more time for study on account of his lameness, how the boy who has been sick has learned far more than he knew before about the love of his dear ones and about the great Physician, how the boy who has had to leave school and go to work is none the less getting a priceless schooling in patience and determination and energy and faithfulness.
Many of these practical illustrations you may by questions draw out from the boys themselves. "Blessed are the peacemakers." Call for stories of boyish quarrels settled by some boy Solon. That is better than telling about the Massachusetts boards of arbitration in strikes. "My cup runneth over." Draw out a list of their own boyish blessings, which are more to them than those of any saint or psalmist.
But especially this practical application, to be successful, must be the work of a consecrated imagination. A Sunday-school teacher must think himself into the lives of others. "Bear ye one another's burdens." Now don't rake up from your encyclopediasthe story of St. Christopher, beautiful as it is, and try to twist it into an illustration of the text. No. Ask the bright scholar what he does to help his duller friends understand the knotty problems at school. Ask the merry boys what they do when mother is tired amusing the baby. Ask the selfish boy what a lad that greatly wanted a new sled could do to help his father bear his burden of poverty.
To get these applications you have had to "put yourself in his place," to picture to your mind your scholars' joys and sorrows, desires and disappointments, hopes and fears, labor and play. And in the process, and as its result, have come two rewards that no thumbing of dictionaries of biography, and manuals of mythology, and encyclopedias of illustrations, could ever give. You have come closer to the lives of your scholars, and you have drawn those lives closer to the present, practical Christ.
It is marvelous how rich in suggestion all passages of the Bible are to the thoughtful, studious mind. It is no less marvelous how bare and barren the wealthiest portions become when filtered through a bare and barren mind.
Truth is valuable only as it isextendedinto life. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"; that means to the child very little, packed into this condensed form. But let the teacher set aboutextendingthat blessed truth. Let him picture a man, cross, ugly, besotted, selfish, greedy, his heart all rotten with passion and pride. Go through a day with him, from the sullen greetings in the morning and his breakfast-table quarrels, through his business hours all stern and crabbed, to his morose and unlovely evening. Ask the children how much he sees and enjoys of the beautiful world, how much he gets from noble books, what perception he has of the character of his charming wife and children. He isblind to all these things. Why? Because of his impure heart.
Show how this baseness follows him to church, holds him down from praying, weights his songs, dulls his vision of spiritual things. Ask them how it will be at death, when he goes out of this world with a soul taught to see only money and self.How can he see God?
Then go on to tell them of their loving, gentle-hearted mothers, and how much goodtheycan see in this world, in their friends, in their children, because their hearts are unselfish and pure. How easily they pray. How cheerily they sing. How near God is to them. Will there be any difficulty intheirseeing God in the next world, when they can see so much of him in this?
You have made quite a sermon out of that text. It has been extended largely, and yet the meaning of it has merely begun to dawn on those childish minds.
Suppose you had taught it in this way: "Verse eight. Read it, Tommy. Now, who are blessed, Mary? And why are they blessed, Willie? Now don't forget that, children. Pay attention. Always remember it. The pure in heart see God. Why should we be pure in heart, Lucy? And how can we see God, Susy? Now don't forget it, children. Pay attention. Always remember it. The pure in heart see God. What have we learned in this verse, Lizzie? Yes, that's right. You all want to be pure in heart,children, now don't you? Why? Yes, that's right. I see you have paid attention." But they haven't, as any such teacher may find out by a question next Sunday.
A teacher of children must learn the art of righteous padding. He must learn how to fill in outlines, how to expand texts. He must illustrate with imagery, parable, allegory, personal experience, use of material objects, pictures, action of the children.
Especially valuable is the last, when it can be used. The teacher's cry for attention might well be translated into the highwayman's, "Hold up your hands." At any rate, if you can manage to keep them busy with their hands, you have their eyes, tongues, and brains.
Set them to hunting up verses in their Bibles. You will have the experience of a friend of mine who came to me once after trying it, and despairingly said that the children now wanted to do nothing else. Nearly every verse can be illustrated by a stanza from some common song. Get the children to sing it softly, first making them see how the song fits the Bible. Make liberal use of concert repetition of Bible verses. There is nothing better than this good old device for unifying and freshening the attention of a class.
And pictures. Teachers do not yet know one-tenth of the teaching power of pictures. Take the Twenty-third Psalm for a familiar example. "The shepherd, want, green pastures, lie down, leadeth me,still waters, the paths of righteousness, the valley of the shadow, thy rod and staff, a table prepared, mine enemies, anointing, cup runneth over, the house of the Lord"—as you read that list did not fourteen pictures rise at once in your mind? Find them, and show them to the children. They will pay even better attention to your printed pictures than to your word-pictures.
Experience will soon teach the teacher, if his eyes are open, the need of copious illustration. Astronomers tell us that it is very difficult to see the smallest objects visible to us in the sky, if they are in the form of little dots. They may have dimensions very much smaller and still be visible easily, if they are extended into lines of light. So with the points of our lessons. They will miss attention entirely or gain it with difficulty, while they remain merely points. We must extend them, by the use of consecrated wits.
On several pages of this book I have hinted at the use of the newspaper in our teaching; but the theme deserves a chapter to itself. An up-to-date teacher is respected, and it is largely the newspaper that brings one up to date. We must put our lessons into touch with life, and the newspaper is our modern compendium of life—very faulty, but all we have. The best illustration of the lesson is one your scholars find; the next best, one you find yourself; and only the third best, one found for you by the skilful writers of your lesson helps. The newspapers are mines of original illustrations.
They constitute, for example, a magazine of warnings. Hardly a number but tells of a defalcation sprung from gambling, of the ruin accomplished by the theater and dance-hall, of the mischief caused by sensational literature, and everywhere and always of the rum-fiend's devilish work. Why Saul fell, and David, and Solomon,—your scholars must know that;but their sense of the reality of sin and its fearful power will be deepened by noting the fall of men and women in this present world, and learning what brought shipwreck to their souls. A misplaced switch last week threw a train from the track and killed a man. What a warning against carelessness! Early Wednesday morning a drunken woman was found asleep on an ash-pile, her little girl sobbing by her side. What a lesson on the evil wrought by rum! Of all the sins and faults against which the Bible utters its great warnings, there is none we may not illustrate freshly and vividly from the newspaper.
But that is only half, and the lower half. By sharp search we may find in our papers many a thrilling example of heroism and noble service. Would that our reporters more frequently chronicled the good! Yet here is a fire at which a fireman risked his life to save a little child. And here is a cashier that braved death rather than open the safe for the robbers. And here is a lad whose shoulder was dislocated by stopping a runaway horse. And here is a heroic rescue of men and women from a shipwreck. We do not get from the newspaper the daily acts of devotion and faithfulness so honored in the eye of heaven; but we do get the splendid deeds, the stirring, romantic victories, that will move the girls and boys to knightly action.
Newspapers, too, give an outlook over the world. The confining walls melt away, and your lesson takes wide sweeps under a broad sky. Every session ofCongress considers many matters of the highest import for the kingdom of God. Our great offices are filled with men of strong character, acting out upon a grand scale lives potent for good or evil. In the lands across the seas great events are occurring, each exhibiting some phase of godliness or sin. You will exalt the gospel mightily in the minds of your scholars if you can show them how its principles solve the problems of our government, and underlie all wise action of the nations of the world.
It has already been indicated how the temperance lesson, that quarterly bugbear of some teachers, may be illuminated by the newspaper. Thus also may the missionary lesson. So profoundly do missions affect any nation they touch, and so closely are they interwoven with its life, that whatever of importance befalls any people has its missionary bearings. The Sultan cannot massacre the Armenians, or France seize Madagascar, or Japan fight China, or Hawaii depose its queen, or a revolution occur in South America, without entanglement with the omnipresent missionaries of the cross. To make the scholars feel this through wise references to current events is immensely to broaden their conception of the church and its work.
Even beyond all this, our newspapers afford the teacher a vast supply of illustrative material. There are the carefully prepared biographies of the great men and women that pass away, printed with their portraits. There are sketches of the lives of livingcelebrities, with pictures of their faces and their homes. There are lectures and sermons, sometimes admirably reported, giving in a few bright paragraphs the gist of an hour's discourse. There are thousands of poems by the best modern authors. There are appropriate editorial comments on all the holidays, Christmas and New Year's, Easter and Memorial Day, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. There are accounts of the latest wonderful inventions, each a pointed parable to one with eyes and a brain. And, with all its pictorial enormities, the newspaper often contains a portrait or a sketch worth using in our lesson half-hour.
In all this I am taking for granted, of course, that you subscribe to no sensational abomination, but to the best of our standard sheets, even if you must get it from some other city than your own. It must be a paper so clean that you can occasionally hand a copy to your scholars, and fearlessly set them to "reading up" on some theme helpful to the lesson. Besides, it must not be forgotten that our best religious weeklies are now genuine newspapers as well, and furnish admirable comments upon all important current events.
To use the newspaper to the best advantage in your teaching, you must have well in mind all the lesson themes for months in advance, since a striking event of to-day might not illustrate this week's lesson, but the lesson of five weeks ahead. Your best plan is to cut out each day the paragraphs and articles that seem likely to be of use, and preserve themin a series of envelopes. Mark one set of envelopes with the topics and dates of a year's lessons. Let another set contain the clippings arranged by subjects, as: "Love," "Faith," "Temperance," "Missions," "Theater," "Heroism," "Inventions." These will contain poems as well as prose. Some, rather than classify the bits of biography under the characteristics especially prominent in each case, will prefer to arrange them alphabetically, in a separate set of twenty-six envelopes. As the envelope for each week's lesson is used, distribute its contents through your permanent file. Frequently glance over your clippings to refresh your memory concerning them; otherwise they will become so much dead wood.
Not an unimportant result of all this is that it will teach your scholars to read the newspaper as a Christian should. In this great American university our scholars should be taught to skip the courses in evil and elect those in goodness.
And a final word,—which, indeed, no teacher is likely to need, though it must be said: keep the whole matter subordinate. It is not proposed to turn our Sunday-schools into classes for the study of current events. We have to do with one Life, and with that alone. We are teaching not all kinds of truth, but him who is the Truth. Whatever we admit into our teaching that does not exalt him and throw light on his life and doctrine is a harmful impertinence. We are not to study the lamp, but the Book that lies beneath it.
The cliff-scaler, who lowers his comrade down the precipice, does not take for granted the fastening around the tree or the stoutness of the rope; but the Sunday-school teacher too often throws his young people into the treacherous depths of thought and life with little care for their life-rope's integrity or moorings. More than once or twice or thrice in my own experience, after weeks and months of supposedly thorough intercourse with my scholars, an awkward question, better aimed by Heaven than by myself, has disclosed some fatal doubt, some fundamental misconception. I had been taking for granted that my boy really believed Christ to be divine, or that he had at least the beginnings of a conception of the Saviour's mission to the earth, or that he knew by experience the meaning of prayer, or that he actually had confidence in a future life.
I have in mind a fine, thoughtful fellow, graduate of a famous college and a church-member, whosevery thoughtfulness, and the knowledge of his religious activity in former years, led me, when he entered my class, to take for granted his Christianity. After weeks of teaching, it was only a chance question, in private conversation, that led him to the frank admission that skeptical college friends had absolutely destroyed his faith in Christ and the Bible, leaving him with only a sad and bewildered hold on the God of nature. What Sunday-school teacher has not been startled thus with disclosures of his own carelessness in taking things for granted?
It is a mistake constantly to advertise skepticism by warning our scholars against it, but it is no mistake to arm them against it. No teacher has mastered his lesson until he has mastered every doubt regarding it that any of his scholars is likely to entertain. "Will this punishment seem unjust? this event fabulous? this person mythical? this doctrine unreasonable? this miracle unreal? this author apocryphal? these men and women mere creatures of imagination?" Such questions as these are important for the teacher to consider,—to consider, not ask in the class. Because to the teacher the account is more true and vivid than an extract from yesterday's newspaper, he takes it for granted that his scholars so regard it. They may put the lesson story in the same category as Baron Munchausen or "The Ancient Mariner," and such a teacher would be none the wiser.
I know of nothingin the way of studythat is so capable of firing a Sunday-school teacher and classas Christian evidences. Remember that this also is a study of the Bible. Why is it ordinarily thought so dull? It is full of snap and point. Professor Fisher's short "Manual of Christian Evidences," published by Charles Scribner's Sons at seventy-five cents, stands next to my Bible as an aid and inspiration in teaching that Bible. I keep several copies, and all of them are usually in the hands of earnest scholars. Often when they are returned the compliment is, "That book helped me so much that I have bought a copy of my own." That means the conversion of a doubting Thomas. "Why!" exclaimed one such reader, "I never knew before that there was anything to prove Christianity but the Bible, or anything but the Bible to prove the Bible."
A teacher that is not in the habit of questioning persistently and searchingly can have no idea of the depth and at the same time the shallowness of the religious thinking of the average scholar. Far too many teachers prove everything by quoting the inspired Bible, taking it for granted that their scholars accept the Bible as inspired; or by referring to our divine Saviour, taking it for granted that their scholars believe Christ to be a divine Saviour. Our scholars are more shrewd than that. Their answers will be proper, but skepticism often lurks beneath, ready to spring up in open infidelity, secret scorn, or fruitless, formal morality.
Skepticism should never be anticipated, but it shouldneverbe neglected. It should never be dealtwith before the class, if it can be dealt with in private. But it is a teacher's first duty toknowthe great truths of Christianity, and knowwhyhe knows them. It is his second duty to make certain that each of his scholars knows them,and can prove them.
"But we cannot cover the ground without taking things for granted."Cover the ground!Superficial area, and superficial teaching!