The Secret of Teaching Power.

By MR. A. T. WATSON, M.A., Rector, Burgh Academy, Dumbarton.

EDUCATION is the cultivation of all the human powers. Religious education may be defined as the cultivation of these powers with special reference to the will of God. A religious teacher, then, must not only have knowledge of the will of God as it is disclosed in the Bible, but he must have, at least, a fair acquaintance with those powers which he seeks to cultivate. It is not enough that he be well read in his Bible-not even enough that he have a large store of moral and religious experience. These the excellent teacher must have; but the excellent teacher must have more he must have a knowledge of the child nature he wishes to instruct and train.

In some this knowledge is instinctive. To recall the varied experiences of childhood and youth costs them little or no effort. If they are men and women in age, they are still boys and girls in nature. It has been said of Dr. Arnold, who was a prince among educators, that the natural youthfulness and elasticity of his constitution gave him a great advantage in dealing with the young. He said of himself, "When I find that I cannot run up the library stairs, I shall know that it is time for me to go." A pupil says of him, “Often and often have I said to myself, 'If it was one of ourselves who had just spoken, he could not more completely have known and understood our thoughts and ideas." The big boy or girl in this sense makes the best teacher. Others who are not thus favoured by nature for teaching, if they are to have any but a random success, must make some effort to realize what the child's powers and the child's points of view are. I know some excellent teachers who have long outlived the impressions of their early youth, but who yet produce most admirable results; and when I say results, I think more of the formation of habit and character than of those results which are readily visible and easily tested by examinations, either written or oral. In such a case the teacher seems to be gifted with a power somewhat akin to that of the literary artist-the power of vividly imagining and realizing a character not his own. Something of this power must reside in every teacher who aims at securing the permanent results just referred to. Without it all the machinery for class teaching that can be applied will be, in general, comparatively worthless, because unskilfully directed. I am careful to say "in general," because experience teaches that a marvellous Providence often guides the most unskilful efforts in teaching as in other matters. If your pupils are naturally active-minded, having their "wits to the fore," and if they are not ill-disposed, they will derive some little good from even the dreariest round of formal repetition and dry explanation. But I say "comparatively worthless" in view of the lofty aims and steadily achieved results of all genuine teaching. But this power exists in very different degrees in individual teachers. To those who possess it largely it is almost an impertinence to prescribe principles or rules for guidance. For, of course, they are our men of genius in every art, who supply the principles of their art, and from whose modes of

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working we formulate rules for our general procedure in that art. Beethoven, the great musician, was once challenged by a critic for disregarding, in one of his compositions, a generally received rule. He replied, That rule, sir, is no rule for me." But even a very small degree of this power will enable any one to produce genuinely good results if he be made aware of what he should aim at, and of the general method he should employ in pursuing that aim. In its highest form that aim may be expressed in a single sentence:—It is not so much knowledge, as the means of gaining knowledge, you have to teach. And in a single sentence, too, the general method:-Do not work so much FOR your pupils as work WITH them. All other aims should be subservient to that one, and all other methods revolve round that central method. If the teacher try hard and patiently, through failure after failure, to realize that aim in that way, there must be something exceptionally wrong with him if he does not succeed. Teaching would be an exception to the rule that regulates other arts if an intelligent appreciation of that principle, backed up by an earnest and persistent desire to learn by experience, together with a common capacity of adapting resources to ends, did not give him a power in teaching second only to that of the teacher who "is born and not made.” Only, it must be borne in mind that, for such, experience is by far the most potent factor in the acquiring of power. No mere enlightened acquaintance with principles and methods constitutes a royal road to power in teaching. The study of books on these points is valuable, as may be the listening to papers at a conference; but, after all, the reflection that these induce, and the hints they give from the experience of others, will be of little avail if the work in the schoolroom is not conducted with observation and tact. Many a man that knows all about the theory of teaching can't teach, as a friend of mine knows all about the philosophy of swimming but can't swim, and the theory of sound production without being able to sing or play. In a practical art you learn by your failures. No true beginning is made until it has been recognised that one must be one's own teacher in the art of teaching, and must cultivate an activemindedness that is ever ready to note failures and to find means for overcoming them. For it is a common experience that you may have made an impression on the gentle and amiable pupil, while you have scarcely bridled the attention of the fiery and stubborn one.

Sympathy, then, with child nature, which is the first of all requisites for gaining power in teaching, if it be not original-if it be not a constitutional inheritance—may be acquired. And when acquired nothing is to be compared with it for influencing a class. Without it your apparatus, your Bible pictures, your memory helps, your adoption of the best received methods, even your stories, will miserably fail in their aim, and will all, by-and-by, sink to the level of the dullest routine. There is no questioning it; "the one thing needful" is, that in every lesson you give you bẹ constantly feeling for the right level. It is all so much recklessly wasted powder if you do not do this. Nothing else will enable you to grapple with those bugbears of all Sabbath school teaching-listlessness and fidgets. Teaching has been called "the noblest of all professions and the sorriest of trades. There is surely no work more delightful to those who like it; and liking it depends on acquiring this power of "projecting one's

own mind into the pupils' minds to see what is going on there, and to think not only of how the lesson is being given, but also of how it is being received." Rules of teaching are nothing to this for giving power. It is with them as with other matters-the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. And if it be true that the spirit is constantly tending to become the better, there is great need for jealously guarding this power when it is possessed. We must keep ourselves ever fresh and free in sympathy with our young ones, and ready to interest them. Whatever methods we adopt we must keep revising them constantly, with a fresh look for improvement. I am certain of this, that Sabbath school work, at any rate, will have little or no influence on the inner life of the generation if much dependence is laid on the routine of memorizing psalms and hymns, the reading of passages of Scripture, with formal explanations, however correct. Sympathy, then, is the key-note principle of teaching. It is the germ of all else in the art; and it suggests almost everything else that can be said on the subject. It tells us that there is little good in pouring into or stuffing the children with what are called lessons. There is not much virtue in carelessly telling Bible facts or doctrines, leaving the Spirit of God responsible for all else. That seems to me not the kind of human help which entitles us to expect Divine help. We are gardeners developing seeds by the help of sunlight, and air, and water. We are not stokers. There is no promise that God will bless the efforts of any of us who mistake the real ends and means of the work we undertake. We must touch the emotions with Scripture fact and truth; and we cannot do that unless we deeply interest children by employing the art of putting things at their level. Although all the Biblical lore is poured into them that it is possible for their big memories—and they are big-to retain, the work in the Sabbath school will fail, as that in our day schools is most liable to fail, if there is not left in the pupils, as a general result, a real love for what they have read, and a desire to have more. It is only the knowledge acquired in such a way as to become a subject of thought and a source of feeling that germinates. It germinates if it has taken hold of the soil of the young hearts, and is left free to sprout. No lesson is good for much that is not made to attract the intelligence and the feelings of the learner. Other lessons will soon be forgotten. Indeed, as the child changes to manhood, all lessons, as lessons, tend to lapse into oblivion. That is the inevitable in the case. They are of the nature of the husk that decays; but if we have taught in a way thoroughly interesting, if we have got the pupil to meet us half-way, if the lesson has made him feel that he has something in common with what we are saying or telling, if it has been linked with some of his own thoughts or experiences, or if it has touched his emotions, something has been done that will probably outlast mere change of time. "The body dies, the spirit lives," is true even of lessons. The necessity for being interesting, then, is of the first importance. Bring Bible topics within the range of the child's experience. Study to give life-like descriptions of scenes. We have a dozen eyes fixed on us at once if we do that well; and we have the pleasure of seeing our little heart-breaks the idle, the dull, and the listless—as eager as the others. That's our opportunity for them.

Then we are never interesting if we talk high to young children-if we

lecture them at the pulpit elevation-if we use big words, or try to make them understand big, comprehensive thoughts, such as the saving principle of love. Any one, provided he is an ordinary person, that tries to recall himself as between the ages of 5 and 12, will bear me out when I say, that it is almost impossible for a child to realize that what is so familiar to it as love can be the most powerful influence in the world. You can reach its emotions with the story of Jesus' love, and train it to feelings of loyalty to Christ as champion in a fight against the Evil One; but you will fail to make it understand or be interested in doctrine or philosophy. Cultivate a power of homely illustration, of telling anecdotes which have the core of the lesson in them. Begin a lesson as often as close it with such a story. For making a spiritual impression, the parables -and chiefly the Good Shepherd, the Prodigal Son, and the Ninety-andnine-are probably the best arrows you can shoot with. Remember that the Scriptures teem with illustrations, and that our Lord himself is the master of the art.

Then this principle of sympathy evidently suggests the necessity for graduating lessons, for making the steps short and easy, at least easy enough to be overcome by such effort as they can give. I know, from early experience, that it is a common mistake of Sabbath school teachers —and by no means merely of the older teachers-to assume too much knowledge on the pupils' part, and too much capacity for adding to it.

Again, if you remember how engrossed the young are in the present, and how many little life-experiences-little presents, so to speak—they have gone through since the last Sabbath day, you will see the need for repeating the impressions of last lesson; and as a means to this, of having one lesson linked to another by some association of ideas. The lessons should form groups or sets. But the excellent practice usually followed by Sabbath school superintendents in this respect renders it needless to enlarge on this detail.

(To be continued.)

The Wonderful Book: its Books and Writers.

By the REV. DAVID THOMPSON, Appledore, Devon.

Of all writings none are so ancient and important as the sacred Scriptures. By them we converse with far back ages; we associate with great and good persons that left their mark on their respective ages; we have fellowship with histories that stirred former days; we have an audience in the sacred temple of faith, listening to Divine thoughts that glow the soul. This Book, beginning with the creation, spreads over a period of many thousand years; yea, including the book of Revelation, we have the world spanned-the eternity past arched with the eternity to come. If there was no Bible, what a blank in the history of our world! But with the Bible we have a breadth of

vision that no line can measure and no years can tell. Oh, Book divine! Most wonderful! how concise the words, yet how broad the truth!

This wonderful book has different writers. It was not written at one time by one man, but composed at different times by different men. Indeed, the Bible is many books bound in one. We have, first, the book of Genesis, which means generation, in which we have a succinct, yet very important history of the world for 2369 years. In that book we have notices of several great and good men, whose lives were expressive histories such as Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph. Fuller justly remarks-"Without this history the world would be in total darkness, not knowing whence it came or whither it goeth. In the first page of this sacred book a child may learn more in one hour than all the philosophers in the world learned without it in thousands of years." Then we have the book called Exodus; and, as its title imports, it contains an account of Israel's departure from Egypt and their sojourn in the wilderness. In the first verses we have the Jews as slaves, grievously oppressed; and the remarkable child Moses, wondrously preserved, brought up in the royal court of Pharaoh, becoming the deliverer and leader of the despised people. About the middle of the book we have Mount Sinai, the scene of a grand Divine manifestation, when the Moral Law is given, written on stones, speaking its perpetuity. And throughout the book we have lessons of ingratitude and fickleness—a race of grumblers, who would not battle the ills of life. The third book is Leviticus, which describes, as its name indicates, the laws and ceremonies of the Levitical priesthood, in which we have striking pictures of gospel grace-types of the better and greater priesthood of Christ. The fourth book, Numbers, derives its name from the frequent numberings and marshallings of the people, and speaks of victories obtained in war. The fifth book, Deuteronomy, which signifies a "second law," was so called because it is a repetition of laws before delivered, illustrative of the truth, "line upon line, precept upon precept." These five books, written by Moses, called "The Law," are the most ancient the world ever saw; hoar with antiquity, yet full of the buoyancy of youth. They are the foundations of sacred truth-the first tier in the pyramid of grace-the stately portico into the temple of spiritualities. The book of Joshua is worthy of the man who wrote it. He retained his integrity in iniquitous times-breasted the billow-walked in white when contamination was general. He and Caleb were the only two that left Egypt who were permitted to enter the promised land. There is true heroism in his nature; and he might well lead on to honour and to victory. It has been remarked "that the book of Joshua bears the same relation to the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses, as the Acts of the Apostles bears to the four Gospels. The Pentateuch contains a history of the acts of the great Jewish legislator under the immediate authority and direction of God, and the laws on which His ancient Church should be established; and the book of Joshua shews us the end of these laws, and how the Church was established in Canaan. The analogy between this and the relation of Acts to the Gospels is sufficiently obvious." The book of Judges is sufficiently distinctive, deriving its name from its contents; for it gives the history of the kingdom of the Jews under fifteen judges; and is