will, the whole round of mental action was exercised. Teaching always must touch this entire circle. To know is only to enrich the mind. To know, to feel, to do, is to enrich the soul. The mind is the intellectual function of the soul. To inform the mind is one thing. To enrich the soul is quite another thing. The teach Soul Enrichment er in the Sunday-school above all other teachers must know how to enrich the soul,-to occasion right thought, to secure keen feeling, and to ensure right action. Jesus was a teacher of human souls, not of human intellects. The great teachers of Greece rested their discourses upon an appeal to the intellect. Their great orations conclude with an appeal to reason—it is the summing up in logical order of the principles announced in the discourse. The Greek and hearer was led to know. There is a reason for this. Greek philosophy as formulated by Socrates assumed that if one knew the right he would surely do it. We have abundant proof of the inadequacy of this teaching. The great teachers of Rome rested their discourses upon an appeal to the sensibilities. Their great orations conclude with an appeal to the feelings -it is the sweep of a lofty sentiment to a climax that swayed the auditors as the summer winds move the ripening grain. Many of our American orators have followed these Roman models. Jesus' Plan But the greatest teacher of all, Jesus of Nazareth, directed his appeal to the will. He was too wise to be content with intellectual products as were the Greeks, or with emotional products as were the Romans. He understood that the soul is cultured only when the will is moved to act. Notice how he concludes that most wonderful of all addresses, the Sermon on the Mount: "Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man;" and, again: “And every one that heareth these words of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man." Note that the difference is not in the understanding, but in the doing, of the truths he uttered. Both heard. The foolish man did not act. The wise man acted. We want teaching like this, teaching that appeals to the will, teaching that ends in noble living. Books, apparatus, maps, charts,-in short, all the materials used in the teaching process,-are but the scaffolding that a wise teacher uses to build a human soul. But the soul itself is the product the teacher must see from the beginning, not merely the materials with which he works. The choicest fruit earth holds up to its Creator is a good, clean, vigorous man or woman. Το ripen, elevate, educate a man, a woman, that is worth while. To the accomplishment of this we may well devote our thought, our prayer, our constructive effort. And as the task is most worthy, the process is most difficult and delicate. But it can be done, it must be done, if we are to meet our responsibilities and prove equal to our opportunities. Teaching Must be Methodic All good teaching is methodic. It follows some plan that experience and research have approved. To teach without method, or to teach unmindful of method, is to fail utterly. No amount of zeal, no wealth of enthusiasm, no acceptance of the place of teaching from a sense of duty, valuable as these may be, will in any appreciable degree ensure results such as we pray for and long to achieve. Our methods of teaching find their sanction in certain underlying laws. These laws are our educational principles. These educational principles, when rightly understood, will likewise be found to rest upon another series of laws which inhere in the mind itself. The teacher must know (1) how the mind operates, (2) how these laws of the mind express themselves in terms of educational principles, and (3) how these educational principles determine methods of teaching. Threefold A complete recognition of this threefold aspect of the problem of teacher-making is found in the teaching of Jesus. It is said that he taught in parables. That is, his method of teaching was in the form of the parable. The parable method of teaching rests upon the well-known educational law that we should proceed from the concrete to the abstract. He saw the kingdom of heaven in a mustard seed; in a man that is a householder; in a man which sowed good seed in his field; in leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal; in a treasure hid in a field; in a merchantman seeking goodly pearls; in a net which is cast into the sea; and so on through the series. In each case it is to be noted that he presents the concrete, the familiar, easily understood experiences of the every-day life of his hearers, and upon these he builds their understanding of the abstract and new knowledge of the kingdom. It is becoming increasingly clear to educational experts that no finer example of teaching is to be found anywhere than that exemplified by the Great Teacher, Jesus of Nazareth. We shall find in the method of others many valuable applications of educational law. We shall learn from the long array of educational reformers many broken fragments of good teaching. But the perfect ideal, the rounded model of all wise. teaching, is found only in the activities of Jesus of Nazareth. Some Defects Our Sunday-school teaching is even now too frequently simply the interpretation of a lesson. It is, I fear, quite generally an attempt, successful or otherwise, to explain the meanings of terms; to locate, geographically and historically, the events of the lesson; to memorize some Golden Text; to strain to the limit the language of the Bible in an effort to find in each lesson some all-comprehensive guidance; and to bring about these results under conditions of instruction and of discipline that defeat whatever of virtue such a process might have. It is not the fault of the Sunday-school teachers that this has been possible, it is the result of our system. We have frequently given over to wholly untrained teachers the immature mind, the mind that is not able to reject or to accept, but is wholly without an experience against which to measure the quality of its instruction. To teach a mature mind the truth of God is a noble work. To teach a child the truth of God is a nobler work. For the Sunday-school teacher there opens a splendid prospect, a glorious possibility. |