Second, in order to heighten the effect of the story, follow it with poetical selections that reenforce the ideas contained in the story. Third, further intensify the story by the singing of such songs as bear directly upon the incidents of the story, and, in the fourth place, building out of all this concrete threefold, presentative knowledge, clear judgments in the form of maxims, principles, rules, law of conduct. To put this into a sentence, the thought is,-tell it, rhyme it, sing it, formulate it. I believe the day will come when we shall study the four things which are indicated, and group our materials in harmony with this classification. Then we may with some degree of confidence lay our nutritional elements upon the soul, confident that its fruitage in conduct will surely follow. QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS. For testing one's grasp of the subject, and Why should the mind be trained to form correct judgments, and what is the significance of this in religious training? Make a list of what you consider to be fundamental moral qualities. Do you see clearly the difference between a decision by the judgment and a decision colored by feeling? Why should accidental qualities be fully set aside in forming correct judgments? What is your opinion of John at 9 A. M.? at noon? at 4.30 P. M.? Write a diary of a day in some boy's life, and study it in the manner indicated in the exercise in this chapter? Why should the story end with an appeal to judgment? Should this appeal be used with children under the age of ten? What things stand opposed to clear judgment? What weakness may be discerned in Sunday-school teaching as a means of training judgment? If concrete material should be presented first, what should it lead to? What is more important than the training of the judgment? Why? Discuss the doctrine of natural consequences, and point out its limitations. What makes a moral idea spiritually significant? In what way do the rhyme and the song enforce the story? IT XXII JESUS THE IDEAL TEACHER T SEEMS fitting that this discussion should include the presentation of some of the salient characteristics of the principles and methods of teaching used by Jesus. In its last analysis the true training of the teacher for the Sunday-school must be a training that fits him to follow in some degree the perfect example of the greatest teacher that ever stirred the heart and stimulated the mind of a pupil. In measuring the worth of any teacher three things must be considered; (1) the purpose or end which the teacher aims to accomplish, (2) the equipment of the teacher, (3) the material employed to achieve the end. The Great All great teachers have set before them a definite end. This end is the goal of all effort, and when the pupil attains it, it is his good. In what, then, may this good be said to consist? Buddha makes it consist in the complete suppression of self. Plato makes it consist in the vision of eternal ideas. Aristotle makes it consist in the exercise of man's highest faculty,-his reason. Zeno makes it consist in a life according to nature. Epicurus makes it consist in the enjoyment of calm, abiding pleasure. Dante The End in Jesus' Teaching makes it consist in the vision and enjoyment of God. Goethe and others make it consist in devotion to the wellbeing of humanity. Kant makes it consist in a good will. Hegel makes it consist in conscious freedom. Others make it consist in a preparation for complete living, while still others define it as consisting of a harmonious development of all the powers of the soul. Jesus is no exception to this rule. He declared that the end of the education of the human soul is to fit it to live in har mony with the will of God. This will of the Father is to be realized best in the kingdom which Jesus established on earth, and which he so frequently referred to as the kingdom of heaven. The whole purpose of his teaching was to bring men into right relations with the divine will, to show them how to live in harmony with the divine power, and at last to unite them with the divine personality. Thus, too, he anticipates the best statement of modern pedagogy by demanding ideal perfection,-perfection after God's standards, as the end of education. What was the equipment of Jesus for this important work? We have only a few glances into the rich life that he lived to the age of thirty, but all of these are significant, and indicate that he was steadily pursuing a definite purpose and fitting himself for a specific service. If now we consider what he did after the age of thirty, we are led to the conclusion that all these earlier years were spent in study, in meditation, in prayer, in direct communion with the Father. There may have been times when he became impatient over the long delay of the time when he should come forth and teach. If this were the case, we have no hint of it in anything that he said or did. On the contrary, Jesus' Equipment it seems reasonable to assume that he willingly spent thirty years preparing himself to teach for three years. How significant this is! What a flood of light it throws upon the relative significance of preparation and of performance of life service! Most of us would reverse the order, and undertake after three years of preparation to render thirty years of service to mankind, and even then we would demand a pension for the remainder of our days as additional compensation for our three years of preparation and our thirty years of service. How unlike Jesus this would be! He understood what all of us must come to understand more fully, that we must pay the price in effort and time if we are to reach the point where we can render large and efficient service to the race. |