Teacher-Training Series 
 
 for the Sunday School 
 
 TWO 
 THE PUPIL AND THE TEACHER 
 LUTHER A. WEIGLE, Ph.D. 
 
 
/.2-7./SL. 
 
 *8W* PRINCETON, N. J. ^|J 
 
 Presented byVroX.O. W , On>\roc7\n r *- 
 
V ( JAN 27 1912 
 
 Lutheran \%, g{CAL ^ 
 Teacher-Training Series 
 
 FOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL 
 
 PREPARED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE SUNDAY 
 SCHOOL LITERATURE COMMITTEE OF THE 
 BOARD OF THE LUTHERAN PUBLI- 
 CATION SOCIETY 
 
 BOOK TWO 
 
 THE PUPIL AND THE TEACHER 
 
 By Luther A. Weigle, Ph. D. 
 
 Professor of Philosophy, Carleton College 
 
 THE LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, PA. 
 
Copyright, 191 i 
 
 BY THE 
 
 LUTHERAN PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 It is with a sense of satisfaction that we present this series of Sunday 
 School Teacher-Training handbooks. Their preparation has been in 
 response to a frequently expressed desire on the part of many of our 
 pastors and teachers. The committee has felt the difficulty of the task 
 and the many conditions to be met. Much consideration has been 
 given to the work, and not a little revision has been found necessary. 
 To enter a field already largely occupied and vindicate our claim that 
 such a series is needed, is no small task. These books have been 
 made, not because there are not already many excellent books on 
 teacher-training, but because none of them covers all the ground we 
 deem requisite. Nothing needs to be more carefully guarded than the 
 character of the literature we give to our Sunday schools. Especially 
 is this true of the helps for the study and teaching of God's word. We 
 lay emphasis upon child-nurture from the viewpoint of our Church's 
 teaching, that baptized children are members of the Church of Christ. 
 The responsibility of the Sunday school in teaching the child is the 
 responsibility of the Church. The teacher, therefore, should know 
 not only his Bible and its message, not only the laws of child-thought 
 and the best methods of influencing the unfolding soul, but he should 
 know what his Church stands for and what it teaches. With this con- 
 ception of our responsibility we have chosen the subjects and the 
 writers. The work speaks for itself. We believe it will be found 
 adapted to the better equipment of our Lutheran teachers. The series 
 consists of four books, as follows: "The Book and the Message," 
 "The Pupil and the Teacher," "The School and the Church" and 
 "The Lutheran Church and Child-Nurture." The aim of these 
 books is to furnish the teachers and officers of our Sunday schools with 
 a working knowledge of the Bible as a book and as the message of 
 
 (iii) 
 
IV 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 God to men ; of the personality of the pupils, and the principles 
 and methods to be applied in teaching them ; of the organization, aim 
 and work of the Sunday school, and of our Lutheran views of the 
 child's relation to the Church. 
 
 Sunday School Literature Committee. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 LESSON 
 
 I. 
 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 XIII. 
 XIV. 
 
 XV. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 XXI. 
 
 PART I— THE PUPIL 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Teacher's Work and Training 9 ^ 
 
 Physical Activity 15 
 
 Early Childhood 22 
 
 Middle Childhood 30 
 
 Later Childhood 38 
 
 Early Adolescence 47 
 
 Later Adolescence 56 
 
 Instinct 65 
 
 Habit 72 
 
 The Will 80 
 
 Morality and Religion 89 
 
 PART II— THE TEACHER 
 
 Grades 102 
 
 Methods of Teaching 112 
 
 The Plan of the Lesson 121 *" 
 
 The Pupil at Work 131 
 
 Attention and Apperception : Principles 142 
 
 Attention and Apperception : Methods 154 
 
 Questions 169 
 
 The Class as a Social Institution 182 
 
 The Spiritual Goal 195 *- 
 
 The Ideal Teacher : Jesus 210 *■ 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 This book contains no bibliography and no list of references for 
 each lesson. It is to be hoped, however, that each training class will 
 secure a little reference library, and that each teacher will read at 
 least one book bearing upon the development of the pupil, and one 
 upon the work of the teacher. The following books are recommended 
 as a compact list, all of which a class might well own : 
 
 To be read i?i connection with Part I : 
 
 Harrison : " A Study of Child Nature." 
 
 Forbush : "The Boy Problem." 
 
 Coe: "The Spiritual Life." 
 
 Addams : " The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets." 
 
 To be read in connection with Part II : 
 
 Burton and Mathews : ' ' Principles and Ideals for the Sunday 
 School." 
 
 Du Bois : "The Point of Contact in Teaching." 
 , — Bryant : " How to Tell Stories to Children." 
 
 Hervey : "Picture-work." 
 
 Coe : " Education in Religion and Morals." 
 
 For those who wish to know more about psychology and its application 
 to teaching : 
 James : " Talks to Teachers on Psychology." 
 Home : "The Psychological Principles of Education." 
 
PART ONE 
 
 THE PUPIL 
 
Lutheran Teacher-Training Series 
 
 PART I.— THE PUPIL 
 
 LESSON I 
 
 The Teacher's Work and Training 
 
 i. What is your aim as a Sunday school teacher? What is the 
 work that you are set to do ? 
 
 You must do more than instruct. It is not enough to give your 
 pupil a knowledge, however true and full, of the Bible, or of Jewish 
 history, or of Christian doctrine. He might get to know all these 
 things without doing anything worth while. You must reach his life 
 and mold his action. 
 
 Yet you must do more than train your pupil in right habits of 
 action. Animals can be trained. You want, more than the action, 
 the will behind it. Your pupil is to become capable of acting for him- 
 self, in a voluntary, self-initiated expression of what he knows and be- 
 lieves. Huxley spoke unworthily when he said that if anyone could 
 wind him up like an eight-day clock, and guarantee that all his life he 
 would do nothing but perfectly right actions, he would close the bar- 
 gain and be wound up at once. The mechanically perfect Huxley 
 would be, not a man, but a clock in human form. Character is some- 
 thing which each must make for himself. 
 
 As a teacher you aim, then, to develop a personality. You want 
 your pupil not simply to know, but to live Christianity. You want 
 him not merely to do right deeds, but to do them of his own will, 
 knowing what he is doing and why he is doing it, and loving the right 
 for sake of the Father who gave him that freedom. There is but 
 one real test of a teacher's work. God and men alike will ask you 
 that one question. It is not, "What have you taught your pupil to 
 know?" or, "What have you trained him to do?" but, "What sort 
 of person have you helped him to become?" 
 
 (9) 
 
10 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIEvS 
 
 2. Personality grows naturally. You cannot build it within a 
 pupil by mechanically cementing ideas one upon the other as though 
 they were bricks. The youngest child in your class already has a per- 
 sonality of his own — living, growing, maturing. And, like every other 
 living thing, it has its laws of life and growth and development. Just 
 as the body develops in accordance with the laws of its nature, so the 
 mind develops from the blank of babyhood to the self-reliant person- 
 ality of complete manhood in accordance with definite laws which by 
 nature belong to it. If you are going to help a child become the right 
 sort of person, you must understand these laws, just as truly as the 
 gardener must understand and use the natural laws of plant develop- 
 ment. 
 
 It is the aim of this book to tell you, in a plain and simple way, 
 what these laws are and how you may use them. Its first part — The 
 Pupil — gives the laws themselves. It is a description of how person- 
 ality grows. The second part — The Teacher — applies these laws to 
 your work. It deals with the principles of teaching. 
 
 3. The teacher needs, above all else, to understand children. But 
 that is not easy. Children are not "little men " and "little women." 
 They differ from adults, not simply in size and strength, but in the very 
 quality of their powers. Growth to manhood and womanhood in- 
 volves a change as real as that from caterpillar to butterfly, even if less 
 obvious. 
 
 The body of a child is, in all its proportions, unlike that of a grown 
 person. Relatively to the rest of its body, the head of a baby is twice 
 as large as that of a man, and its legs but two-thirds as long. Propor- 
 tionately, its brain is six times as heavy as the man's, but its muscles 
 w r eigh only half as much as his. 
 
 The mental difference is even greater. The child has, of course, a 
 less wide experience, and consequently fewer and less adequate ideas. 
 His mental faculties, again, have not reached their full growth. But 
 this is not all. A child's whole way of looking at things, his feelings 
 and interests, his instincts and desires, are different. He sees the 
 world in a perspective of his own. 
 
 In late years, many trained observers have studied children, seeking 
 to learn the fundamental characteristics of each stage in their develop- 
 ment. The more important results of this systematic child-study are 
 summed up for you in the first part of this book. You will need to 
 supplement it, however, with your own study and experience. Ob- 
 serve children for yourself, especially in their spontaneous plays and 
 games. Be mindful of the possibility that you may misinterpret their 
 
THE TEACHER'S WORK AND TRAINING 11 
 
 words and actions, and attribute to them thoughts and feelings which 
 only an adult could have. Our grown-up point of view almost in- 
 evitably distorts our interpretation of what children do and say. One 
 way to guard against this is to go to the "child you knew best of all." 
 Remember from your own childhood how a child thinks and feels. 
 Get back to your own point of view, your interests and activities, your 
 reasonings and attitudes, when you were the age of those you now 
 teach. But, after all, if you are really to know and help children, you 
 must share their life. " If we want to educate children," said Mar- 
 tin Luther, "we must live with them ourselves." Nothing can take 
 the place of this direct personal relationship. With it, you perhaps 
 need know but little of the laws of the mind or of the scientifically ob- 
 served characteristics of child life ; without it, no amount of training 
 can make a teacher of you. 
 
 4. The Sunday school teacher needs as careful and adequate 
 training as any other. You teach the same children as the teacher 
 in the public schools. You must deal with the same minds and the 
 same natural laws. Every child has an inward disposition toward re- 
 ligion ; but none has a separate mental faculty for it. It is your busi- 
 ness, not to train a single faculty, but rather to help the whole child, 
 with all his everyday powers of mind and heart, to become religious. 
 
 Yours is an educational work, and it calls for the best of educational 
 methods. It is no fad or frill that you are teaching. Religion is an 
 essential element of human life, and its highest interest. It is the only 
 sure basis for personal morality, for social uplift, and for good citizen- 
 ship. And these are the very things at which all education aims. 
 Schools and colleges are maintained throughout the length and breadth 
 of this land, not simply to make our children clever or skillful, but to 
 help them become men and women of integrity and purpose, efficient 
 members of society, and loyal to country and to humanity. Education 
 needs religion, therefore. Without religious faith, no one is com- 
 pletely fitted for life, for citizenship, or for social service. No educa- 
 tion is complete, nor is the realization of its aim assured, until it has 
 been crowned with a development of the spiritual nature. 
 
 But our public schools do not give this development. Religion is 
 the one human interest that remains unrecognized by the State in its 
 elaborate provision for the education of future citizens. The Sunday 
 school has a place and responsibility of its own, therefore, in our edu- 
 cational system. Upon it rests the completion of education. 
 
 It may be questioned whether the Sunday school can or should 
 adopt the methods of the public school. This much, however, is 
 
12 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 sure : The Sunday school must feel its responsibility as an educational 
 institution. It must realize that it shares with the public school a com- 
 moTi task. It must do its part of the work of education with as much 
 dcjiuiteness of aim, soundness of method and efficiency of organiza- 
 tion, as the public school maintains. It must strive so to co-operate 
 with the public school as to promote a unity of development within the 
 child. 
 
 This is a high ideal. You undoubtedly feel that many things in your 
 own school, and in most others, stand in the way of its realization. 
 But it is what we must work toward ; and it is plain where to begin. 
 The first and greatest need of every Sunday school is well-trained 
 teachers. Begin with yourself. Make your own teaching, at least, 
 what it ought to be. 
 
 But not only does education need religion ; the converse is just as 
 true. Religion needs education. "Go ye therefore and teach'''' 
 was Jesus' farewell commission. Religion is more than feeling. For 
 sake of its truth and permanence, we must know what we believe. If 
 the new generation is to know God at all, and to do anything in His 
 service, religion must be made a vital part of its early growth and edu- 
 cation. The Sunday school is the Church of to-morrow. Martin 
 Luther was right in his estimate of the work of the teacher : 
 
 " For my part, if I were compelled to leave off preaching and 
 to enter some other vocation, I know no work that would please 
 me better than that of teaching. For I am convinced that, next 
 to preaching, this is by far the most useful, the greatest and the 
 best labor in the world ; and, in fact, I am sometimes in doubt 
 which of the two is the better. For you cannot teach an old 
 dog new tricks, and it is hard to reform old sinners, yet that is 
 what by preaching we undertake to do, and our labor is often 
 spent in vain ; but it is easy to bend and to train young trees." * 
 
 This estimate of the teacher's work is even more true to-day than in 
 Luther's time. The world recognizes how as never before that it is 
 in the school that society best shapes itself and perpetuates its inter- 
 ests and ideals. We have come to see that education is the fundamen- 
 tal method of social progress and reform. f Schools and colleges are 
 multiplying, and are being brought ever closer to the concrete inter- 
 ests of workaday life. Everybody gets an education these days, and 
 one can get an education in everything. Practically no human inter- 
 
 * Sermon on the Duty of Sending Children to School, 
 t Dewey : " My Pedagogic Creed." 
 
THK TEACHER'S WORK AND' TRAINING 13 
 
 est is unprovided for by the public schools of America — save religion. 
 Inevitably, the young- will come to feel that religion is of little conse- 
 quence, or else is absolutely separate from the ordinary interests of 
 everyday life. 
 
 The Church is awake to these facts, and it is fitting its methods to 
 the situation it faces. We are in the midst of an educational revival 
 of Christianity. The teaching function of the ministry is being empha- 
 sized. The "new evangelism" relies upon Christian nurture rather 
 than upon emotional revival methods. National and international 
 organizations are earnestly seeking to correlate all educational forces 
 into a unity of effort that will include morality and religion. As a 
 Sunday school teacher, you are stationed, therefore, at the very center 
 of action. Yours is the strategic point in the fight for better education, 
 for social and civic reform, and for the kingdom of God. You cannot 
 prepare yourself too well. 
 
 5. You have God's help in your work. You are teaching His 
 word, and you have the promise of the Holy Spirit's light and power. 
 You can feel the Father's nearness as you come to Him in prayer. 
 Without Him you would fail. You cannot help your pupil to matur- 
 ity of spiritual life without God's presence in your own. Personal 
 consecration is the first and greatest need of every Sunday school 
 teacher. 
 
 But consecration alone will not make of you a teacher. Spirituality 
 does not insure efficiency. God's help does not relieve you of respon- 
 sibility. Paul said of himself and Apollos, "We are God's fellow- 
 workers." That is the best text in the Bible for a Sunday school 
 teacher. It expresses your privilege and your dignity. God will not 
 do all the work ; you are more than a tool of His, more than a mere 
 channel for His Spirit. God asks your help — that is the greatest 
 thing life can bring to anybody. The consecration He seeks is not 
 passive submission, but a consecration of work — of brain and hands 
 and feet that are able as well as willing to do something for Him. He 
 asks you not simply to trust Him, but to remember how He trusts 
 you. He has faith enough in you to give you a piece of work to do. 
 And He has given you the highest work in His power to bestow — to 
 help Him in the shaping of human lives and immortal souls. Surely 
 you want to make of yourself a real helper of His ; you want to bring 
 to His service the highest energy, the best equipment and the most 
 efficient methods that you can. 
 
14 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 The questions following each lesson are in no sense meant to take 
 the place of an outline, or to serve as a guide for study. You should 
 study the lesson for yourself, making a careful written outline of your 
 own. After you have mastered it, you may then turn to the questions. 
 They are meant to help you review the main points of the lesson, as 
 a final step in its preparation. The leader of the training class will, 
 of course, make out his own questions. 
 
 1. What is the distinction between instruction and training? Show 
 how both are included in the work of the teacher. 
 
 2. What do you understand by a law of mental development ? 
 How does it differ from a moral law ? 
 
 3. What is the aim of this book ? Of each of its parts ? 
 
 4. What are some of the ways in which a child differs from an 
 adult? 
 
 5. What methods will you use to study children for yourself? 
 What are some of the difficulties of each method? 
 
 6. Why ought religion be a part of the education we give our chil- 
 dren? 
 
 7. Why do not the public schools give any education in religion? 
 Ought they? 
 
 8. Do you feel that the Sunday school can adopt the methods of 
 the public schools ? Ought it ? Give reasons for your answers. 
 
 9. Ought the Church make use of the educational method to win 
 the coming generation ? Compare the educational and revival methods 
 of propagating Christianity, with a statement of the relative advan- 
 tages of each. 
 
 10. What evidences can you cite of an " educational revival " within 
 the Church ? 
 
 11. Why is personal consecration the first qualification of the Sun- 
 day school teacher ? 
 
 12. Does God's help make your own careful training for your work 
 any less imperative ? Give reasons for your answer. 
 
LESSON II 
 Physical Activity 
 
 i. Everyone recognizes that there are certain periods of develop- 
 ment through which we all pass in the growth from babyhood to ma- 
 turity, and that each period has its distinctive characteristics. But 
 there is room for difference of opinion concerning the number of 
 periods which ought to be distinguished, and the ages at which boun- 
 dary lines may be drawn. 
 
 As a matter of fact, there are no hard and fast periods, and no exact 
 boundary lines. Growth is grajdual and continuous. The baby enters 
 into sturdy boyhood, and the boy into youth, without our realizing the 
 precise time of transition. Sometimes new powers come suddenly ; 
 but the rule is that they ripen more or less gradually. Individual chil- 
 dren, moreover, differ greatly. Some enter a given stage earlier, and 
 pass through it more quickly, than others. 
 
 The most definite transition is that from childhood to adolescence. 
 It comes usually at thirteen or fourteen, and is marked by deep-seated 
 physical and mental changes. 
 
 From the point of view of the Sunday school, we may recognize a 
 subdivision of the years before this transition into three periods, and 
 three periods in the years after. The six periods and the correspond- 
 ing departments of the Sunday school are : 
 
 (i) Early Childhood, under six : Beginners. 
 
 (2) Middle Childhood, three years, ages six to eight : Primary. 
 
 (3) Later Childhood, four years, ages nine to twelve : Junior. 
 
 (4) Early Adolescence, four years, ages thirteen to sixteen : Inter- 
 mediate. 
 
 (5) Later Adolescence, four years, ages seventeen to twenty: 
 Senior. 
 
 (6) Manhood and Womanhood, twenty-one and over : Advanced. 
 2. The most evident characteristic of childhood is its physical 
 
 activity. Sometimes, annoyed by it, we elders call it restlessness. 
 A little child is incessantly active. His tiny legs travel far in a day's 
 play, and his hands are always busy at something. He is seldom con- 
 tent simply to look or listen ; he wants to go to things and handle 
 them. Every impression that goes in at his senses, it seems, comes 
 out at his muscles. 
 
 (15) 
 
16 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING vSERIES 
 
 3. It is no accident — this great place that physical activity has in the 
 life of a little child. It is nature's provision for mental as well as 
 physical development. It is essential to the growth of personality. 
 This becomes clear when we think of the results of a child's phys- 
 ical activity : 
 
 (1) Physical growth. This is the primary need of the first six years 
 of the child's life. It is the time of most rapid growth. A child's 
 weight doubles during the first six months, and increases fourfold 
 during the first three years, and sixfold during the six. Height in- 
 creases nearly fifty per cent the first year, and nearly seventy-five per 
 cent within the first three years ; while at six it has been more than 
 doubled.* That this growth may be normal, the child needs proper 
 physical conditions — good food, pure air, the light and sunshine of 
 God's out-of-doors, and plenty of sound sleep. And for the best real- 
 ization of all these conditions, and the assurance of healthy growth, 
 there is constant need of physical activity and exercise. 
 
 (2) Physical development Because growth and development usu- 
 ally take place together, we often use the terms as though they meant 
 the same. But growth means simply increase in size ; while develop- 
 ment stands for a change in the character of the bodily tissues, making 
 for maturity and strength. Sometimes growth takes place without 
 development, and then the child is fatty, flabby, and apt to be sickly. 
 There is only one way to insure development — through exercise. Food 
 and air and sleep may cause the body to grow, but the only way to 
 get good, hard muscles is to use them. A child craves physical activ- 
 ity because nature wants its body to develop. Such exercise, more- 
 over, develops the nervous system as well as the muscles. Strength 
 and skill, steadiness and self-control, are some of its results. 
 
 (3) New sensations. The child is a discoverer in a strange, new 
 world. He does not passively wait for things to force themselves upon 
 him ; he pushes out to seek knowledge. Each bit of activity widens his 
 experience. It is really an experiment. It brings new sensations, 
 new information, better understanding ; and lays open new possibil- 
 ities. 
 
 (4) Use and meaning. The child's physical activity does more 
 than bring sensations ; it determines their meaning. The meaning 
 which anything has for a child depends upon what he can do with it. 
 He is not ready to appreciate the structure of things, to discriminate 
 
 * The best statement of the facts of growth, with a discussion of their bearing 
 upon education, is Tyler's " Growth and Education." Here, and in succeeding 
 chapters, we make a rough use of figures which he gives exactly. 
 
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 17 
 
 forms and textures, or to comprehend definitions. He is interested 
 primarily in the use which a thing may have, and especially in that use 
 to which he himself may put it. Ask any child to tell you what some 
 familiar nouns stand for, and his answer will bear witness to this fact. 
 "A knife is to cut," "Coffee is what papa drinks," "A circus is to 
 see the elephant " — are typical children's definitions. Professor Barnes 
 found that 80 per cent of the definitions of a list of common nouns 
 which six-year old children gave him, were in terms of activity and use. 
 This percentage decreased to 63 per cent for chiklren of seven and 
 eight, 57 per cent for those of nine, 43 per cent for those of ten and 
 eleven, and about 30 per cent for those of twelve to fourteen.* 
 
 (5) Habits. A thing done once is easier to do again. What a child 
 does becomes a very part of himself through the working of the law 
 of habit. Grouping these last three results — new sensations, meanings 
 and habits — we see that the child's mental and moral development is 
 in a great degree dependent upon his physical activity. 
 
 4. The causes of a child's physical activity are to be found in 
 deep inner laws of his being. He is so made that he must be active. 
 
 (1) He is impelled to act by the energy that is being constantly 
 generated within him. Energy always seeks an outlet. The heat of 
 a firebox begets the steam which drives a dynamo, and the electric 
 current gives forth light throughout a great city. Human energy is 
 no exception. It finds its natural outlet in physical activity. Much of 
 the child's activity is the spontaneous expression of the bounding life 
 that quickens every fiber of his being. 
 
 (2) He is impelled to act by the sensations he gets. He reaches for 
 everything he sees, turns toward the sound he hears, plays with what 
 he touches. His senses rouse his muscles. His impressions call forth 
 reactions. 
 
 We can see why this should be so if we think for a moment of the 
 structure of the nervous system. It is made up of three classes of 
 cells — sensory, associative and motor. The sensory cells receive im- 
 pressions ; the motor cells impel the muscles to act. The associative 
 cells connect the sensory with the motor, and so connect impressions 
 and actions. These three classes of cells may be coupled up in a 
 myriad intricate ways, yet they are always so related that the goal of 
 a sensory current is an associative cell, and that of an associative cur- 
 rent is ultimately motor. The natural result of every sensation, there- 
 fore, is an action. Every nerve current tends to go the whole way, 
 and so to issue in activity. 
 
 * Quoted by Bagley : " The Educative Process," p. 80. 
 
18 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 The nervous system has been well defined as a mechanism for trans- 
 lating sensations into movements. Its function is to receive impres- 
 sions from the outside world, and to respond to them with appropriate 
 actions. Strike at the fly that annoys you, and he is gone before your 
 hand touches him. His nervous system received an impression from 
 the movement of air and responded with an action that took him out 
 of danger. Strike laughingly at a friend, and he will dodge the blow 
 before he thinks — his nervous system has connected action with the 
 sight of the threatening arm. The nervous system is made for 
 action — and to adapt actions to situations. Every sensation becomes 
 an impulse. 
 
 (3) The child is impelled to act by his instincts. His nervous sys- 
 tem contains certain pre-established pathways which incoming cur- 
 rents are sure to follow, as they go on to discharge themselves in 
 action. These pathways are natural and hereditary. They constitute 
 great inborn tendencies to act and feel in certain ways. Fear, shyness, 
 curiosity, imitation, play, acquisitiveness — these are only a few of the 
 natural tendencies which every child possesses, which determine the 
 character of his reactions to the things that present themselves to him. 
 Not all of these tendencies, of course, are present at birth ; but they 
 manifest themselves in the course of the natural growth and develop- 
 ment of the nervous system. Each stage of development has its 
 own dominant instincts, naturally and inevitably determining its actions 
 and attitudes. A young child is just as certain to carry things to its 
 mouth as is the little chick to peck at any small object within range. 
 And at a certain age a child will fear the dark, a boy will love to fight, 
 and a youth will conceive a tender passion, just as naturally and with 
 as little consciousness of the reason why. 
 
 (4) The child is impelled to act by his ideas. For him, as a rule, to 
 think is to act. He says whatever comes into his mind ; he goes at 
 once to seek the toy of which he happens to think. He reacts as 
 directly to the presence of an idea or memory in his mind as to his 
 sensations. It matters nothing where the idea has come from. We 
 express it by saying that a child is naturally impulsive; or, if the 
 idea has come to him from someone else, that he is very suggest- 
 ible. 
 
 We can see why this should be so if we think again of what we just 
 learned about the nervous system. Ideas and memories are always 
 accompanied by nerve-action within the associative cells which make 
 up the gray matter of the brain. And a nerve-current in the associ- 
 ative cells, we saw, tends naturally to run over into the motor cells, 
 
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 19 
 
 and so to result in action. Ideas, therefore, are dynamic ; they become 
 impulses. 
 
 5. These principles of action hold true for us who are grown 
 as well as for little children. 
 
 The law of motor discharge remains true. We, too, are impelled to 
 action by every nerve current. Every sensation calls for a response ; 
 every idea is an impulse. See an attractive book, and it is hard to 
 resist picking it up ; think of the pleasure of a tennis game, and you 
 feel the impulse to play. Action of some sort is the natural outcome of 
 every nerve current^ and hence of every sensatio7i and idea. 
 
 Our actions, again, are reactions. They depend upon the situation ; 
 we fit them always to the circumstances. No action possesses an intrin- 
 sic value. ' ' There is a time, ' ' as the Preacher says, ' ' for every purpose 
 and for every work." To do the right thing at the right time, we all 
 naturally seek ; and we do what we do at any moment because there 
 seems to be something in the present situation that calls for just such 
 action. Human actions are seldom without motive, and most motives 
 are rooted in our sense of the situation. 
 
 To the end of life, moreover, the development of perso?iality depends 
 upon action. It is what we do, more than what we see or feel or think, 
 that determines what we are and what we become. Life's real mean- 
 ings are determined by its deeds. Thoughts are idle that make no 
 practical difference. No bit of knowledge is really learned until it 
 grips the life. 
 
 It is action, as a matter of fact, that measures the final worth of any 
 life. We are in the world, not to look on, but to do. He lacks man- 
 hood who lives but to be amused by the passing show. Work 
 bestows meaning upon life, and brings unity to its scattered impulses. 
 Work gives a man dignity and poise ; it shows forth the divinity that 
 is within him. Not just to find out God's wisdom are we here, but to 
 work for Him and with Him in the building of His kingdom. 
 
 6. We differ from little children in the voluntary control 
 which we have acquired, and which they do not yet possess. We are 
 able to select from among our sensations those pertinent to our pur- 
 poses, to prevent immediate reactions, and to check impulses by tak- 
 ing thought. Through experience, ive have gained self-control. The 
 child, on the other hand, has had little experience, and consequently 
 possesses few ideas, and is able to grasp only in a very limited way 
 the meaning of the situations he faces. We cannot expect him to have 
 self-control. These great laws which in us are so complexly inter- 
 woven with the results of experience, appear in his life in their simplest 
 
20 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 and clearest form. His energy must find immediate physical expres- 
 sions. He reacts at once to his impressions, and is drawn here and 
 there by the passing attraction of the moment. He thinks of but one 
 thing at a time, and it comes right out in impulsive action. He is an 
 eager bundle of instincts of which he is not yet master. 
 
 Yet, be it remembered, it is out of this very turmoil of activity, all 
 lacking in unity as it is, and out of it alone, that growth and develop- 
 ment, experience and intelligence, habit and will, can come. And so 
 it is plain what our attitude toward it should be. We will seek to use 
 and direct, rather than repress, the physical activity of childhood. 
 The child who is forced to be quiet and to sit still is failing to get 
 what he most needs to build for him a sturdy body, a sound mind, 
 and the right sort of character. "A child shut up without play," 
 said Martin Luther, "is like a tree that ought to bear fruit but is planted 
 in a flower-pot." More than that, repression works within him a pos- 
 itive injury. The child whose energy is not permitted to find its natural 
 outlet is bound to become nervous and irritable ; and every now and 
 then the tension will break in an outburst of mischief or of passion. 
 Unhappiness and discouragement, distrust and alienation, sullenness 
 and defiance, or else weak-willed dependence — are some of the results 
 within a child who is continually assailed with don't's. 
 
 QUESTIONS' 
 
 1. Into what periods may we divide the development of per- 
 sonality? What are the corresponding departments of the Sunday 
 school ? 
 
 2. What is the distinction between growth and development? 
 Show how physical activity is essential for each. 
 
 3. Give figures to show the rapidity of growth in early childhood. 
 
 4. Show how the child's mental development depends on his 
 physical activity. 
 
 5. What do you understand by a sensation ? A habit ? 
 
 6. Show how sensations impel the child to action. What do you 
 understand by a reaction ? 
 
 7. What is an instinct? 
 
 8. Why do ideas impel the child to action ? 
 
 9. State the law of motor discharge. 
 
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY 21 
 
 10. In what sense are our actions always reactions ? 
 
 11. How do we differ from the little child in voluntary control ? 
 
 12. What attitude should parents and teachers take toward the 
 child's physical activity? 
 
LESSON III 
 Early Childhood 
 
 We begin the study of the separate periods in the development of 
 personality with early childhood — the first six years of life. 
 
 I. The little child lives in a world of play. Most of us grown 
 people live in a world of work. The difference, we imagine, is that 
 the things we have to do are of real value, while what the child does 
 is not. 
 
 But the child's play is of real value. It is more than a means of 
 occupying him, or of working off his surplus energy. It is more even 
 than a means of exercise to promote physical growth and development. 
 It is a preparation for life. Groos has shown that young animals in- 
 stinctively anticipate in their play the activities which will be of use in 
 their maturity. So, too, the play of children develops instincts and 
 powers which will later be needed. Girls play with dolls and tea- 
 sets ; boys like to make things, build houses and dams, keep store or 
 play at soldier. Colonel Parker used to say that "play is God's 
 method of teaching children how to work." 
 
 More than this, play is essential to the best general developme?it 
 of body, mind and character. Coe sums it up well : 
 
 "Quickness and accuracy of perception; co-ordination of 
 the muscles, which puts the body at the prompt service of the 
 mind ; rapidity of thought ; accuracy of judgment ; promptness 
 of decision ; self-control ; respect for others ; the habit of co- 
 operation ; self-sacrifice for the good of a group — all these pro- 
 ducts of true education are called out in plays and games." * 
 
 And they can be gotten nowhere else so easily and surely, or so 
 early in life. A child without play matures quickly, but his life will 
 always remain stunted. "The boy without a play-ground is father to 
 the man without a job." 
 
 The difference between work and play is really one of inward atti- 
 tude. Any activity is play in so far as it is thoroughly enjoyed ; it is 
 work if we do it only because we must to gain some end. The negro 
 stevedores on the Mississippi play while loading a steamboat, with 
 
 *Coe : " Education in Religion and Morals," p. 143. 
 (22) 
 
EARLY CHILDHOOD 23 
 
 their songs and rivalry ; yet baseball is work for the professional 
 player who must keep at it day after day. The advance from child- 
 hood to maturity ought not to mean so much a stepping out of 
 the world of play into the world of work, as a carrying over the 
 play spirit into the responsible activities of manhood and woman- 
 hood. 
 
 2. The play of early childhood has its own distinctive character- 
 istics : 
 
 (i) It is play, not amusement. The child is never content simply to 
 watch the activities of others, and to be amused by things done for 
 him. He wants to enter into the action himself. 
 
 (2) The little child cares nothing for games — that is, for play sub- 
 ject to rules. His plays are almost wholly free and unregulated, and 
 any attempt to dictate when or where or how he shall play is apt 
 to meet with failure. Through imitation, however, simple games may 
 be taught. If you play in a certain manner with evident enjoyment, 
 he will want to do the same thing. 
 
 (3) Children of this age play alone. If they do play with one 
 another, their enjoyment is self-centered. There is neither rivalry 
 nor team play. 
 
 (4) The child's play is at first wholly a matter of the senses and 
 muscles. He uses neither in any accurate or definite way, but finds 
 keen enjoyment in the free repetition of some activity or sensation. A 
 natural rhythmical tendency is soon manifest. Jingles and songs and 
 rhythmic movements are a source of keen delight, while many a story 
 or bit of poetry that is not at all understood will yet be enjoyed for the 
 cadence of the voice that reads or tells it. 
 
 (5) Plays exercising the memory and imagination begin about the 
 third year. From that time on to the end of the period the child's 
 play becomes largely imaginative and dramatic. 
 
 (6) Throughout the period the child's play is imitative. 
 
 3. Eager and impressionable senses are characteristic of early 
 childhood. In this strange world where the child one day finds him- 
 self, there are so many new things to see and hear and feel that he has 
 little time, even if he should have the power, to think over his experi- 
 ences and to inquire into those abstract qualities and relations with 
 which we older people interest ourselves. The mind of a child is 
 intensely concrete. He lives in a world of perception, rather than of 
 thought. Round-eyed, quick to hear and eager to touch, he is busy 
 absorbing the world about him. 
 
 And he is not content simply to await sensations and to absorb what 
 
24 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 comes to him ; he actively seeks new experiences. Curiosity is one 
 of the earliest, as it is one of the most permanent, of the human in- 
 stincts. It manifests itself first as se?isory curiosity — the tendency to 
 prolong sensations, to experience them again, and to seek new ones. 
 Later, ratio/ml curiosity appears — the desire to learn the relations 
 which things have to one another, and the tendency to draw and test 
 conclusions respecting matters not directly experienced. The curios- 
 ity of early childhood is predominantly sensory, though rational curi- 
 osity begins to reveal itself in the latter half of the period, as anyone 
 well knows who has had to answer a child's "How?" "Why?" 
 "What for?" and "Where from?" 
 
 Curiosity often manifests itself in undesirable ways — in too persistent 
 questioning, in pulling things to pieces, and in general mischief. 
 These should be checked ; but care must be taken not to injure the 
 instinct itself, or to destroy the child's natural thirst for knowledge. 
 His open senses and eager mind are your heaven-sent opportunity. 
 And the world needs men who can bring to its problems a free spirit 
 of question and discovery. It owes to such men its science and phi- 
 losophy and the achievements of civilization. Your problem is, not 
 to repress the child's curiosity, but to turn it toward worthy objects, 
 and to develop it in right directions. 
 
 The child's senses will drink in anything that is presented to them. 
 He is unable to discriminate between good and bad, true and false, 
 wise and foolish. There is only one safe rule : Do absolutely noth- 
 ing before a child that you would not have him copy. Let nothing touch 
 his senses that you would not have enter permanently into his life. 
 There may be exceptions ; undoubtedly some things which a child 
 sees and hears make no permanent impressions upon him — but you 
 cannot tell when the exceptio?is come. 
 
 You cannot tell by questioning a little child what things have made 
 a lasting impression upon him — for many reasons besides the likeli- 
 hood that he will not catch the drift of your questions. We all know 
 that many things which we see and hear modify our thoughts and 
 actions in ways of which we remain unconscious ; and this is far more 
 true of the child. Moreover, the memory of a child is different from 
 our own. It 'is exceedingly impressionable and retentive, yet with 
 little power to recall. A child's impressions are lasting. Old people 
 sometimes remember the events of their childhood more clearly and 
 vividly than those of later life. Yet the child's power to recall any 
 impression when he wants it is comparatively weak. He has made 
 but few associations, and those without concentration of attention. 
 
EARLY CHILDHOOD 25 
 
 What he can recall is no test, therefore, of what his memory has gotten 
 and is retaining. 
 
 4. A little child is intensely imaginative. Imagination is the 
 power mentally to reproduce sensations. It has two great uses. First, 
 it is the picture-making faculty of the mind. It enables us vividly to 
 see and hear and touch absent things as though they were present, 
 and to picture abstract and spiritual truths in concrete ways. Second, 
 it is inventive and productive. While it is limited to a reproduction 
 of past experiences — it can create no images for which there have been 
 no previous sensations — it brings bits of them together into totally 
 new combinations. It [gives birth alike to fairy stories and to great 
 novels, to Handel's oratorios and to the hypotheses of a Newton ; it 
 inspired Columbus' discovery of a hemisphere and the Wrights' con- 
 quest of the air. 
 
 The imagination of a little child manifests both these characteristics. 
 He thinks in concrete pictures, because he has little power of abstrac- 
 tion, and has not yet learned the distinction between the material and 
 the spiritual. His inventive fancy runs riot, for he does not yet feel 
 the stern logic of facts. 
 
 (1) He tends to personify everything. He draws no sharp line be- 
 tween the animate and the inanimate, between persons, animals and 
 things. And as the first and most definite objects of his knowledge 
 are persons, and the terms he understands best are those which stand 
 for actions, he interprets everything in personal terms. 
 
 11 Jean Ingelow tells us that when she was a little girl she was 
 sure that stones were alive, and she felt very sorry for them be- 
 cause they always had to stay in one place. When she went 
 walking she would take a little basket, fill it with stones and 
 leave them at the farthest point of the walk, sure that they were 
 grateful to her for the new view." * 
 
 The child's conception of the world about him is in fact akin to that 
 of the primitive savage, to whom every natural object seemed alive. 
 This accounts for what is sometimes called the " superstition " of 
 children. The term is wrongly applied — children can no more have 
 superstitions than they can have scientific ideas. The fact is simply 
 that the child's conception of the world makes tales of miracles and 
 impossible wonders, of fairies, elves and angels, as probable as matters 
 of sober fact ; and he delights in them because they appeal to his love 
 of action and to his sense of wonder. 
 
 ♦Tanner: "The Child," p. 124. 
 
26 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 (2) He lives in a world of make-believe. His play, we have seen, 
 is dramatic. Father's walking-stick becomes a horse, himself a sol- 
 dier captain, and sticks of wood the enemy. He turns himself into a 
 railroad engine, and goes even about his errands puffing and flailing 
 his arms like driving-rods, backing and switching, and coming to a 
 stop with the hiss of escaping steam. For hours or even for days he 
 becomes another person or an animal. Lonely children often play 
 with imaginary companions ; and cases are to be found where such 
 creatures of fancy abide and play a very real part in the child's life for 
 months or even years. " Let's play we're sisters," said two little sis- 
 ters who had been quarreling ; and the imagined relationship brought 
 the peace which the real one had failed to maintain.* 
 
 (3) He makes no clear distinction between imagination and reality. 
 Personifying natural events as he does, he may fail to distinguish be- 
 tween the real happening and his interpretation of it. Beneath his 
 make-believe there often runs an under-consciousness of its unreal 
 character ; but like as not he forgets, and grows really afraid of the 
 make-believe lion, or cries over some imagined trouble. It is this 
 confusion of fact and interpretation, of reality and play, that is respon- 
 sible for many so-called "lies" of children. They call, not for pun- 
 ishment, but for comprehending sympathy and patient training. 
 
 (4) He comprehends no symbolism save that of the imagination. It 
 is perfectly natural to a child to use symbols. In his dramatic play he 
 has no difficulty in making one thing stand for another. He is not 
 hindered, as we generally are, by a feeling that the symbol ought to 
 resemble the thing it represents. Chips of wood can represent sol- 
 diers just as easily as the most elaborately uniformed tin warriors. 
 The magic of his imagination can transform the dullest and most 
 prosaic of objects. 
 
 Yet he cannot understand the symbolism of grown people, and is 
 often absurdly literal in his interpretation of figures of speech or 
 "object-lessons." It is because our symbols are of a totally different 
 character from his own. They depend for their value upon some like- 
 ness to the thing they represent, and bring out the truth in terms of 
 analogy. Take as examples some of the figures of speech which we 
 constantly use to express religious truths — that we are "the sheep of 
 His pasture," that "our cup runneth over," that Jesus is the "Lamb 
 of God," that the "cross " is the way to the " crown." It takes more 
 than the imagination to appreciate these analogies ; it requires a rea- 
 soning power which the child does not yet possess. Moreover, we 
 
 * This illustration comes, I think, from Miss Harrison ; but I cannot now find it. 
 
EARLY CHILDHOOD 27 
 
 make too big a demand upon his little mind when we expect him to 
 deduce from these concrete figures an abstract spiritual truth whose 
 reality he has not yet experienced. In his own natural symbolism he 
 lets one known thing stand for another equally concrete and well- 
 known — chips for soldiers, or stick for horse ; but here we are ask- 
 ing him to let a known thing stand for something he knows nothing 
 about. 
 
 (5) He is intensely eager for stories. They must be full of action 
 and of pictures, simple and without intricacy of plot. They must lie 
 close enough to the child's own experience to rouse definite mental 
 pictures, yet have enough of mystery and novelty to stir his feelings. 
 They must have a climax, and must lead straight to it and then stop. 
 They must contain some rhythm or repetition in which he can delight. 
 Above all, they must be told by one who himself retains the spirit of 
 childhood, and who sees and feels the things he tells. Such stories 
 the child will call for again and again, and often he wants them re- 
 peated in the very words that were used before. 
 
 5. A little child is credulous and suggestible. He believes any- 
 thing you tell him, simply because of his lack of experience. He has 
 no fund of established ideas as the rest of us do, to serve as a basis 
 for distinguishing truth from falsehood. The suggestion remains un- 
 contradicted, and issues in action from the very motive power that all 
 ideas possess. Many little letters and prayers every year witness how 
 real Santa Claus is to the child; real, too, is the "bogy-man" who 
 will " ketch you ef you don't watch out." Make light of a little tot's 
 fall and heal the bump with a kiss, and he will not cry ; while you can 
 bring on a very agony of tears if you pity him enough. 
 
 It is not only ideas that we wish the child to believe and act upon, 
 that have this suggestive power. Chance remarks, unthinking actions, 
 personal attitudes, are often more potent than direct suggestions. 
 Objects, too, as well as persons, may " put ideas into his head " which 
 are hard to get rid of. 
 
 6. The little child is exceedingly imitative. Imitation is one of 
 the earliest of the instincts, and remains throughout early childhood a 
 marked characteristic of the period. 
 
 It may be looked upon as a form of suggestion. We are more 
 likely to be influenced by what others do than by what they say. At 
 any time of life, the action of someone else is the most potent of sug- 
 gestions. 
 
 But imitation does not depend at all upon the possession of ideas. 
 It is often reflex. The presence of a stammering child at school has 
 
28 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 a bad effect upon the speech of other children. The temper of your 
 class is likely a reflection of your own. Smile, and they smile with 
 you ; frown, and they will soon give you reason to. 
 
 Reflex imitation is present almost from the beginning. Dramatic 
 imitation we have already considered. It appears about the third year. 
 Voluntary imitation begins a little before — when the child purposely 
 seeks to act like another does. His repetition of words, as we teach 
 him to talk and he tries the difficult pronunciations again and again to 
 secure our approval, is an example. He imitates single actions rather 
 than persons ; he wants to do something like uncle, rather than to be 
 like him. 
 
 7. A child of this age is naturally self-centered. He knows no 
 motives other than those of his own pleasure and pain. His little acts 
 of generosity are done only for the approval or pleasure they bring. 
 The social and altruistic instincts have not yet awakened. If he plays 
 with other children, or if he likes to be with others, they are ministers 
 to his own enjoyment. He is the center of his world, and everything 
 and everybody in it exists for him. The word "my" is the great 
 one in his vocabulary. Yet this is not selfishness ; it is simple nature. 
 
 It is tempered by the fact that he is very affectionate and is keenly 
 sensitive to the personal attitudes of others. He finds the greatest 
 of pleasure in a smile or caress, and is heart-broken at a frown. 
 A boy of two wept bitterly because he had caught a look of sur- 
 prise and disapproval on the face of a visitor when he had struck at 
 his mother. A week after he saw the visitor again. "Do you re- 
 member," he plaintively queried, "how you looked when I hit 
 mamma? I don't like you to look that way." The child's feelings 
 are not deep or lasting — his tears come like April showers and are 
 forgotten — but they lie near the surface. There is truth in the old 
 adage that one may trust a man whom children and animals like. The 
 child, at least, instinctively fathoms the dispositions. Nature has put 
 him close to the heart of men. 
 
 Here lies his defence when one would impose upon his credulity. 
 He soon comes to know whom he can believe. His faiths become 
 personal. He has implicit confidence in those who love him, and 
 learns to reject the suggestion of meanness or of ridicule. We are 
 sometimes urged to have the faith of a child — and rightly. For the 
 faith of a child is at bottom faith in a Person. 
 
EARLY CHILDHOOD 29 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 1. What is the distinction between work and play? What are 
 some of the values of play in the life of a child ? 
 
 2. Describe the distinctive characteristics of the play of early 
 childhood. 
 
 3. Why are the little child's senses more impressionable than ours? 
 
 4. In what forms does the instinct of curiosity manifest itself in 
 early childhood ? What should be our attitude toward it ? 
 
 5. What are some of the peculiarities of a little child's memory? 
 
 6. What do you understand by the imagination ? What are its 
 functions ? 
 
 7. Describe some of the ways in which the imaginativeness of early 
 childhood is revealed. 
 
 8. Why is a little child credulous ? 
 
 9. What do you understand by a suggestion ? How does it differ 
 from a command ? How does an indirect differ from a direct sugges- 
 tion? 
 
 10. What is reflex imitation ? Dramatic imitation ? Voluntary im- 
 itation ? When does each appear in the life of a child ? 
 
 11. Is a little child selfish when he takes all the playthings of the 
 nursery to himself ? Give reasons for your answer. 
 
 12. Why is it best that a child should be self-centered ? 
 
 13. Can you cite any illustrations of a little child's sensitivity to the 
 personal attitudes ? 
 
LESSON IV 
 
 Middle Childhood 
 
 There is no evident transition from early to middle childhood. Most 
 of the characteristics of the former period belong to this. The child 
 of six to eight is still impulsive and suggestible. He is active and rest- 
 less, and not yet able to give sustained attention, or to concentrate 
 himself upon a disagreeable task. His real life is one of play, and 
 your appeal must be to senses and imagination. He is still self-cen- 
 tered and the creature of capricious instincts and feelings. 
 
 Yet the child of six or more differs from the one who has not reached 
 that birthday. He has had a wider experience, of course, which gives 
 a richer meaning to every perception and a more definite control for 
 every impulse. But the great difference lies in the fact that he has 
 entered school. That gives him a wholly new view-point. His world 
 has changed. He has now a place of his own in the social order, 
 and enters into a wider circle of companionship and a more definite 
 round of responsibilities than home or kindergarten had made pos- 
 sible. 
 
 i. Physically, this period is one of rapid growth, though less 
 rapid, of course, than that of the former period. From six to nine, 
 weight increases 32 per cent, as opposed to 45 per cent during the 
 years from three to six. Height increases somewhat over 13 per cent, 
 against 25 per cent in the preceding three years. While the death- 
 rate continues to decrease, there is about the eighth year a rapid in- 
 crease of liability to sickness. This is to be traced in part to condi- 
 tions associated with the appearance of the permanent teeth, and in 
 part to the relative weakness of the heart, which has less than one-third 
 of its adult weight, and must force the blood over a body which has 
 two-thirds of its adult height. The heart is especially pushed, of 
 course, by muscular exercise, of which the body craves a great deal. 
 This is doubtless the explanation of the quickness with which an eight- 
 year-old becomes fatigued. 
 
 2. Physical activity and play characterize this period of childhood 
 as well as the first. But there are manifest differences : 
 
 ( 1 ) Activity is more purposive and controlled. Whereas the younger 
 child found delight in the mere activity itself, the child of this period 
 
 (30) " 
 
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 31 
 
 begins to find pleasure in what he can accomplish. Eyes and hands 
 and feet are used in play, no longer in mere aimless exercise, but for 
 sake of some success of quickness or accuracy or strength. He wants 
 to make things, to achieve something. Yet, be it remembered, he has 
 not developed enough control to be able to hold very long to a tedious 
 task, or to see through complications and conquer many difficulties in 
 the pursuit of an end. You must give him simple, definite things to 
 do, and not too hard. 
 
 (2) Play takes the form of games, at first with very simple rules, and 
 then more complex. 
 
 (3) The child no longer plays alone, but with companions ; and 
 rivalry and competition begin. Their games provide contests of power 
 or skill in which each strives to win. 
 
 (4) Imaginative play, with its little dramas of make-believe, reaches 
 its culmination in the first half of this period. It continues until ado- 
 lescence, though constantly decreasing in importance, to be replaced 
 by games of the competitive sort. In this period it often takes the 
 more definite form of acting out some story that has been heard or 
 read — a form in which it may well be used educationally, not only in 
 this, but in succeeding periods. 
 
 3. The child's senses are as eager as ever, and to them we must 
 appeal in our teaching. But now he is better able both to use his 
 senses, and to understand the messages they bring. His years of 
 experience, few as they have been, enable him to comprehend much 
 that he once could not. School life is widening his knowledge and 
 perfecting his powers, and casts a new light upon everything that pre- 
 sents itself. 
 
 It has been well said that we are able to see as much in anything as 
 we can put into it. It is not the mere seeing or hearing, but the mean- 
 ing which sights and sounds convey, that is important. And their 
 meaning depends upon what is within one — upon his point of view and 
 his ability to understand. 
 
 We always interpret the new in terms of the old. We grasp the un- 
 known only by relating it to the known ; to name it even we must class 
 it with some past experience. A little girl of three called to her 
 mother in wonder to come and see how the flowers had melted in the 
 heat of the sun. A bright boy of the same age called a ring-shaped 
 ant-hill a doughnut, and put a young uncle to confusion by asking 
 whether his budding mustache were an eyebrow. We have all heard 
 many such sayings of children, and are often amused at their bright- 
 ness and originality. They are but simple illustrations of one of the 
 
32 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 most fundamental of all laws of the mind — that new ideas grow always 
 out of the old, and that what we already know biases our interest in 
 novel situations and our comprehension of their meaning. 
 
 The term apperception is applied to this process of getting mean- 
 ings. It is the process of interpreting, comprehending, digesting and 
 assimilating whatever presents itself to the mind. It is the source of 
 many of the teacher's hardest problems. If we could just put our 
 own ideas unchanged into a pupil's head, teaching would be a very 
 simple thing. But that we cannot do. We can only present words 
 and things, and the pupil must understand them in his own way and 
 from them construct his own ideas. What meaning does he get? 
 What ideas does he form ? — these are the vital questions in every day's 
 work. 
 
 The law of apperception is that the meaning of each new experi- 
 ence is determined by the relations it bears to one' s ideas \ instincts and 
 habits. In early childhood, we have seen, things are apperceived 
 from the standpoint of use and action. The child's instincts in the 
 main determine his attitudes toward what is presented to him, and 
 hence its meaning. But as experience grows, and ideas and habits 
 multiply, they come to serve more and more as the basis for his apper- 
 ceptions. 
 
 To understand, therefore, what your pupil's experience has been, 
 what ideas and habits he has acquired, and so, what point of view he 
 will bring to your teaching, is your primary duty. He will interpret 
 everything you say and do from the plane of his own experience. If 
 you can talk with him upon that same plane, and express your ideas in 
 terms that belong to it, you can be reasonably sure that he will get just 
 the meaning you want him to get. If you cannot, he will get some 
 meaning or other, but not what you intend. 
 
 It is especially difficult to share the point of view of children from 
 six to eight, and to make sure that we understand their apperceptions. 
 Younger children are more dominated by instinct, and so tend to look 
 at things in the same general way. Older children are nearer to our 
 own plane, and reading has thrown open to them the common herit- 
 age of the race. Middle childhood is a transition time — from home to 
 school, from play to work, from instinct to will, from imagination to 
 reason. Each child is working out his own ideas from the host of new 
 experiences that are coming to him, and he is bound to get some that 
 are strange enough from our standpoint. 
 
 We must be careful not to assume that the child knows things which 
 he really does not. A number of investigations have revealed a some- 
 
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 33 
 
 what surprising ignorance of common things among children who are 
 entering school. At Boston, of two hundred children entering school 
 in the fall of 1880, President Hall found that 60 per cent did not know 
 a robin, and 91 per cent an elm tree ; 54 per cent had never seen a 
 sheep ; 50 per cent did not know what butter is made of, and 20 per 
 cent were ignorant that milk comes from cows ; 78 per cent did not 
 know what dew is ; 90 per cent could not locate their ribs, 81 per 
 cent their lungs, 70 per cent their wrists, 65 per cent ankles, and 
 25 per cent elbows ; 21 per cent did not know the difference between 
 their right and left hands ; 28 per cent did not know what a hill is, 
 and 35 per cent had never been in the country. Speaking to the 
 public school teacher, President Hall draws these conclusions among 
 others : (1) "There is next to nothing of pedagogic value, the knowl- 
 edge of which it is safe to assume at the outset of school life." (2) 
 "Every teacher on starting with a new class or in a new locality, to 
 make sure tliat his efforts along some lines are not utterly lost, should 
 undertake to explore carefully, section by section, children's minds 
 with all the tact and ingenuity he can command and acquire, to deter- 
 mine exactly what is already known." * 
 
 Such a detailed investigation of the pupil's ideas, of course, cannot 
 be undertaken by the Sunday school teacher ; yet the spirit of these 
 two conclusions should possess us. And our task is really very much 
 simpler in this regard than that of the teacher in the public schools, 
 just because we can count on the ideas which the child gets from 
 him. There is one very definite and practical way for you to get into 
 touch with the child' s apperceptions. Visit his grade in the public 
 schools ; find out what he is learning there ; and bring your teaching 
 into as close correlation with it as you can. 
 
 4. The imagination of middle childhood is no less active, but 
 more coherent and better controlled than that of early childhood. We 
 have just seen that imaginative play reaches its culmination in this 
 period. The same is true of the appetite for stories. 
 
 (1) The child is as eager as ever for stories. They must have more 
 of detail and of connected action than those which appealed to him 
 when younger. They must be dramatic, with plenty of life and move- 
 ment, yet with a unity and coherence that brings them nearer to the 
 plane of reality. 
 
 " Here is opportunity to fill the mind with a stock of images 
 that shall represent life in its truth. The stories should not be 
 
 * Hall : " Aspects of Child Ufe and Education," ch. i. 
 
34 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 goody-goody, nor should they contain any effort to reveal spirit- 
 ual ideas and motives that are beyond the child's spontaneous 
 interest. What is needed is the truth of life embodied in simple, 
 sensuous forms, especially forms of outward action."* 
 
 (2) The child now makes a distinction between fact and fancy : His 
 imagination is becoming critical. All stories were alike to the credu- 
 lity of early childhood. But now he is getting perspective. He recog- 
 nizes a difference between stories that are "just stories" and those 
 that are "really true" or "could happen." Some that he once im- 
 plicitly believed are now called into question. He wants to know 
 whether fairy tales are true, or whether Santa Claus is real. 
 
 5. The fact is that reason is awakening. The child is beginning 
 to grasp the relations of things and to fit them together into a con- 
 nected whole. 
 
 Only the tiny baby accepts the moments as they come, without 
 question of whence or whither, how or why. As soon as the mind 
 awakens, the little child seeks causes for the happenings that fill his 
 days. He finds them, we have seen, in personal agencies. He inter- 
 prets all nature after the pattern of himself, and peoples his world 
 with fairies and elves. 
 
 Almost insensibly, however, he grows away from this conception. 
 As day after day brings more experience, the regularity and conti- 
 nuity of natural events stand out ever more plainly. Time and again, 
 the same two things are joined together. When the one happens, the 
 other follows. He comes soon to look upon the one as the cause of 
 the other — and then there is no more need of fairies or giants. He 
 has come to see that things cause one another. Henceforth he seeks 
 thing-causes. 
 
 The transition is not made all at once. It is pretty sure to center, 
 however, in middle childhood. With the influx of new ideas at school 
 and the freedom of a wider companionship, the child soon outgrows 
 the myths of his earlier years and reaches out toward a more rational 
 comprehension of the world about him. It is a time of eager mental 
 activity and of endless questions. The child is putting his world 
 together. It is a work of thought, not merely of the senses. He is 
 learning the relations of things to one another, and is as eager as he 
 had been to see and touch in the first place. 
 
 We are apt to make either of two mistakes in dealing with the child 
 at this time. One is to demand too much of him, assuming a reason- 
 
 * Coe : " Education in Religion and Morals," p. 232. 
 
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 35 
 
 ing power which he has not yet attained. He reasons only in terms 
 of sequence. He associates cause and effect, not because he sees the 
 real ground of their relationship, but simply because they happen 
 together in time and space. He cannot analyze such a relationship 
 into its elements and discriminate the essential from the non-essential. 
 He cannot reason abstractly, and is not at all certain to draw a logical 
 conclusion from given premises. All this must wait until adolescence, 
 for reason is the last to mature of the intellectual powers. 
 
 The other mistake is to fail to meet the demands which the child's 
 reason makes upon us. The most important of these demands are ( I ) 
 consistency ; (2) openness and sincerity. 
 
 (1) Consistency is demanded because the child is forming his own 
 ideas of right and wrong. He forms them in the same way that he 
 does his ideas of physical things — by reasoning from the sequence of 
 events. Actions are bad, to his mind, which are followed by dis- 
 agreeable results ; those are good which bring pleasure. Moral laws 
 are to him simple statements of cause and effect. He judges actions 
 solely by their consequences. It is plain what is required of us. We 
 must be firm and consistent in our dealings with him. We must abide 
 by the simple laws we wish him to learn. There must be no excep- 
 tions, justified by some higher bit of reasoning that he cannot compre- 
 hend. We must see to it that always bad results follow bad actions, 
 and good goes with good. In short, we must confront him with a 
 moral order as inflexible as is the physical order, that he may be able 
 to formulate definite moral laws, and that obedience to law and 
 respect for the right may grow naturally within him. 
 
 (2) Openness and sincerity are demanded in our answers to his 
 questions. The mother who will not answer truthfully a child's doubt 
 concerning Santa Claus, because "it is so nice for the little ones to 
 believe in him," sells her boy's birthright for a paltry bit of play. He 
 believes her until the truth is forced upon him by the ridicule of 
 schoolmates. She has deceived him, and left him to find out else- 
 where and to suffer in the finding. Yet he ought to have the right to 
 come to mother before anyone else in the world, for the truth and 
 with the truth. There is a barrier now ; his confidence is shaken — and 
 then she grieves in later years that he does not come to her with his 
 problems ! 
 
 The teacher is faithless to his trust who teaches a child to accept as 
 literal truth any Bible story or figure that he does not himself accept 
 in that way, because "children are not old enough to be bothered 
 with such things." Some day the youth so taught will pass through 
 
36 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 an agony of doubt ; and it may mean the shipwreck of a soul. 
 
 We need to remember that the child now has both imagination and 
 reason, and that he will continue throughout life to need both. We 
 must recognize the distinction that he draws between " just stories " 
 and "things that really happened." We must minister both to the 
 story-appetite and to the hunger for facts. And — most important of 
 all — we must show him that there is a vast middle ground between 
 mere fancy on the one hand and the plain recital of fact on the other; 
 the middle ground of truth presented tmdey the forms of the imagina- 
 tion. "Faust," "Macbeth," "Enoch Arden," "The Idylls of the 
 King" — who cares whether the events they tell ever happened in just 
 that way ? These tell more than facts ; they feed the soul upon truth. 
 Literature is more than history ; it is a seer's vision of truth set down 
 in pictures that we too may see. The Bible is more than a chronicle 
 of events ; it is a divinely inspired interpretation of history, a book of 
 life and truth. 
 
 No distinction that life will bring is more important than this three- 
 fold one : literal fact, imaginative truth and mere fancy. And now, 
 when the distinction begins to be made, is the time to shape it if we 
 would have the boy become what he ought to be — a man of perfect 
 fidelity to fact on the one hand, and of whole-souled appreciation of 
 literature and art on the other, discriminating in both the true from 
 the idle and the false. Give both the truth and the story of Santa, 
 therefore, the myths of the Greeks and Norsemen as well as primary 
 lessons in science, the fact with the figure in the Bible story. Do not 
 be afraid to answer when a child asks whether a story ever happened, 
 "No, it never happened ; but don't you think it tells us something 
 true?" — and show him just what you mean.] 
 
 The child is not ready, of course, to receive the whole truth on every 
 subject — in fact, not on any. But that is not necessary. To hold 
 something back is not to evade or deceive. We need give only so 
 much as his spontaneous interests demand ; and that must be in a form 
 that he can understand. 
 
 Children's questions about birth and sex constitute a special prob- 
 lem, and one peculiarly grave. The parent who evades them con- 
 demns his boy to find out from companions in ways that are full of 
 impure suggestion. Frankly and plainly, without preaching and with- 
 1 out mystery, these questions should be answered with the simple 
 and literal truth — never going beyond the child's spontaneous interest, 
 but satisfying it completely. They are not for the teacher to answer, 
 however. It is the sacred duty of the father and mother. 
 
MIDDLE CHILDHOOD 37 
 
 6. The child of this age is still self-centered and must be dealt 
 with individually. He likes to be with other children, but the com- 
 petitive motive is strong and he has no idea of subordinating self to 
 the good of the group. The real awakening of the social instincts 
 comes afterward, in later childhood. 
 
 The instinct of imitation, however, leads the child out in a meas- 
 ure beyond himself. He now imitates the doer rather than the deed. 
 Instead of copying single actions, he wants to be like the person behind 
 the action. He begins to think of what he would like to be when 
 grown up, and his choice is always the reflection of what those nearest 
 to him are — father, mother, friend or teacher. Your influence is 
 never greater than right now. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. Where shall we place the transition from early to middle child- 
 hood? Why? 
 
 2. Describe the physical growth and health of this period. 
 
 3. How does the play of middle childhood differ from that of early 
 childhood? 
 
 4. What is the process of apperception ? State the law of apper- 
 ception. What problem does the process of apperception set the 
 teacher ? 
 
 5. Why are the apperceptions of middle childhood especially hard 
 to understand ? 
 
 6. How may the Sunday school teacher best make sure that he 
 understands the ideas of Primary children ? 
 
 7. How does the imagination of middle childhood differ from that 
 of early childhood ? 
 
 8. What proofs are there that the child's reason is now awakening ? 
 
 9. What is meant by the statement that the child reasons only in 
 terms of sequence ? 
 
 10. Why ought we be consistent in our dealings with children? 
 
 11. How ought we meet a child's questions in search of the truth? 
 Give all the reasons you can for your answer. 
 
 12. How does the individualism of middle childhood differ from 
 that of early childhood ? Its imitation ? 
 
LESSON V 
 Later Childhood 
 
 Life is unique in the years from nine to thirteen. The boy and girl 
 are unlike the children that were, or the youth and maid that will be. 
 Later childhood has as distinctive characteristics as adolescence. 
 " Health is almost at its best, activity is greater and more varied than it 
 ever was before or ever will be again, and there is peculiar endurance, 
 vitality and resistance to fatigue. . . . Perception is very acute, and 
 there is great immunity to exposure, danger, accident, as well as to 
 temptation." * 
 
 Yet it is hard to say exactly where the period begins. The average 
 child enters it when he begins to read easily and naturally ; and it will 
 be best for our purpose to let this mark the transition. When a child 
 can understand and enjoy books for himself, life acquires a new range. 
 The whole wide world of literature lies open before him, and he 
 plunges into it with a mind as eager as ever his senses had been to 
 make acquaintance with the material world. 
 
 i. This is a period of slow growth, of health and hardihood. 
 The first marked difference between the sexes appears, girls being 
 quicker to develop than boys. The tenth year in girls and the eleventh 
 in boys are years of very slow growth. In both sexes, this retardation 
 is followed by an acceleration which heralds the coming of adolescence. 
 Since this acceleration begins a year or more earlier in girls, they are 
 apt to be taller and heavier than boys at the close of this period and 
 the beginning of the next. During the three years from nine to twelve, 
 a boy increases in weight 29 per cent and in height less than 1 1 per 
 cent — a less rapid growth than that of middle childhood. Girls in- 
 crease in weight 37 per cent and in height 13 per cent. 
 
 In both sexes, it is a time of good health and of boundless energy. 
 Dr. Hartwell's tables, compiled from a careful study of Boston chil- 
 dren in the census years 1875, 1885 and 1890, show that the power to 
 resist disease is highest in the twelfth year for girls and in the thirteenth 
 year for boys, f 
 
 * Hall : " Youth : Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene," p. 1. 
 t Hartwell : Report of Director of Physical Training, 1894, School Document No. 
 8, Boston, Mass., cited in Tvler : " Growth and Education," p. 269. 
 
 (38) 
 
LATER CHILDHOOD 39 
 
 In the year 1907, throughout the registration area which contains 
 nearly one-half the population of the United States, there were 10,513 
 deaths of children from ten to fourteen, against 15,287 from five to 
 nine, 18,359 frum fifteen to nineteen, 27,876 from twenty to twenty-four 
 and 29,415 from twenty-five to thirty. There were over one hundred 
 and eighty thousand deaths of children under five ; and in each of the 
 remaining five-year periods up to eighty there were more than thirty 
 thousand.* 
 
 2. Independence and self-assertion are, to fond mothers especially, 
 the most obvious characteristics of the period. " The child develops 
 a life of its own outside the home circle, and its natural interests are 
 never so independent of adult influence." f And now certainly, if at 
 no other time, the boy's interests reflect the activities of a more prim- 
 itive generation. Fighting, hunting, fishing, exploring, collecting, go 
 to make up his life. He is more likely to play truant or to run away 
 than at any other period. He is full of daring and adventure, of dash 
 and go. He cares no longer for imaginative play or for fairy stories. 
 He is frank and practical, and has, he feels, put away childish things. 
 
 3. But there is another side. With all its independence and self- 
 assertion, its primitive instincts and love of adventure, later childhood 
 is amenable to law. Its "gang spirit" and its "hero-worship" mark 
 a distinct advance in moral development. 
 
 The child's social instincts begin to ripen in this period ; and 
 obedience to law becomes to him a matter of social well-being resting 
 upon his own initiative, rather than of mere habit or imitation or 
 authority. 
 
 (1) The sexes now draw apart. Boys and girls no longer share 
 the same interests, or enjoy the same games. Boys get a wholesome 
 contempt for the gentler sex ; and girls can see nothing nice in such 
 rude and messy creatures as boys have gotten to be. In the latter half 
 of this period, and in the first few years of adolescence, girls are more 
 mature than boys of the same age. They develop more quickly, not 
 only in body, but in mind. A high school principal expressed the dif- 
 ference in a striking, though somewhat extreme way, by saying that 
 the average boy in the senior class of a high school is little more 
 mature than the average girl in the freshman class of the same school. 
 
 (2) Social motives predominate in the games of the period, which 
 are almost wholly competitive. Some are games in which individual 
 competes with individual, each striving for his own success and glory. 
 
 * United States Census, Mortality Statistics for 1907, p. 282. 
 t Hall : " Youth : Its Education, Regimen and Hygiene," p. 1. 
 
40 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 But more and more the boy becomes interested in games that call for 
 team-play rather than for individual prowess. He begins to like base- 
 ball, basketball, hockey and the like, and even tries football. In 
 these, the best player is he who can fit best into a system of play, and 
 work most unselfishly for the success of the team as a whole, instead 
 of seeking to shine individually. 
 
 (3) Team games call for organization ; yet even aside from them, 
 the "gang instinct" as it has been called, is at work. Boys and girls 
 of this age naturally and spontaneously organize themselves into in- 
 formal groups — the boys into "gangs " and the girls into "crowds" — 
 and into more or less formal clubs. 
 
 Dr. Sheldon's study of such spontaneously organized clubs gives 
 some very definite information concerning boyhood and girlhood. Of 
 over a thousand boys from ten to sixteen who answered his inquiries, 
 851 belonged to organizations of this sort. Of the remainder, many 
 were in clubs formed for them by adults, and some were thrown with 
 other boys so little that they had no chance. Eight hundred and 
 sixty-two societies were reported, and 623 fully described. Of these, 
 \Y 2 per cent were philanthropic, 3% per cent secret, 4% per cent social 
 (for "good times"), 4% P er cent devoted to literature, music or art, 
 8)4 per cent industrial, 17 per cent predatory (for exploring, building, 
 hunting, fighting, preying), and 61 per cent athletic. It will be noted 
 that physical activity is the keynote of by far the larger number — 86 l / z 
 per cent if we add the industrial to the predatory and athletic clubs. 
 
 The figures for the ages at which these clubs are formed are as fol- 
 lows : at eight, 28 ; at nine, 44 ; at ten, 118 ; at eleven, 155 ; at twelve, 
 164 ; at thirteen, 188 ; at fourteen, 90 ; at fifteen, 80 ; at sixteen, 34 ; at 
 seventeen, 11. We note that the ages at which the most societies are 
 formed are eleven, twelve and thirteen. Over 87 per cent are formed 
 between ten and fifteen, less than eight per cent before ten, and only 
 1 per cent at seventeen. The interests, too, change with age. Pred- 
 atory societies are at their height at eleven, and then gradually disap- 
 pear. Athletic societies multiply rapidly until thirteen, then diminish 
 in number. The interest in literary societies grows steadily, though 
 never very great. 
 
 Girls and boys naturally organize in separation from one another. 
 Girls form five times as many social societies as boys, twice as many 
 philanthropic, and three times as many secret, industrial and literary. 
 On the other hand, boys form four times as many predatory and seven 
 times as many athletic societies as the girls — these two classes forming 
 but 10 per cent of the girls' societies as opposed to 78 per cent of the 
 
LATER CHILDHOOD 41 
 
 boys. " Girls are more nearly governed by adult motives than boys. 
 They organize to promote sociability, to advance their interests, to 
 improve themselves and others. Boys are nearly primitive man : they 
 associate to hunt, fish, roam, fight and to contest physical superiority 
 with each other." * 
 
 (4) With this awakening of the social instincts, and their expression 
 in spontaneous organizations, there comes into the child's life a new 
 moral force — that of the opinion of his peers. He has entered into a 
 social order of his own, and its laws become his standards of right and 
 wrong. He no longer imitates parents and teachers, but his own com- 
 panions, or the one whom the gang holds a hero. He cares little for 
 the opinion of older people, but a great deal for what the "bunch" 
 thinks. 
 
 "It is probably from the gang that most boys learn first to 
 codify their conduct, and while this code of honor is imperfect, 
 it is apt to be pretty sound. This list of 'things a feller won't 
 do ' soon becomes a mighty judgment of the individual con- 
 science. . . . Parents may have slaved a life long ; they may 
 have made the inculcation of morals a daily care ; these new 
 companions have been known only six days, but they are Public 
 Opinion." f 
 
 This applies also to girls. In this period boys and girls alike begin, 
 through association with their own comrades, to achieve moral inde- 
 pendence. 
 
 (5) A strong sense of honor is characteristic. A boy's funda- 
 mental virtue is loyalty. He will stick by the rest of the fellows 
 through thick and thin. And from this loyalty springs a fine sense of 
 what is honorable and true and just. His boyish conceptions of these 
 things are often enough distorted ; but they are virtues none the less, 
 and virtues really his own. If you respect his loyalty and rely upon 
 his honor, God gives you quick entrance to the soul of a boy. But 
 there is no greater sin than to trample upon his ideals and outrage his 
 sense of justice. And there is no better proof of the worth of a man 
 than to have a boy think him "square." Judge Lindsey has been 
 saving hundreds of the street boys of Denver from crime, and turning 
 them toward worthy lives, simply because he is willing to take " a kid's 
 word." 
 
 * Sheldon : " The Institutional Activities of American Children," American Jour- 
 nal of Psychology, Vol. IX., 425-448. This chapter uses Forbush's summary of his 
 figures, in " The Boy Problem." 
 
 t Forbush : " The Boy Problem," pp. 20, 21. 
 
42 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 It is hard to pick out crucial points in the education of a child, for 
 everything is important, and moments may be decisive that we least 
 expect. Yet here, certainly, we cannot be too careful. To the end of 
 one's days his loyalties make his life. Ask what they are, and you 
 know what the man is. Is he loyal at all ? If not, he is no man. Is he 
 loyal only to a group — to his own family merely, to a political party, 
 or to a particular denomination ? Or is he loyal to humanity and to 
 God, and to the great eternal principles of right and truth which lie 
 beyond all narrowness and party strife? These questions have 
 been settled for many a man by the attitude of elders to his boyish 
 loyalties. 
 
 All this applies particularly, of course, to boys. You cannot, even 
 in speaking of them, mix the sexes at this age. Yet it is as true of 
 girls, with the difference of perspective that is cast by the different 
 social life into which they now begin to enter. Every mother knows 
 well that a daughter now begins to have " ideas of her own," which it 
 is idle to seek to repress or to expel by force. The wise mother is 
 she who respects the daughter's personality, invites her confidence 
 and seeks to share her point of view, and so by companionship, 
 rather than by domination, leads her into clear-sighted, self-reliant 
 womanhood. 
 
 4. This is the period of life's first idealism. Boys and girls now 
 begin to form ideals for themselves. 
 
 These first ideals are concrete. They are found always in some 
 person. Later childhood has well been called the age of hero- 
 worship. Middle childhood imitates persons, but not as ideals; 
 adolescence conceives ideals, but not in personal terms. Now, ideal 
 and person are inseparable. The boy worships his hero because he 
 sees in him the embodiment of an inward longing of his own; and he 
 loves strength and courage, manliness and truth, not in and for them- 
 selves, but for what they actually accomplish in the person of one 
 about whom achievement casts its glamor. You cannot help a boy or 
 girl of this age by talking of ideals in general and in the abstract. You 
 must set before them a hero. 
 
 But that is not easy. Heroes are not made to order, or worshiped 
 according to precept. Boys especially seem apt enough to idealize 
 wrong characters, and perversely fail to be attracted by the heroes we 
 would press upon them. Earlier in life, the child had imitated those 
 whom he knew best — father, mother or teacher. Then their word 
 was law, and to be like them his dearest'wish. But that time is pass- 
 ing. Life is reaching beyond home and school. Its heroes come 
 
LATER CHILDHOOD 43 
 
 from the new worlds just opening to the vision of boyhood and girl- 
 hood. They must be in some degree removed from the ordinary 
 round of humdrum and familiar things. They must have something of 
 that mystery .which always surrounds an object of worship. Boys are 
 more apt to get their heroes from the world about them, girls from 
 their reading, from history or fiction. Boys always idealize men, while 
 girls may choose either men or women. 
 
 It is achievement that makes a hero. Men who can do things well, 
 men who can get results, men who can in anything, are the boy's 
 heroes just as they are ours. Because his instincts and interests are 
 primitive, he is most ready to idealize physical strength or skill or 
 daring. He will worship the leader of the gang, the football captain 
 or the star pitcher, the town's best hunter or fisherman. But it is 
 only because he is not yet able to realize achievements of a different 
 sort. As fast as he becomes able to comprehend the work of Edison, 
 of Lincoln, of Luther, he is ready to pay tribute to strength of intellect 
 and heart and will. 
 
 The counsel is simple but hard to live up to. If you would be a 
 hero to the boys of your class — and you must be if you are really to 
 influence them as you should — you need only succeed in what you do 
 before them. It may be that you are able to approach them from the 
 physical side, and are fortunate enough to win them because of your 
 athletic prowess. But that is not always essential, and that alone is 
 never enough. The one thing needful is that you be absolute master 
 of yourself and your work. Teach well, live strongly, do thing s, get 
 results, and you will have the influence you wish. Heroism, like the 
 kingdom of God, "cometh not with observation." He soonest be- 
 comes a hero who thinks least of it, but most of the things he is set 
 to do. 
 
 The principle tells us, too, how to present Jesus to our pupils. It 
 must be as aj irro, in the sheer strength of His manhood and His 
 achievements. Talk of what He did, not of what He was. At this 
 age, children will not love Him for His goodness, but they will learn 
 to love goodness because they honor Him and His deeds. Do not 
 talk much, however, about His being a hero ; and certainly do not 
 ask your pupils to call Him one. There are some things in life that 
 cannot stand much talking about — heroism and loyalty are among 
 them. Simply present His life and its deeds so vividly and concretely 
 that the strength and power of His personality cannot help but shine 
 through. 
 
 5. At no time of life is there a greater hunger for books and 
 
44 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 reading than now. Most of us can remember how eagerly we 
 awaited the weekly arrival of the Youth's Companioti, or how we 
 pored over Henty and Alger and Oliver Optic. What woman can 
 forget her girlhood's delight in Louisa Alcott and the Elsie books? 
 
 The teacher could ask for no better opportunity than is afforded by 
 this insatiable demand of later childhood for something to read. And 
 it is, like all times of opportunity, a critical point in the development 
 of personality. The boy may easily acquire a taste for the "dime 
 novel" of impossible adventure and hair-breadth escape, the girl for 
 mawkish romance ; and they grow into the man or woman who can 
 enjoy nothing but highly-spiced and frothy fiction. On the other 
 hand, children who are given books too serious may lose entirely 
 the desire to read, and become those pitiable beings — men who 
 never read, except the newspaper, and women whose only litera- 
 ture is in the oral form of gossip. Give a boy "goody-goody" 
 books — the typical Sunday school library books of a few years ago — 
 and you may turn him, not only against reading, but against religion 
 itself. 
 
 We make a mistake if we treat the child's reading either as a mere 
 amusement or as a sugar-coat for a moral. To the end of life, the love 
 of good literature remains one of its mightiest spiritual forces. The 
 child must learn to love the best. It is as important that you guide 
 him to great fiction and poetry, to well-written biography and history, 
 as that you teach him Bible verses. It is better to co-operate with the 
 town library than to attempt to provide a Sunday school library, 
 because of the wider resources the public institution is apt to afford. 
 It is your privilege to put your pupil in touch with the literary heritage 
 of the race. Pick things that he can comprehend ; but do not be afraid 
 of the best. "Periods which no master has described, whose spirit no 
 poet breathes," says Herbart, "are of little value to education." 
 Books of real insight into life and of genuine literary value, books of 
 truth caught by the imagination and felt within, will grip the minds 
 and hearts of children as they do our own. 
 
 6. Habits are more easily formed in this period than at any other 
 time of life, and are more lasting. A multitude of brain cells are just 
 maturing. Impressions are easy, and connections between cells 
 quickly established. Every boy knows that if he is ever to become a 
 great baseball player he must begin now. Later he will not be plastic 
 enough to get the finer knack of the man who " handles himself as if 
 he were born to it." 
 
 It follows that memory is best in these years, for memory, as we 
 
LATER CHILDHOOD 45 
 
 shall see, is after all a kind of habit. It is the time for drill work in 
 school. Repetition will now fix anything in the mind, whether it be 
 understood or not, and many a glib answer will deceive us into think- 
 ing that the pupil has really grasped our teaching. The boy will learn 
 his daily lessons word for word with only a couple of readings, keep 
 them until the recitation is over and then let them go forever. If he 
 is ever to learn a foreign language, better now than later, for he will 
 soon be able to use it easily and naturally, while there will always be 
 some little hesitancy or artificiality about the speech that he learns in 
 later years. This is the time to learn Bible verses, the shorter psalms, 
 and whatever else should be laid up in the mind word for word. If 
 you keep these tasks within reason, you need hardly fear repelling 
 your pupil. Most boys and girls delight in them because they are so 
 easy. 
 
 7. We shall see in the next chapter that there is a marked awaken- 
 ing of interest in religion at the end of this period and the beginning 
 of early adolescence. The child is approaching life's decision time. 
 We must keep this in mind throughout these years. We shall not 
 attempt to hasten it ; but we shall make ready. And if the child of 
 eleven or twelve wants to make a public profession of his love for his 
 Father and the Lord Jesus, we shall let him join the church. Happy 
 the little one who has been so brought up that he has never known 
 himself to be anything other than a child of God. 
 
46 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 1. When does the average child make the transition from middle 
 to later childhood? 
 
 2. Describe the growth and health of later childhood. 
 
 3. In what sense is it true that boys of this age are like primitive 
 man? 
 
 4. How do the games of later childhood show that the social in- 
 stincts are ripening ? 
 
 5. What is the attitude of the sexes toward one another in this 
 period ? 
 
 6. What do you understand by the " gang instinct " ? Tell some- 
 thing of Dr. Sheldon's study of clubs organized by boys and girls. 
 
 7. Show how public opinion enters life as a moral force during 
 later childhood. 
 
 8. How should the teacher deal with "school-boy honor " ? 
 
 9. Describe the hero-worship of later childhood. Can you remem- 
 ber any such hero-worship of your own? Tell something of it. 
 
 10. What opportunity does the " reading craze " of later childhood 
 afford the teacher? W r hat dangers does it involve ? 
 
 11. What is meant by the statement that the nervous system is more 
 plastic in later childhood than in any other time of life ? What evi- 
 dence is there for it ? 
 
 12. When is a child's first definitive awakening of interest in religion 
 apt to occur ? Is a child of eleven or twelve too young to be con- 
 firmed ? 
 
LESSON VI 
 Early Adolescence 
 
 There is a world of difference between twelve and thirteen, in the 
 mind of boys and girls. They are all glad to enter upon the 'teens. 
 It seems to mark a great step toward that goal of every child's ambi- 
 tion — being grown-up. 
 
 And they are not far wrong. The passage from childhood to ado- 
 lescence is in fact life's greatest and most definite natural transition. 
 Rooted in the development of new physical powers, it transforms the 
 mental and spiritual life as well. It has-been well called a new birth. 
 It is the awakening of manhood and womanhood. 
 
 i. The term adolescence is applied to the whole period from this 
 first awakening of new powers to their final ripening into young 
 manhood and womanhood. Its boundaries cannot be exactly fixed. 
 The age of puberty varies with different individuals, and is earlier for 
 girls than for boys. It comes generally at thirteen or fourteen. The 
 end of adolescence and the beginning of manhood and womanhood 
 depends a great deal upon circumstances. The boy who must leave 
 school early to go to work, the girl who must assume the responsi- 
 bilities of a household, mature quickly. The complexity of modern 
 life, on the other hand, and the elaborate education it demands, have 
 lengthened adolescence. The end of the period comes more often at 
 twenty-four or twenty-five than at twenty-one, which is the age recog- 
 nized by law. 
 
 For our purpose, however, it will be best to regard the thirteenth 
 birthday as the beginning of adolescence, and the twenty-first as its 
 end — simply because the Sunday school had best recognize those 
 transitions which are definitely acknowledged as such by the pupil 
 himself. No boy or girl in the 'teens likes to be classed with the 
 children ; and the young man or woman of twenty-one feels a right to 
 all that the attainment of legal majority implies. 
 
 This period, again, may be divided at the seventeenth birthday. 
 Early adolescence thus covers four years, ages thirteen to sixteen ; 
 and later adolescence, four years, ages seventeen to twenty. 
 
 2. Physically, early adolescence is a time of very rapid growth, 
 both in height and weight. During the three years from the twelfth 
 
 (47) 
 
48 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 birthday to the fifteenth, boys increase in weight 40 per cent and in 
 height 14 per cent, while girls increase in weight 36 per cent and in 
 height 10 per cent. At fifteen a boy has attained 92 per cent of his 
 adult height and 76 per cent of his adult weight ; girls have reached in 
 height 97 per cent and in weight 90 per cent of their full growth. After 
 Seventeen girls almost cease to grow, and boys grow comparatively 
 little, that mainly in weight. 
 
 The years of most rapid growth in height are the twelfth and thir- 
 teenth for girls, and the fourteenth and fifteenth for boys. In weight, 
 girls grow most rapidly from the twelfth -to the fifteenth years, boys 
 from the thirteenth to the seventeenth. Girls are taller than boys from 
 the twelfth to the fifteenth years, and heavier from the thirteenth to the 
 fifteenth. After fifteen boys exceed both in height and weight. The 
 most profound changes of these years, of course, are those connected 
 with the development of the powers of sex. 
 
 This is a time of vigor and energy. While there is an increase in 
 liability to sickness just before puberty, this declines again imme- 
 diately after ; and the power to resist disease remains high throughout 
 the period. During just those years, in fact, when boys and girls 
 approaching puberty are most apt to be sickly, they are least likely to 
 die. In the last chapter we saw that the period from the tenth to the 
 fifteenth birthday contains less deaths than any other five-year period. 
 According to the census of 1900, the death rate for the registration 
 area of the United States was 3.3 per thousand for the period from ten 
 to fourteen, against 5.2 from five to nine, 5.2 from fifteen to nineteen, 
 and 7.5 from twenty to twenty-four, with increasing rates for each suc- 
 ceeding period. HartwelPs tables, previously referred to, give a death- 
 rate of 4.5 from ten to fourteen, opposed to 10.6 from five to nine, and 
 7.9 from fifteen to nineteen. For our own division into periods, his 
 tables give the following death rates : middle childhood, 10.2 ; later 
 childhood, 4.7 ; early adolescence, 5.5 ; later adolescence, 9.0. 
 
 3. Early adolescence is a time of expansion. Life widens in a 
 hundred unexpected ways, and may take any one of them as its final 
 direction. It is full of conflicting impulses, of contradictions and sur_ 
 prises. Through all, however, three fundamental characteristics stand 
 out definitely : the expansion of selfhood, a new recognition of social 
 values, and an emotional instability associated with the development 
 of the sexual instincts. 
 
 4. The expansion of selfhood. It is now that the boy really 
 begins to attain selfhood. He enters into the heritage of instincts and 
 ideals, purposes and ambitions which is his birthright as a member of 
 
EARLY ADOLESCENCE 49 
 
 the human race. He is filled with a new sense of power, and with a 
 desire to use it as a man should. He becomes conscious of what the 
 world is doing, and begins to realize its worth. He is eager to throw 
 his energies into the real things of life and to do what there lies wait- 
 ing for him. 
 
 A time of independence and self-assertion, then — but independence 
 and self-assertion of a totally different sort from that of later childhood. 
 Then the boy was independent because his interests were primitive ; 
 he was absorbed in the social life of the gang, and blind to the greater 
 world beyond. Now it is the independence of vision, the seli-assertion 
 of one who has caught a glimpse of the great interests of humanity, 
 and who feels his right to give and get, on his own account, as a sharer 
 of the big world's life. The man is stirring within the boy, and it is a 
 man's independence that he begins to assert. He has lived through 
 the primitive interests of a former generation, and now claims his 
 share of to-day. He is one of us. 
 
 This expansion of selfhood reveals itself in the desire to go to u '<>/■£, 
 which every boy feels at this age. It is hard now to keep boys at 
 school. They feel that they ought to be getting at a trade or begin- 
 ning their business career, and that it is time they were making money. 
 Recent studies show that the tendency to drop out of school is great- 
 est within the period covered by the last two grades of the elementary 
 school and the first two years of the high school.* Out of more than 
 two thousand children answering a question as to what they would do 
 with a small monthly allowance, it was found that over 80 per cent of 
 those thirteen or more said that they would save it, against 40 per 
 cent at seven and eight, and about 60 per cent from nine to twelve.. f 
 
 Early adolescence is genuinely and passionately idealistic. The 
 boy is no longer a mere imitator ; he is more than a hero worshiper. 
 His version penetrates the outward act, and catches the spirit within a 
 man. He begins to discern inward qualities, and to feel the intrinsic 
 worth of truth, faith, self-sacrifice. And it is not simply that he ad- 
 mires these virtues in others ; he feels them to be a forthputting of his 
 own deeper self. They are directions in which his life would expand, 
 forms in which his self would find expression. 
 
 The power to conceive abstract ideals is man's crowning glory and 
 strength. It lifts him above mere intelligence and brings him into co- 
 operation with God Himself. But it can become a pitiable weakness, 
 
 * Thorndike : " The Elimination of Pupils from School." Ayres : " I,aggards in 
 Our Schools." 
 f Monroe : " Money Sense in Children." Cited in Hall : " Adolescence," II., p. 393. 
 
 4 
 
50 LUTHERAN TEACJHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 for it makes possible a life of contemplation and dreams, whose remote" 
 devotion to transcendent things never realizes itself in action, and fails 
 to redeem from sordidness the present deed. So the awakening of 
 this power marks a critical time in the life of the youth. The divine 
 moves within him. He glimpses the things of the Spirit ; he feels the 
 ' ' torment of the infinite. ' ' He lives for that which is not yet real. He 
 builds upon "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things 
 not seen." He is full of ambitions; he makes decisions; he seeks 
 service. It is life's very spring time. But he must be carefully dealt 
 with. His ideals are yet evanescent ; his decisions not abiding. He 
 resolves things too great, and turns back in disappointment from the 
 plodding path. He may easily enough become a dreamer and a 
 scatter-brain — a mere idealist. He needs the friendship of one who is 
 older, but who -has not forgotten what it is to be a boy — one who can, 
 through comprehending sympathy and co-operation, help him find 
 himself and turn his life toward its real usefulness. 
 
 5. The social instincts now mature rapidly, and there is a definite 
 recognition of social values. The independence of adolescence is 
 tempered by a new sense of social dependence and by the desire to 
 be recognized by others, to help and to be helped by them. 
 
 The social forms of later childhood persist in the first year or two 
 of this period, but are gradually outgrown. We saw that the gang 
 instinct, as witnessed by the number of clubs organized, is strongest 
 at thirteen, and then declines. It is not that the youth becomes less 
 social ; rather that he is becoming conscious of a larger world. The 
 opinion of his fellows remains a powerful moral force, as it does to 
 the end of life ; yet now he begins to recognize the wider bearings of 
 his actions, and to look for judgment beyond his immediate com- 
 panions. Later childhood had thought that it possessed reality when 
 it lived to itself ; adolescence now sees that reality is richer far than 
 childhood had dreamed. 
 
 Life noiu first becomes genuinely altruistic. The youth is glad, in 
 pursuit of his ideals and for the sake of others, to endure hardships 
 and to make sacrifices. He wants to be more than square ; he feels 
 the worth of unselfishness. It follows that here, too, selfishness 
 begins. The child who is a mere bundle of instincts, the boy who has 
 not yet felt an altruistic impulse, may be self-centered, but not selfish. 
 But the youth who feels the call to a bit of sacrifice, and rejects it, lets 
 an unworthy thing enter his life. Genuine selfishness exists only 
 when the higher impulse is present, but is denied. It is in adolescence, 
 as a matter of fact, that real sin begins — the conscious choice of a 
 worse, as opposed to a better way. 
 
EARLY ADOLESCENCE 51 
 
 6. The development of the sexual instincts underlies every other 
 change at adolescence. It strengthens youth's aspirations, and colors 
 its social attitudes. Altruism and self-sacrifice are primarily, in fact, 
 parental instincts. 
 
 New impulses, new sensations and emotions, new temptations, new 
 problems, new meanings, a new. conscience and a new heart — from 
 without and within, the whole world and himself seem alike strange 
 and wonderful to the adolescent who first feels the race-old forces by 
 which life begets life. It is a time of unstable equilibrium, of strong 
 yet shifting emotions, of purposes not understood. "Someone has 
 said of mental adolescence that it is as if we were born over again, not 
 from an unremembered past into which the new life can bring no sur- 
 prises, but from one conscious life into another that cannot be under- 
 stood by anything in our previous experience." * 
 
 In the first years of the period, the sex-repulsion continues which 
 was characteristic of later childhood ; but the sexes begin to be 
 attracted in its latter half. Boys begin to pay attention to their dress, 
 and girls are no longer tom-boys. Few pass the age of sixteen with- 
 out some little love affair. 
 
 From sixteen to eighteen the feelings deepen and acquire more sta- 
 bility. Emotions become sentiments ; the affections are more lasting. 
 Life is getting its "set." It is the time at which emotional religious 
 conversions are most apt to occur. 
 
 7. Intellectually, adolescence is marked by the development of 
 the higher powers. The youth is able to reason, not simply in terms 
 of time sequence, but of cause and effect, and logical ground and con- 
 sequence. And he becomes a pretty rigorous logician. He wants to 
 understand. He seeks life's rational basis. 
 
 It follows that the adolescent is critical. He rejects mere author- 
 ity. The springs of moral judgment are now within him : he will 
 accept no bald imperatives. He is no longer credulous ; he demands 
 proofs. He is not content with scattered bits of knowledge ; he wants 
 to see things in their relations. 
 
 It is easy to see, therefore, why doubt should often be thought to be 
 a characteristic of early adolescence. The sort of doubt that denies, 
 however, is not natural at this period. It comes afterward, in later ado- 
 lescence. Now there is simply the demand for reasons. If it turns 
 to a more negative attitude, it is generally because we have not met 
 that demand the right way. Clear, logical statement of beliefs and 
 reasons will be accepted. But we can force the youth to doubt if we 
 * Coe : "The Spiritual l,ife," p. 33. 
 
52 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 press authority where he seeks reason, or if, in matter or method, our 
 teaching is below his level. 
 
 8. Early adolescence is a time of more or less turmoil and con- 
 fusion. Coe calls it a period of "general mental fermentation," and 
 speaks of its "yeastiness of mind." * There is not disorganization, 
 so much as lack of organization. The youth does not understand him- 
 self ; he cannot at once coordinate the many new impulses that are 
 welling up within him. 
 
 Physically, the boy or girl in the early 'teens is overgrown and awk- 
 ward. The parts of the body do not grow at the same rate, and there 
 is clumsiness and incoordination of movement. The boy's voice 
 breaks. The girl feels big and restless and is afraid to talk. Both are 
 very sensitive, and are too often made more so by the talk of parents 
 and family, who speak of the awkward age, comment on their personal 
 appearance, or tease them about their budding consciousness of the 
 other sex. 
 
 The extremes and contradictions of adolescence have often been 
 noted. The boy is now one thing, and now its opposite. He sud- 
 denly awakes to a new interest, and throws himself into it with the 
 utmost ardor — for a few weeks ; then it is forgotten. He is over-exact 
 and conscientious in some respects, and careless in others. It is 
 because of the very richness of his new life. He is not sure of 
 himself. His instincts are as great a surprise to himself as to anyone 
 else. 
 
 This confusion of life may issue in an abnormal self-consciousness 
 and a morbid habit of introspection. It then becomes hard to deal 
 with because the adolescent is naturally secretive, and resents any 
 intrusion upon his personality. It may be questioned whether most 
 of the studies of adolescence have not tended to exaggerate the in- 
 trospective character of the period. In any case, the cure is to give 
 the youth something to do that seems to him worth while, and to see 
 to it that he realizes something of its fruits. 
 
 9. Religious awakenings are natural in early adolescence. In the 
 general expansion of selfhood the religious instinct has its place. As 
 life opens to a larger world, and becomes cognizant of new social and 
 spiritual values, the soul reaches out toward God. 
 
 As we should expect, the first definite awakening comes at the 
 beginning of the period. At twelve or thirteen most children who 
 have been brought up under religious influences desire to join the 
 church. "Among 512 officers of Young Men's Christian Associations 
 
 * Coe : " The Spiritual I^ife," pp. 38, 86. 
 
EARLY ADOLESCENCE 53 
 
 the average age of the first deep religious impression appears to 
 have been 13.7 years. Among 99 men who were studied with refer- 
 ence to all their periods of special religious interest, as many awaken- 
 ings of the religious sense occurred at twelve and thirteen as at 
 sixteen and seventeen. A recent study shows that in a group of 
 'growth cases' reaching into the hundreds, the most distinctive 
 period of spontaneous interest falls at the age of twelve." * 
 
 There is a second period of religious awakening at sixteen and 
 seventeen. Forty-one of the ninety-nine men studied by Coe experi- 
 enced an increase of religious interest at this age — the same number 
 as at the earlier period. At twenty again, there seems to be a third 
 such awakening. Seventy-six per cent of the religious awakenings re- 
 ported by these men came in the ages from twelve to twenty, and 50 per 
 cent in the years named as times of special interest — twelve and thirteen, 
 sixteen and seventeen, and twenty, f Other studies have tended to 
 confirm the conclusions which Coe draws from these figures. 
 
 When we inquire into the age of ' conversion^ the question is different. 
 We are asking now at what age the decision is most apt to be made. 
 As might be expected, Coe found that conversions were most frequent 
 in the three periods of special religious awakening ; but the propor- 
 tion is not the same. There were more at sixteen and seventeen than 
 in the earlier period, and many less in the last period than in either of 
 the other two. Collating a number of studies, he found that the 
 average age of conversion for 1784 men was 16.4 years. Hall adds 
 data from several sources which show that, of a total of 4054 men, 1329 
 were converted at sixteen, seventeen and eighteen, and 3053 at ages 
 from twelve to twenty, with only 705 at twenty-one and over.f Has- 
 lett summarizes a total of 6641 conversions of both sexes, of which 
 5054 were at ages from twelve to twenty ; 1527 were at sixteen and 
 seventeen, and only 1039 from twenty-one to thirty-four. \ 
 
 We shall later inquire more closely into the significance of these 
 figures. It is enough now that we see the tremendous importance of 
 early adolescence in religious development Both at its beginning and 
 at its end life is especially open to religious influences. It is the age 
 upon which the Sunday school must center its efforts. 
 
 10. We may sum up, finally, three great reasons why early adoles- 
 cence is a peculiarly critical period : 
 
 * Coe : " Education in Religion and Morals," pp. 254, 255. 
 
 t Coe : " The Spiritual Iyife," ch. i. 
 
 X Hall: " Adolescence," II., p. 290. 
 
 § Haslett: "Pedagogical Bible School," p. 165. 
 
54 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 ( i ) It brings a multitude of new instincts. A new instinct means a 
 new interest, a new opening of life. It means an unstable equilibrium 
 — a new danger and a new opportunity. Character is never more 
 plastic ; habits form quickly. 
 
 (2) The youth thinks himself a man, but is not. His ideals and 
 ambitions reach out into the great world ; yet he is only a boy, and 
 hardly more than a child. He is not old enough to decide for himself 
 any of life's greater issues ; but he wants to. To deal rightly with 
 him you will need all your love and tact and hard common sense. 
 You must bear responsibility, yet let him feel it. You must take him 
 seriously, and not let him know your doubts. In short, you must think 
 with him, not simply/<?r him, and so lead him to right conclusions. 
 You must share his life, and give him a share of yours. 
 
 (3) The youth of this age is peculiarly open to suggestion. His 
 suggestibility is in fact as great as that of the child under six — but it is 
 of a different sort. Early childhood was open to direct suggestion ; 
 it would believe and act upon whatever is told it. Now the suggestion 
 must be indirect. The youth will resent a direct command or wish ; 
 but he is very sensitive to influence. The reason is plain. His new 
 consciousness of the great world about him shapes his sense of values. 
 He will esteem those things that he finds esteemed in what he gets to 
 know of the grown-up world ; he will reject what is there rejected. 
 There is no time of life when social environment is so potent. The 
 youth is bound to be like those about him — not merely because he im- 
 itates, but because their life is the source from which he imbibes his 
 new ideas of what life is. To help him you must suggest, not in words 
 but in deeds. Don't talk ; be and do. Go about your business, live 
 straight and get things accomplished, and your influence will do what 
 advice never could. Be a friend of the boy, not a patron. Let him 
 work with you ; don't make him feel that you are working for him. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 1. What years does adolescence cover? Why does the Sunday 
 school fix the beginning and end of the period where it does ? 
 
 2. Describe the physical growth and vigor of early adolescence. 
 How do girls differ from boys in growth and development during 
 these years ? 
 
 3. How does the independence and self-assertion of early adoles- 
 cence differ from that of later childhood ? 
 
EARLY ADOLESCENCE 56 
 
 4. How do the records of the public schools prove the expansion 
 of selfhood in early adolescence ? 
 
 5. Show how the social instincts mature in these years. How do 
 they differ from those of later childhood ? 
 
 6. Why does the development of the sexual instincts throw life 
 into unstable equilibrium? What changes of attitude toward the other 
 sex does the adolescent pass through ? 
 
 7. In what sense is early adolescence a time of doubt ? 
 
 8. Why is the youth of this age awkward and self-conscious ? 
 
 9. What are the three periods of special religious awakening found 
 by Coe ? 
 
 10. At what time of life do the greater number of conversions take 
 place ? 
 
 11. W T hy is early adolescence a peculiarly critical period? 
 
 12. Compare the suggestibility of youth with that of childhood. 
 
LESSON VII 
 Later Adolescence 
 
 We have agreed to regard the seventeenth birthday as the begin- 
 ning, and the twenty-first as the end of later adolescence. These 
 boundaries are by no means exact. There are no rules by which the 
 passage from early to later adolescence may be precisely defined. 
 Yet in every life there is a more or less definite turning point around 
 sixteen to eighteen. It may be some moral or emotional crisis ; it may 
 be conversion. Or it is the beginning work to support one's self, or 
 leaving home to go to college. It may be nothing more than the 
 attainment of full growth in height. To know, in any particular case, 
 just what the turning point has been, is essential to any real under- 
 standing of the succeeding years. 
 
 We have seen, too, that adolescence ends more often at twenty-four 
 or twenty-five than at twenty-one. Yet here practical considerations 
 impel the Sunday school to regard the age of legal majority as the end 
 of youth. 
 
 i. The development of individuality is the fundamental charac- 
 teristic of this period. It has been well called a time of selection and 
 concentration. Early adolescence was a time of expansion. It pre- 
 sented a wealth of possibilities. It spread the world before youth's 
 eager vision. Its instincts pulled a hundred ways. Later adolescence 
 begins to select from among life's possibilities and to concentrate its 
 energies. Life begins to narrow, but to become deeper. The time 
 of mere vision is over ; choice must be made. And With choice comes 
 individuality. Lives diverge. Each must have its own work ; and 
 each its own quality 
 
 2. The difference between individuals is thus the great fact of 
 w r hich we must take account in this period. At no time,. of course, 
 are pupils to be treated in the bunch. The individuality of the tiniest 
 and most uninteresting must be respected. But now, of all times, 
 individual interests are primary. Each pupil presents a separate 
 problem in himself. 
 
 Many factors enter into the determination of individuality. There 
 are differences of heredity and of home environment. There is the 
 natural inborn variation of capacity and temperament. God makes 
 
 (56) 
 
LATER ADOLESCENCE 57 
 
 no one of His creatures or of His children exactly like any other. It is 
 the provision by which His wisdom insures progress in the world. All 
 these differences show themselves with especial dcfiniteness in- later 
 adolescence. And they do so because they are called out by differ- 
 ences in external conditions. We do not all have the same oppor- 
 tunities. We cannot all get the same education, or do the same 
 work. There we come to the bottom of the matter — it is because 
 the lives of your pupils are now getting set toward work, and toward 
 different lines of work, that you must deal with each in its own way. 
 
 Recent studies show that not more than half the children who enter 
 our city schools finish the work of the grades, and that only one-tenth 
 of them continue to the final year of the high school.* It has been 
 estimated, again, that only ten per cent of those who take a high 
 school course go to college or to a professional school. Consider 
 what differences, simply from this standpoint, later adolescence pre- 
 sents. Our pupils divide themselves into at least three great classes : 
 
 (i) Those who have gotten only an elementary education, or a part 
 of one, and have gone to work at an early age. They are more 
 mature than others in some ways, for they have had to face life's seri- 
 ous business. In other respects they are more immature. Their lives 
 are circumscribed ; their interests narrow. They cannot appreciate 
 things that appeal strongly to those of more culture. 
 
 (2) Those who are now finishing high school, and entering upon 
 work-a-day life. 
 
 (3) Those who are entering college or professional school. For these 
 the period of adolescence will be prolonged. They will broaden and 
 mature intellectually, yet lack development into manhood and woman- 
 hood until they finally face the world to make a living. 
 
 3. All three classes are experiencing in this period a contact with 
 reality more direct and definite than at any former time of life. The 
 first two are wage-earners ; the former with a little experience, the lat- 
 ter just beginning. They face the realities of business life, with its 
 routine, its competition and its uncompromising standards of efficiency. 
 The college students are leaving home for the first time to enter upon 
 a new life. Protected from economic necessity as it is, college life yet 
 has its realities. It is a world to itself, but within it the student stands 
 upon his own feet. He must make good in life with his fellows as 
 well as in the eyes of the faculty. 
 
 We shall here consider later adolescence from the standpoint simply 
 of the first two classes. Very few of you have to deal with college 
 
 * Ayres : " I^aggards in Our Schools," p. 65. 
 
58 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 students. The problems of the student, moreover, are peculiarly his 
 own, and must be solved by college men. 
 
 4. For most of our pupils, then, later adolescence marks a new 
 stage in life because it brings their first wages. It is the time of 
 transition from economic dependence to self-support and inde- 
 pendence. At some time or other within these years, life's real re- 
 sponsibilities begin. 
 
 Nature has made ready for the transition. The youth of this age 
 possesses a splendid equipment for work — a high degree of physical 
 energy, strength and comparative maturity of intellect and vigor of 
 will. The physical energy, that before was needed for growth, can now 
 be turned into activity and the development of strength. This is the 
 age when athletes develop — great baseball and football players, boxers 
 and runners. They reach their best in the middle twenties. The 
 baseball player of thirty is a " veteran," and we wonder whether he 
 can stand the pace for another season. The runner has usually had to 
 stop racing before that age. He no longer possesses the endurance 
 that he had in the years just before and after twenty-one. 
 
 The intellectual energy of the period is just as great. Reason and 
 will are maturing, and the mind is restlessly active. Much of the 
 world's best work has been done by young men. The list of its great 
 youths reaches into every sphere. Napoleon was a lieutenant at fif- 
 teen, and by study made himself the master that he was of the science 
 of war. He was but twenty-four when he astonished the world at the 
 siege of Toulon. Lafayette sailed to the help of the American col- 
 onies at nineteen. Byron published his first volume at seventeen ; 
 Bryant wrote ' ' Thanatopsis ' ' at the same age. Shelley had published 
 romances and poems before he was eighteen, and at that age was ex- 
 pelled from Oxford for publishing a tract on "The Necessity of Athe- 
 ism." Pascal discovered geometry for himself at twelve, and at six- 
 teen wrote a treatise on conic sections. Savonarola passed his later 
 youth in meditation upon the evils of his day ; and at twenty-two de- 
 cided the work of his life. At seventeen Leibniz wrote a thesis con- 
 taining the germ of his philosophy, and at twenty was ready for a 
 doctorate of laws. Descartes doubted all knowledge save mathemat- 
 ics while yet a stripling, and at twenty-three passed through the crisis 
 which determined his whole future life and philosophy. At nineteen 
 Schelling was writing upon the philosophy of Kant and Fichte, at 
 twenty-two published his first great book, and at twenty-three was 
 himself professor of philosophy at Jena. Michael Angelo was at work 
 in the palace of the Medici at sixteen. Peter Cooper vowed at 
 
LATER ADOLESCENCE 59 
 
 eighteen that he would some day build a Cooper Institute. At the 
 same age Spurgeon began his remarkable work as a preacher. 
 
 5. Yet later adolescence is not all success and happiness. It con- 
 tains its disappointments. It has new forces to tear life down as 
 well as to build it up. 
 
 It is almost inevitably a time of some disillusionment. The hopes 
 of early youth were too extravagant, its ideals loved with a passion 
 that did not see how plodding is the path to realization. The first 
 contact with reality brings something of a shock, a sense of loss. The 
 world is not nearly so responsive as the boy had dreamed, and ideals 
 are not so easy of accomplishment. This making a living seems, after 
 all, a sordid business, which knows no law save the survival of the 
 fittest. He feels himself to be a mere cog in a vast industrial 
 machinery, and the dull routine of it all oppresses him. 
 
 " Forenoon, and afternoon, and night ; — forenoon. 
 And afternoon, and night ; — forenoon, and — what? 
 The empty song repeats itself. No more? " 
 
 Added to this is the fact that starting to work means generally a 
 breaking of old ties. Even if the boy stays at home and boards with 
 his parents, the home ties are no longer the same. He has acquired 
 a new jndependence now that he, too, is a bread-winner. The old 
 restraints are loosed ; his status even in the home comes to be one of 
 contract. The break is most complete, of course, in case of the youth 
 who goes to a new community to make his living among strangers. 
 The freedom, the new temptations, the loneliness of being without 
 friends and with no acquaintances save fellow-workmen — no wonder 
 that the boy in a new town often goes wrong. 
 
 Jane Addams has given us an interpretation of the spirit of youth 
 that is almost prophetic in its insight. There is not a page in her book 
 that one can afford to lose ; but we must be content here with two 
 brief passages : 
 
 " Many boys in the years immediately following school find 
 no restraint either in tradition or character. They drop learning 
 as a childish thing and look upon school as a tiresome task that 
 is finished. They demand pleasure as the right of one who 
 earns his own living. They have developed no capacity for re- 
 creation demanding mental effort or even muscular skill, and 
 are obliged to seek only that depending upon sight, sound and 
 taste. Many of them begin to pay board to their mothers, and 
 make the best bargain they can, that more money may be left 
 
60 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 to spend in the evening. They even bait the excitement of 
 4 losing a job,' and often provoke a foreman if only to see ' how 
 much he will stand.' They are constitutionally unable to en- 
 joy things continuously and follow their vagrant wills unhin- 
 dered. Unfortunately the city lends itself to this distraction. 
 At the best, it is difficult to know what to select and what to 
 eliminate as objects of attention among its thronged streets, its 
 glittering shops, its gaudy advertisements of shows and amuse- 
 ments." 
 
 ' ' One of the most pathetic sights in the public dance halls of 
 Chicago is the number of young men, obviously honest young 
 fellows from the country, who stand about vainly hoping to 
 make the acquaintance of some ' nice girl.' They look eagerly 
 up and down the rows of girls, many of whom are drawn to the 
 hall by the same keen desire for pleasure and social intercourse 
 which the lonely young men themselves feel. One Sunday 
 night at twelve o'clock I had occasion to go into a large public 
 dance hall. As I was standing by the rail looking for the girl I 
 had come 'to find, a young man approached me and quite 
 simply asked me to introduce him to some 'nice girl,' saying 
 that he did not know anyone there. On my replying that a 
 public dance hall was not the best place in which to look for a 
 nice girl, he said, ' But I don't know any other place where 
 there is a chance to meet any kind of a girl. I'm awfully lone- 
 some since I came to Chicago.' And then he added, rather de- 
 fiantly, ' Some nice girls do come here ! It is one of the best 
 halls in town.' He was voicing the ' bitter loneliness ' that many 
 city men remember to have experienced during the first years 
 after they had ' come up to town.' "* 
 
 Later adolescence is often called the " wild oats'" period. It is 
 true, indeed, that most boys now have their fling. It is true, too, that 
 from these years on through the twenties more crimes are committed 
 than at any other time of life. But the wild doings of youth are not 
 usually caused by purposed badness of character. They are often 
 enough a natural result of the conditions of which we have just been 
 thinking. 
 
 6. t In later adolescence religion may easily be lost, either through 
 disuse or through doubt. 
 
 (i) Religion may simply die out of the youth" s life. The new free- 
 dom permits him to stay away from church, and it gets easy to stay 
 
 * Addains : " The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," pp. II, 54. 
 
LATER ADOLESCENCE 61 
 
 away. Work makes him forget religion ; success keeps him from 
 feeling its need. It is a law of life that use gives strength ; a capacity 
 unused weakens and dies. It is as true of the religious instinct as of 
 any other. One need not be a sinner to lose God ; he need only 
 forget Him. 
 
 (2) This is life' s doubting time. About the beginning of the 
 twenties many — perhaps most — men and women pass through a 
 period of doubt and negation respecting the truths of religion. There 
 are many causes. The disillusionment of these years often brings a 
 sense of the worthlessness of religious hopes. The college student's 
 first vision of the great truths of science calls in question the religious 
 conceptions he had before acquired — and all too often rightly, because 
 his teachers have forced upon him dogmas that he could not under- 
 stand, and with the best of intentions have led him to believe impos- 
 sible things. The youth, too, who gets no higher education catches 
 the spirit of the popular science of newspapers and magazines, with a 
 more disastrous result because it is poor science on the one hand, and 
 he is less able to understand on the other. Perhaps he is caught by 
 the argument of the labor agitator or socialist leader, who inveighs 
 against religion because the church is itself a "club of the rich." 
 Aside from all these external incentives, however, the youth is im- 
 pelled to doubt from within. His metaphysical [instincts have awak- 
 ened. His reason is active. He must know what he believes, and he 
 must systematize his principles of life. He seeks a unity of concep- 
 tion. He is a creed-maker. And just because his old religious ideas 
 were the ideas of a child, they will not fall into unity and harmony with 
 one another or with the new conceptions which every day brings. He 
 can no longer be content with the old answer that these are mysteries. 
 Youth acknowledges no mysteries. He turns to doubt. 
 
 7. But later adolescence has its reconstructive forces. Great as 
 are the chances for disintegration in these years, life builds itself anew. 
 We note three such forces : 
 
 (1) Education. Doubt can be met and resolved by more complete 
 knowledge. Youth is open-minded. Take your young doubter at 
 his word, and meet his intellectual difficulty with an intellectual 
 answer, and you need have no fear. He is no skeptic. He seeks the 
 truth, and he will accept it when it comes. Make sure that you know 
 enough to teach him ; make sure that you have the truth. 
 
 The routine dullness of labor, too, may be banished if the youth but 
 learns more of his task and its bearings upon human life. Disillusion- 
 ment may become warm-hearted comprehension as one gets to know, 
 
62 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 and his interests widen. We have often wrongly defined culture. It 
 does not mean mere acquaintance with books and paintings, or the 
 ability to talk of historical events. It means breadth of interest — the 
 ability to understand what the next man is doing, and to see the vital 
 relations which his life sustains to mine, and mine to his. 
 
 " If a child goes into a sewing factory with a knowledge of 
 the work she is doing in relation to the finished product ; if she 
 is informed concerning the material she is manipulating and the 
 processes to which it is subjected ; if she understands the de- 
 sign she is elaborating in its historic relation to art and decora- 
 tion, her daily life is lifted from drudgery to one of self-con- 
 scious activity, and her pleasure and intelligence is registered 
 in her product. . . . Education must be planned so seriously 
 and definitely for the years between fourteen and sixteen that it 
 will be actual trade training so far as it goes, with attention 
 given to the conditions under which money will be actu- 
 ally paid [for industrial skill ; but at the same time, that the 
 implications, the connections, the relations to the industrial 
 world, will be made clear. A man who makes, year after year, 
 but one small wheel in a modern watch factory, may, if his edu- 
 cation has properly prepared him, have a fuller life than did the 
 old watchmaker who made a watch from beginning to end. . . . 
 When all the young people working in factories shall come to use 
 their faculties intelligently, and as a matter of course be inter- 
 ested in what they do, then our manufactured products may at 
 last meet the demands of a cultivated nation, because they will 
 be produced by cultivated workmen. The machine will not be 
 abandoned by any means, but will be subordinated to the intel- 
 ligence of the man who manipulates it, and will be used as a 
 tool."* 
 
 For this education, too, the youth is ready who has experienced 
 anything of the disappointment it is meant to heal. The large num- 
 ber of young men who are in the night schools of great cities, or who 
 are taking correspondence courses, bears witness to this fact. The 
 time is fast coming when our public schools will meet more adequately 
 than they have ever done the needs of that great industrial population 
 which constitutes the body of society. 
 
 (2) Love between the sexes. In the closing years of this period and 
 in the early twenties "the greatest thing in the world" is likely to 
 
 * Addams : "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," pp. 122-128. 
 
LATER ADOLESCENCE 63 
 
 come into life. It is true that the sex-instincts are susceptible of grave 
 abuse, and that passion may lead to the worst of sins. Yet life has no 
 greater spiritual force than love for one of the opposite sex. It lifts 
 the self above all that is carnal and gross. It makes selfishness im- 
 possible. It gains life through losing life. It brings new strength to 
 resist temptation, and puts a new joy into work. The instinct to make 
 a home and to live for one's children is sacred. It is God's revelation 
 of His own nature within us. Too early marriages, of course, are un- 
 fortunate ; and the conditions of modern life compel the young man of 
 to-day to wait longer than his father did. Yet he is blessed who falls 
 really in love with the right girl. His time of waiting and working will 
 be one of spiritual uplift. 
 
 (3) Altruism and social service. The older adolescent is as ready 
 as was the younger to sacrifice self for sake of others — but now he 
 is more practical about it. Altruism is no longer a vague ideal ; he 
 seeks definite forms of social service and wants to see results. Not 
 unselfishness in general, but a particular bit of unselfishness that 
 counts for something, will enlist his sympathy and co-operation. The 
 great trouble with many classes and clubs and other organizations for 
 youths who are almost men is that they seem to have nothing real to 
 do. Give the youth responsibility ; couple him up to the real work 
 of social betterment ; make him feel that he is a worker along with 
 you toward the same ends, instead of being himself the object of your 
 endeavor — and you need not work to make a man of him. He will 
 make a man of himself. 
 
 8. Finally, we dare not forget that the close of later adolescence 
 marks "the danger line in religion." We remember from the 
 figures quoted in the last chapter that there is a time of special 
 religious interest at twenty, and a relatively large number of conver- 
 sions. But less than one-sixth of the conversions studied took place 
 after twenty. One-half of these, again, were before twenty-five. The 
 chances are a thousand to one against conversion after thirty. Our 
 duty is obvious. Preachers have appealed for repentance on the 
 ground that we know not what hour we shall die. Stronger far is the 
 appeal of the facts respecting the age of conversion. Now is the 
 time, not because of what we do not know about death, but because 
 of what we do know about life. Every day's postponement makes it 
 the more certain that our pupil never will consecrate his life to God. 
 
64 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. What are some of the factors which contribute to the develop- 
 ment of individuality in later adolescence ? 
 
 2. Into what three great classes do differences of education divide 
 our pupils in later adolescence ? 
 
 3. In what sense does later adolescence bring a new and direct 
 contact with reality ? 
 
 4. Tell something of the physical and intellectual energy of later 
 adolescence. 
 
 5. Discuss some of the forces which tend to tear life down in this 
 period. 
 
 6. Why is later adolescence a time when religion may easily be 
 lost? 
 
 7. Why is later adolescence a time of doubt? How does its doubt 
 differ from that of early adolescence ? 
 
 8. Show how education may serve as a reconstructive force in a 
 life that has been attacked by doubt, disillusionment or temptation. 
 
 9. Discuss the spiritual value of love between the sexes. 
 
 10. How does the altruism of later adolescence differ from that of 
 early adolescence ? 
 
 11. Why does the close of later adolescence mark the danger line 
 in religion ? 
 
LESSON VIII 
 Instinct 
 
 We have thought now of the chief characteristics of each stage in the 
 development of a child, We have learned something of how person- 
 ality grows. It would be well if we could take up the other problem 
 of how the mind works. We should think then of those great prin- 
 ciples of mental life which hold true in every stage of its development. 
 But there will not be time to do that in any systematic way. 
 
 We shall spend three lessons, however, in a closer study of the laws 
 that determine action. We have spoken a good deal of instinct, 
 habit and will ; and it is highly important that we understand clearly 
 just what we mean by these terms. At the same time these three les- 
 sons may serve to recall and summarize many of the things we have 
 learned thus far. 
 
 One thing must be said at the outset. When we distinguish instinct, 
 habit and will as determining action, we do not mean to classify 
 actions into mutually exclusive groups. In most of our behavior, 
 the three are together present as determining factors. Any ordinary 
 action is partly instinctive, partly voluntary, and partly habitual. In- 
 stinct determines our general tendencies or attitudes in presence of a 
 situation, and so lays down certain broad limits within which action 
 will lie. The will determines its specific character and purpose. 
 Habit, finally, takes care of the details of its execution. Take as an 
 example your conversation and behavior in any social group. Instinct 
 determines the general attitudes you take toward others — whether shy 
 or eager to entertain, ready or slow of speech, vivacious or phleg- 
 matic. Your ideas determine what you want to say and do. Habit 
 forms your words with lips and tongue, maintains your posture and 
 makes your gestures.* 
 
 i. Instincts are natural tendencies to act in certain ways which re- 
 sult from the inborn organization of the nervous system. This organ- 
 ization is a matter, partly of inheritance from the race as a whole, partly 
 
 * One other thing should be said at the outset. These chapters aim to do nothing 
 more than present briefly the substance of Professor James' doctrine on their 
 topics. He has made these subjects peculiarly his own, by his fresh insight and 
 wonderfully clear and attractive treatment. The teacher should read his " Talks 
 to Teachers on Psychology." 
 
 5 (65) 
 
66 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 of inheritance from our immediate ancestors, and partly of the origi- 
 nal variations which constitute our individual endowment. In any 
 case, an action is instinctive just in so far as one does not need to learn 
 it, or to acquire the tendency to do it. 
 
 2. One cannot give a complete list of the human instincts, for it 
 is often hard to draw the line between what is instinctive and what has 
 been learned. Such a list would cover a wide variety of actions, from 
 the simple reflexes of early infancy to the sacrifices of a mother's love. 
 Professor James' list may be taken as typical : 
 
 "Among the first reflex movements are crying on contact 
 with the air, sneezing, snuffling, snoring, coughing, sighing, sob- 
 bing, gagging, vomiting, hiccuping, starting, moving the limbs 
 when touched, and sucking. To these now may be added hang- 
 ing by the hands. Later on come biting, clasping objects and 
 carrying them to the mouth, sitting up, standing, creeping and 
 walking. It is probable that the nerve centers for executing 
 these three latter acts ripen spontaneously, just as those for 
 flight have been proved to do in birds, and that the appearance 
 of learning to stand and walk, by trial and failure, is due to the 
 exercise beginning in most children before the centers are ripe. 
 . . . With the first impulses to imitation, those to significant 
 vocalization are born. Emulation rapidly ensues, with pug- 
 nacity in its train. Fear of definite objects comes in early, 
 sympathy much later, though on the instinct of sympathy so 
 much in human life depends. Shyness and sociability, play, 
 curiosity, acquisitiveness, all begin very early in life. The hunt- 
 ing instinct, modesty, love, the parental instinct, etc., come 
 later. By the age of fifteen or sixteen the whole array of human 
 instincts is complete. It will be observed that no other mammal, 
 not even the monkey, shows so large a list. ' ' * 
 
 3. There have been many attempts to classify the human instincts, 
 with no result that is entirely satisfactory. Kirkpatrick's classification 
 is, perhaps, the best for our purpose. f He takes the uses which in- 
 stincts serve as the basis of division, and finds five great classes, to 
 which he adds a miscellaneous group. 
 
 (1) The individualistic instincts are those which serve to maintain 
 the life of the individual. They are the instincts of self-preservation. 
 Feeding, fear, fighting and anger belong to this class. 
 
 * " Psychology," Briefer Course, pp. 406, 407. 
 t " Fundamentals of Child-Study," pp. S 1 ^- 
 
INSTINCT 67 
 
 (2) The parental instincts are those associated with reproduction 
 and care for the young. Love between the sexes and the love of 
 parent for child are the principal instincts of this class. These instincts 
 do not appear as a rule until adolescence ; yet we may, perhaps, in- 
 clude with them the instinct of children to care for pets, dolls and 
 children younger than themselves. It should be noted, too, that the 
 parental care-taking instinct in adults is not restricted to those who 
 are themselves parents. The successful teacher has a good share 
 of it. 
 
 (3) The social instincts are those concerned with relations to other 
 persons. This class includes sociability, shyness, sympathy, affec- 
 tion, altruism, modesty, secretiveness, love of approbation, rivalry, 
 jealousy, envy. 
 
 (4) The adaptive instincts are those which bring the child into closer 
 contact with his environment, and enable him to adapt himself to his 
 surroundings. In this class are three great instincts which are, per- 
 haps, the most important of all in relation to the work of the teacher. 
 They are imitation, play and curiosity. 
 
 (5) The regulative instincts are those concerned with the formation 
 of ideals and the regulation of life in light of them. They are the 
 instincts of morality and religion. 
 
 (6) In a miscellaneous group may be placed the instinct to collect 
 things and enjoy ownership, the instinct to construct or destroy, the 
 instinct to express ideas to others, the instinct to love and enjoy beau- 
 tiful things. 
 
 4. We all know enough of the instinctive activities enumerated in 
 these lists to make plain certain general characteristics of human 
 instincts : 
 
 (1) The instincts are indefinite. They do not provide for any 
 such details of action as do the instincts of lower animals. Instinct 
 leads the bee to build the honeycomb, and dictates even the hexagonal 
 pattern of its cell ; it impels the child to construct, but what and how 
 it does not determine. Our instincts do not so much provide par- 
 ticular things to do, as simply general kinds of action. The details 
 are left to be learned through experience. Often enough they provide 
 simply the innate capacity for some line of action or of study. Many 
 of them, as fear, anger, jealousy, are emotions as well, and so stand 
 rather for active attitudes than for specific acts. 
 
 (2) The instincts are not all present at birth ; but they appear, each 
 in its time, as a result of the natural growth of the nervous system. 
 The question as to just when each instinct appears, and what are the 
 
68 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 dominant instincts at each stage in the growth of a child, we have 
 dealt with briefly in preceding chapters. 
 
 (3) When instincts do appear, they are often gradual in their de- 
 velopment. A child does not begin to act all at once in a totally new 
 way, because a new instinct has grown within him. The instinct itself 
 must come to maturity — in some cases very rapidly, in others more 
 slowly. Instincts really ripen; they are the result of the gradual 
 maturing of the nerve centers which are responsible for them. 
 
 (4) The ripening of an instinct means the development of a new 
 aptitude and the awakening of a new interest. The child reaches out 
 eagerly toward anything that may serve as material for the nature- 
 impelled activity within him. 
 
 (5) Instincts are transitory and modifiable. If they are not used, 
 or if their use leads to disagreeable results, they will die out. When 
 they are used, they become set in the definite directions which that 
 use has taken, and so become habits. 
 
 5. The bearing of these characteristics of instinct upon the 
 work of the teacher has been set forth by Professor James in a pas- 
 sage so striking that we must quote it at length : 
 
 ' ' We see the law of transiency corroborated on the widest scale 
 by the alternation of different interests and passions as human 
 life goes on. W r ith the child, life is all play and fairy-tales and 
 learning the external properties of things ; with the youth, it is 
 bodily exercises of the more systematic sort, novels of the real 
 world, boon fellowship and song, friendship and love, nature, 
 travel and adventure, science and philosophy ; with the man, 
 ambition and policy, acquisitiveness, responsibility to others, 
 and the selfish zest of the battle of life. If a boy grows up 
 alone at the age of games and sports, and learns neither to play 
 ball, nor row, nor sail, nor ride, nor skate, nor fish, nor shoot, 
 probably he will be sedentary to the end of his days ; and, 
 though the best of opportunities be afforded him for learning 
 these things later, it is a hundred to one but he will pass them 
 by and shrink back from the effort of taking those necessary 
 first steps, the prospect of which, at an earlier age, would have 
 filled him with eager delight. ... In all pedagogy the great 
 thing is to strike the iron while hot, and to seize the wave of 
 the pupil's interest in each successive subject before its ebb 
 has come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill 
 acquired — a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which 
 
INSTINCT 69 
 
 afterward the individual may float. There is a happy moment 
 for fixing skill in drawing, for making boys collectors in 
 natural history, and presently dissectors and botanists ; then for 
 initiating them into the harmonies of mechanics and the wonders 
 of physical and chemical law. Later, introspective psychology 
 and the metaphysical and religious mysteries take their turn ; 
 and, last of all, the drama of human affairs and worldly wisdom 
 in the widest sense of the term. In each of us a saturation 
 point is soon reached in all these things ; the impetus of our 
 purely intellectual zeal expires, and unless the topic be one 
 associated with some urgent personal need that keeps our wits 
 constantly whetted about it, we settle into an equilibrium, and 
 live on what we learned when our interest was fresh and in- 
 stinctive, without adding to the store. Outside of their own 
 business, the ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five 
 are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives. 
 They cannot get anything new. Disinterested curiosity is past, 
 the mental grooves and channels set, the power of assimila- 
 tion gone. . . . To detect the moment of the instinctive readi- 
 ness for the subject is, then, the first duty of every educator."* 
 
 6. If the detection of the pupil's instincts and interests be the first 
 duty of every teacher, his second duty, no less important, is the con- 
 trol of instincts. And the vital problem is — How ? .What method 
 is best to repress undesirable instincts and to enforce and train those 
 that are desirable ? 
 
 No instinct, once used, is after that merely an instinct. It has added 
 two things to itself — a habit and an idea. Just because it has once 
 expressed itself in a certain definite way, it will tend thereafter to ex- 
 press itself in the same way, in accordance with the law of habit. And 
 because its expression has led to some result of which one is con- 
 scious, the idea of that result remains in memory and may help to 
 determine future action. The hereditary tendency need no longer be 
 followed blindly. Each time that an instinct is used in action, there- 
 fore, it becomes more definite and more intelligent. 
 
 Instincts may be controlled, then, in three ways. First, through 
 not using them at all, in which case they in time simply die out. 
 Second, through so using the law of habit as to get them definitely 
 fixed in right directions. Third, through so comprehending their 
 results that one's ideas will help them lead to efficient and right 
 
 * James : " Psychology," Briefer Course, pp. 402-405. 
 
70 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 action. Control by ideas we shall deal with when we come to discuss 
 the will ; let us think now of control through disuse and habit. 
 
 Disuse of an instinct can be secured by seeing that the situations 
 which would naturally call it forth are not experienced, and that the 
 materials it needs to express itself are not present. Do not give the 
 destructive child intricate toys whose mechanism is a challenge. In- 
 stincts that are disused in time are gone. The nerve pathways have 
 wasted away, as does any part of the body which is not exercised. 
 
 Punishment is an application of the law of habit as well as of control 
 by ideas. When a painful or disagreeable result has been connected 
 with an instinctive action, a tendency not to employ it is set up. 
 
 Substitution is, however, the only sure way to deal with an unde- 
 sirable instinct. Substitute another action for the one you wish to get 
 rid of, and exercise that other as much as you can. It combines with 
 disuse of the wrong instinct a positive fixing of the right one by means 
 of the law of habit. Set your destructive child to work constructing 
 useful things, and you can swing the whole force of his instinct into 
 channels that are worth while. Let your boys work off their pugnac- 
 ity in athletic games which will instill ideas of loyalty and of team- 
 play along with the right sort of rivalry. Instead of seeking to re- 
 press the "gang," enlist it in a club and give it something to do. 
 The best juvenile court in the world is at Denver, because Judge 
 Lindsey knows, how to appeal to that boyish honor which is a part of 
 the spirit of the gang. Real control is never merely negative. It is 
 idle simply to stop an action or to seek to eradicate an instinct. Some 
 other action must take the place of the one prevented. The child 
 must do something ; and if there be at hand nothing else to do, he 
 will follow the old instinct, even though he feel that it will end in pun- 
 ishment. Your training must be positive, always giving the some- 
 thing else to do, centering his attention on what is wanted instead of 
 on what is forbidden, and providing the situations that will call forth 
 right instincts. One can sometimes substitute in this way ahead of 
 time. Before an undesirable instinct appears, you can begin to form 
 the habit of meeting in a better way the situation which would be 
 liable to call it forth. 
 
 To enforce and make permanent a good instinct, it is plain that we 
 need simply make of it a habit. Exercise the good instinct, and make 
 sure that it brings each time good and pleasurable results ; and it will 
 acquire strength and definiteness. 
 
 We must be sure, however, that we understand when instincts are 
 good and when they are bad. No instinct is bad in itself ; it is bad 
 
INSTINCT 71 
 
 only in some particular application, or when so enlarged as to distort 
 the well-rounded development of a personality.* Acquisitiveness is in 
 itself necessary and good ; it becomes bad if applied to the property 
 of someone else in theft, or if it so enlarges its hold upon a man as to 
 make him what we call ' ' grasping "or a miser. Further, we must 
 not judge the instincts of a child to be bad because they interfere with 
 our enjoyment, or are not fitting from our point of view. The inces- 
 sant activity of early childhood and its insatiable curiosity are often 
 very annoying, but they are essential to the child's development. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. Show how instinct, habit and will cooperate in most of our 
 actions. 
 
 2. What do you understand by instinct? 
 
 3. Name some of the more important human instincts. 
 
 4. Give Kirkpatrick's classification of the human instincts. 
 
 5. What is meant by the statement that human instincts are indefi- 
 nite? 
 
 6. Are all instincts present at birth ? When does the .instinct to 
 creep appear ? To walk ? Fear of the dark ? Social instincts ? 
 
 7. Give instances of the gradual development of instincts. 
 
 8. What is meant by the statement that instincts are transitory and 
 modifiable ? 
 
 9. Discuss the bearing of the doctrine of instinct upon the work of 
 the teacher. 
 
 10. " Every time that an instinct is used in action, it becomes more 
 definite and more intelligent ' ' — why ? 
 
 11. Describe the methods by which instincts may be controlled. 
 
 12. What is the difference between negative and positive methods 
 of training? Which is the better, and why? 
 
LESSON IX 
 Habit 
 
 We hear habit so much discussed from the moral point of view that 
 we are apt to associate the term with moral habits only. But morality 
 is only one of the aspects from which the law of habit may be regarded. 
 It is in reality the widest and most fundamental of all the laws of 
 mental life. It underlies everything that the mind does. Without it, 
 there would be no acquiring of tendencies, abilities or information. 
 Perception, memory and reasoning depend on the law of habit just as 
 truly as do acts of will. 
 
 i. The physical basis of habit is found in the fact that nerve cells, 
 like all other living tissue, are modified through use. A nerve cell 
 that has once acted is so changed that it is easier for it to act again in 
 the same way. A connection that has once been made by the trans- 
 mission of a nerve impulse from one cell to another, is likely to be 
 made again, and then again, until a very definite pathway has been 
 established. 
 
 2. Since it is so wide in its application, the law of habit must be 
 formulated in very general terms. It may be stated thus : Any con- 
 nection, nervous or mental, which has been made, tends to recur. The 
 degree of probability of its recurrence depends o?i its frequency, recency 
 and intensity in past experience. 
 
 (i) Note, in the first place, that this law applies to any connection, 
 nervous or mental. It may be the connection between an impression 
 and a movement. We unconsciously take out our keys as we approach 
 the home doorstep ; the skilled pianist, without thinking, strikes the 
 right key for each note on the score before her; the bicyclist "in- 
 stinctively" balances himself by a compensating movement as he 
 feels his body incline to one side or the other. These are not inborn 
 connections of impression and movement; we misuse the term "in- 
 stinctive" when we apply it to any such actions. They were at first 
 matters of conscious experience, or even of painstaking effort. But 
 through repetition a pathway of connection has been established be- 
 tween sensory and motor nerve cells, such that consciousness has now 
 little or nothing to do in determining the action. Such a habit is an 
 acquired reflex. 
 
 (72) 
 
HABIT 73 
 
 But this is only one of the many types of connection which are in- 
 cluded under our law. There is the connection between an impression 
 and an idea or a feeling. How many of us have found that in certain 
 situations we are bound each time to think of the same things or to 
 experience the same feelings ? There is the connection, again, between 
 one idea and another, such that the first habitually calls to mind its 
 fellow, even though they may have but little logical relation. Like 
 habitual connections become established between ideas and feelings, 
 between ideas and actions, or feelings and actions. The law applies 
 even to the connection between actions and other actions. Simple 
 practice is enough to make habitual and efficient a coordination of 
 muscles which was at first difficult and poorly accomplished. Learning 
 to write, to ride a bicycle, to play basketball or tennis, are examples. 
 
 We need not study in detail any of these types of habitual connec- 
 tion. The main point is to see how general and universal in applica- 
 tion the law of habit is. Any connection, nervous or mental — between 
 impressions, ideas, thoughts, memories, feelings, movements — once 
 made, tends to recur. And in all these cases the established habit 
 tends more and more to drop below the level of consciousness and to 
 become a matter of mechanical nerve-action. This is simply nature's 
 general provision of economy and growth in mental life. As fast as 
 the mind masters a situation, it hands it over to the mechanical care 
 of habit. The mind is thus left free for new and important things ; 
 familiar situations and details, through our established habits, take 
 care of themselves. 
 
 (2) The second part of the law asserts that the strength of an 
 habitual connection, and consequent probability of its recurrence, de- 
 pend on three factors. These factors, which may be called the vari- 
 ables of the lazv of habit, are the frequency, recency and intensity of the 
 connection in past experience. 
 
 Freque7icy. The more often a connection is repeated, the stronger 
 it becomes. Speaking figuratively, the pathway over which the nerve- 
 current goes becomes more deeply worn. Every time you think or 
 act, you fix more definitely your habits of thinking or acting. 
 
 Recency. Other things being equal, that connection will recur 
 which has been most recently made. I heard just now the bell of a 
 locomotive, and there flashed into mind the thought of last Monday's 
 journey. It has not been a very frequent one ; but it was the most 
 recent connection with a locomotive that had place in my store of ex- 
 periences. The pathways tend to become obliterated in time unless 
 they are freshly traversed now and then. 
 
74 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 Intensity. A connection that has been made with force or intensity 
 will be more likely to recur than one lacking in original strength. 
 When two things have been connected in experience under stress of 
 some emotion, or with the strain of effort to overcome obstacles, or 
 in the full glare of voluntary attention, their connection is more likely 
 to persist. This factor of intensity covers a wide range of experiences, 
 from a child's aversion to some dainty that has made it sick to the 
 awful distinctness with which some scene of sudden disaster is burned 
 into the mind. A pathway stamped hard and deep, if only once, is 
 apt to remain. 
 
 3. The illustrations just used make it plain that the applications of 
 the law of habit may be roughly divided into two groups. Sometimes 
 it deals primarily with ideas, and sometimes with actions. We can 
 form habits of thinking and habits of acting. In its application to 
 thinking, the law of habit lies at the foundation of what is called the 
 association of ideas. 
 
 We have all had the experience of tracing out the links of associa- 
 tion which called some idea to mind. You have found yourself think- 
 ing of some person or event, humming some tune, or repeating some 
 snatch of poetry ; and you have said to yourself, ' ' Now, what made 
 me think of that?''' And setting yourself to work to recall the 
 course of your reverie, you have been able to see how one thing 
 led to another, till finally there was called up the thought which sur- 
 prised you. 
 
 The general principle of association may be formulated in two 
 propositions. First, no idea comes up for use by the mind without 
 being called up by some sensation or other idea. Second, no sensa- 
 tion or idea leaves the mind without trying, at least, to call up some 
 idea from past experience. 
 
 This general principle, however, raises the question : What particu- 
 lar idea will a given sensation or idea call up ? It will call up some- 
 thing either that has actually been connected with itself in past 
 experience, or that is similar to itself, whether before connected or 
 not. There are therefore two types of association. Association by 
 contiguity takes place when an idea comes to mind because of its past 
 connection with another, as when, thinking of a certain man, I am re- 
 minded of Mackinac Island, where I met him. Association by similar- 
 ity takes place when an idea comes to mind because of some point of 
 likeness between it and another, as when a total stranger reminds me 
 of some friend. 
 
 It is evident that association by contiguity is simply one aspect of the 
 
HABIT 75 
 
 working of the law of habit. The thought of worship calls up my 
 home church rather than any other because of the factor of frequency. 
 Speak of music, and I will think of the last oratorio in which I sang. 
 The sound of the fire bell always brings to mind the night when a whole 
 city block burned around our home, because of the intensity with 
 which that experience impressed itself upon my childish mind. 
 
 Association by similarity seems different. One idea may call up 
 another that has not previously been connected with it, provided the 
 second is like it in some point. The simplicity and earnestness of the 
 Christian life reminded Paul of the athletic games at Corinth — "I 
 therefore so run, not as uncertainly ; so fight I, not as one that beateth 
 the air." Yet this type of association, too, is dependent upon the law 
 of habit. It involves two factors : first, that some single characteristic 
 of the first thing thought of stands out and catches the attention ; 
 second, that this single characteristic calls up something with which it 
 has been connected in the past. The second of these factors, it is evi- 
 dent, is nothing more than association by contiguity. Even in our 
 most novel and original associations, therefore, we are dependent 
 upon the resources which experience has put at our command. If a 
 man had never seen athletic games, simplicity and earnestness might 
 stand out as fundamental characteristics of Christianity with all the 
 clearness that they did for Paul, yet he would not be reminded of such 
 a contest. 
 
 So we see why the law of habit may well be regarded as the widest 
 and most fundamental of all laws of the mind. Since it has so large a 
 part in determining what ideas shall come before the mind, it under- 
 lies everything that is done by intellect and will. We all know that 
 one's past experience determines his ways of looking at things, of 
 thinking and acting. In perception, in memory, in reasoning and in 
 willing, we are dependent upon the laws of association. 
 
 4. The law of habit thus determines our actions indirectly, by first 
 determining what ideas will present themselves to the will. But it 
 also may determine actions directly and mechanically, without the 
 intervention of ideas. When we think of this aspect of its work, a 
 fourth variable may be added — that of result. An action that has re- 
 sulted successfully or pleasurably tends to recur ; one that has resulted 
 badly or disagreeably tends not to be done again. The chick that has 
 pecked at some distasteful morsel will soon, by the mere working of 
 habit, leave it alone. The burnt child fears the fire, even if it may 
 not call up any definite ideas concerning the past unpleasant experi- 
 ence. 
 
r6 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 We are all familiar with the characteristics of an action that has 
 become a habit, as contrasted with one that is determined by ideas. 
 The habitual action is performed with more speed and accuracy and 
 with less fatigue. It is done without conscious attention, and the 
 mind is left free to concern itself with other things while the action 
 goes on. As I write just now, my mind is busy with the ideas I wish 
 to express, while the work of writing, with all the intricate coordina- 
 tion of muscles it involves, is taken care of mechanically by my nerv- 
 ous system. I do not pay the slightest conscious attention to the 
 problem of how to form the letters or how to make my fingers work 
 together. I simply have my thought and will to write it — then habit 
 does the rest. Habit is the executive of my ideas. 
 
 5. It is hard to overestimate the importance and value of the law 
 of habit. It is true that comparatively few of our actions are merely 
 mechanical — matters of unconscious habit and nothing more. Most 
 actions are in some degree controlled by ideas. But the mechanical 
 factor is always there. In every action that is determined by ideas 
 habit has at least two functions : first, as law of association it brings 
 the ideas themselves before the mind ; and second, as executive it 
 carries out the details of action once the ideas have decided what to 
 do. It is evident that many an action is pretty completely caused by 
 habit, even when the doer thinks that he has consciously chosen it in 
 perfect freedom. The drunkard never thinks that he is in the grip of 
 an all-powerful habit. He imagines each time that he is freely choosing 
 to drink, and that he can stop whenever he pleases ; yet his action is 
 as absolutely determined by habit as that of the man who goes by 
 daylight into his bedroom and switches on the electric light as he 
 enters the door. 
 
 The practical conclusion is obvious. The problem we all face is 
 that of using- the law of habit so that it will help instead of hinder the 
 right moral and intellectual growth. As Professor James puts it : 
 
 "The great thing in all education is to make our nervous sys- 
 tem our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize 
 our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. 
 For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as pos- 
 sible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the 
 growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, 
 as we should guard against the plague." 
 
 Note the insistence, "as early as possible." The reasons are plain. 
 If we do not begin right habits early, we shall all the time be growing 
 
HABIT 77 
 
 into wrong ones, which we shall afterwards have to undo before we 
 can establish the better. Further, life does not always remain plastic. 
 Our ways get more and more fixed as we grow older, and it is hard 
 for the mature man to acquire new habits. You remember James' 
 statement, quoted in the last chapter, that before we are twenty-five 
 we acquire most of the ideas we shall ever have, except those directly 
 concerned with our business and the ordinary events of life. He 
 maintains that we acquire the larger part of our personal habits before 
 twenty, and that the character of most men is pretty well set by the 
 age of thirty. 
 
 Above all, we need to remember that within the limits of our plas- 
 ticity, the law of habit is always sure to act. It does not concern 
 itself primarily with great moral issues, but with the ordinary things 
 which' we are apt to deem trivial. And it has no exceptions. There 
 is only one safe rule to follow : Refrain entirely from actions you do 
 not wish to become habitual. Keep absolutely apart, both in mind and 
 in life, the things you want kept apart. There is no moment of life 
 too valueless, no action or attitude or thought too insignificant, for 
 habit to take account of and fasten upon us. James puts this with a 
 vividness that is startling : 
 
 "Could the young but realize how soon they will become 
 mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to 
 their conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our 
 own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every small- 
 est stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. 
 The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses him- 
 self for every fresh dereliction by saying, ' I won't count this 
 time ! ' Well ! he may not count it, and a kind heaven may not 
 count it ; but it is being counted none the less. Down among 
 his nerve cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, register- 
 ing and storing it up to be used against him when the next 
 temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific 
 literalness, wiped out." 
 
 6. How shall we make sure that we are securely establishing the 
 good habit we desire, or making permanent the association needed ? 
 There is only one way to gain a new habit, or to break up an old one 
 — that is to keep steadily working- at it. Habits are not built out of 
 resolutions or high emotions or inspiring visions, but out of repeated 
 actions. Just keep on doing the right thing, and you will wake some 
 morning to find that you have permanent possession of it. 
 
r8 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING vSERIES 
 
 The same principle applies to the making of associations. All edu- 
 cation is at bottom a matter of getting habits of thought. A fact is 
 learned just in so far as associations are established which will insure 
 its permanent possession, and its availability when needed. In making 
 such associations, the factor of frequency exhorts to repetition, recency 
 to review, while intensity insists that the association must be clear and 
 distinct, in the full light of attention. 
 
 The need of attention to insure strength of connection requires 
 special emphasis. Because we have said that habits may be incident- 
 ally acquired, and that the law is always sure to act, the conclusion 
 does not follow that we may rely upon incidental and careless repeti- 
 tion for the establishment of a desired habit or association. Just as 
 the utmost care must be used to keep undesirable connections out of 
 life, the most strenuous energy must be put forth to get those that are 
 good. The only safe rule here is : Put all the strength you can into 
 the act that is to become a habit. Center your whole mind upon the 
 fact you wish to remember. 
 
 Professor James, thinking of actions rather than of associations, 
 gives this and three other concrete maxims which constitute the best 
 practical summary of the whole matter : 
 
 " (i) Launch yourself with as strong and decided an initiative 
 as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which 
 shall reinforce the right motives ; put yourself assiduously in 
 conditions that encourage the new way ; make engagements 
 incompatible with the old ; take a public pledge, if the case 
 allows ; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you 
 know. 
 
 " (2) Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is 
 securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting 
 fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up ; a 
 single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind 
 again. 
 
 " (3) Seize the very first opportunity to act on every reso- 
 lution you make, and on every emotional prompting you 
 may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to 
 gain. 
 
 " (4) Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratui- 
 tous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or 
 heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two some- 
 thing for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, 
 
HABIT 79 
 
 so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may not find 
 you unnerved and untrained to stand the test." * 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 i. What is the physical basis of habit? 
 
 2. State the law of habit. 
 
 3. Explain the variables of the law of habit 
 
 4. State the general principle of the association of ideas. 
 
 5. What is association by contiguity? Show how the variables 
 of the law of habit apply to such associations. 
 
 6. What is association by similarity ? Give an illustration of your 
 own. Show how association by similarity is dependent upon associa- 
 tion by contiguity. 
 
 7. " Habit underlies everything that is done by intellect and will " 
 — show why this is true. 
 
 8. What fourth variable may be added to the law of habit when 
 it deals directly with actions ? 
 
 9. Is an action that is willed determined in any degree by habit ? 
 Give reasons for your answer. 
 
 10. How can we make sure that we do not fall into bad habits or 
 acquire undesirable associations ? 
 
 11. How can we make sure of acquiring good habits and desirable 
 associations ? 
 
 12. Gives James' rules for acquiring a new habit or breaking up an 
 old one. 
 
 * The quotations in this chapter are all from James' " Psychology," Briefer 
 Course, pp. 142-150. The chapter on Habit should be read by every teacher. It is 
 one of the best sermons ever written. 
 
LESSON X 
 The Will 
 
 People often speak of the will as though it were a sort of absolute 
 ruler, independent of the rest of the mind, and master of all its ideas 
 and feelings and actions. The truth is that the will is itself a part 
 of the mind, and must develop as must any other of its faculties. One's 
 will depends on his ideas and feelings, instincts and habits, just as 
 truly as they in turn are controlled by it. 
 
 i. To understand the will, we must begin with the fundamental 
 principle that "all consciousness is motor."* Every idea is as well 
 an impulse to act. Thoughts are forces. Left to itself, any thought 
 will issue in action. 
 
 (i) This is a natural consequence of the structure of the nervous 
 system. We have learned how its cells are so coupled up that ' ' action 
 of some sort is the natural outcome of every nerve current, and hence 
 of every sensation and idea. ' ' f We called this the law of motor dis- 
 charge. 
 
 ( 2 ) Many experiments have proved that, even though we check the 
 impulse and prevent the action, we cannot entirely stop the motor 
 discharge. Our sensations and ideas reflect themselves constantly in 
 little starts of the muscles, in changes of heart-beat, breathing, 
 secretion, digestion, and the like. Everyone has felt chagrined at 
 some time or other because of a blush that would come when he did 
 not wish it. 
 
 (3) A hypnotized subject is extremely suggestible. He proceeds 
 to act upon any idea that is put into his mind by the person who hyp- 
 notized him. It is because the hypnotic sleep has emptied his mind 
 of ideas, and the one suggested takes complete possession of it. If 
 one be told while awake that he is an animal, a host of conflicting 
 ideas and sensations present themselves to disprove the suggestion ; 
 but if while hypnotized, these critical ideas do not come to mind, the 
 suggested idea is left alone, and it issues in action. 
 
 (4) In normal wide-awake life we often act impulsively. See a maga- 
 zine that looks interesting, and you take out your purse and buy it. 
 Think of golf, and you start for the links. Some judgment comes to 
 
 * James : " Psychology," Briefer Course, p. 370. fSee p. 19. 
 
 (80) 
 
THE WILL 81 
 
 mind, and it is no sooner thought than spoken. Note the condition, 
 however — if left to itself an idea issues in action. If conflicting ideas 
 present themselves, you will not do the impulsive thing. You will 
 not buy the magazine if the thought comes that there are other things 
 more worth reading ; you will not play golf if you remember that you 
 have an engagement ; you will not express your judgment if it occurs 
 to you that it might hurt someone. • 
 
 2. The distinction between impulsive and voluntary action 
 thus becomes plain. An action is impulsive that results from the simple 
 presence and impulse of one idea. When you "speak before you 
 think," it is not that you did not think the judgment you blurt 
 forth, but that you did not think of anything else but it. In Bible 
 history King Saul is a notable example of an impulsive man. His 
 mistakes and sins were the result, not so much of settled badness of 
 character as of a disposition to think of only one thing at a time. 
 An action is voluntary, on the other hand, when more than one idea 
 has been present, offering an alternative, and it is therefore the result 
 of choice. 
 
 3. Ideas differ greatly, of course, in the degree of impulsive 
 strength which they possess. Some ideas are relatively weak in their 
 push toward action, and others so urgent that they are hard to resist. 
 The rule is that the impulsive strength of an idea depends upon its 
 relation to instincts and habits, and upon the immediacy of the satis- 
 faction it promises. The strongest of all impulses are associated with 
 those objects which appeal directly to elemental instincts — the bodily 
 appetites, the passions and emotions. Ideas that are in line with 
 acquired habits may have as great a force, though we seldom feel it 
 quite as intensely. Things near at hand, immediate results and 
 present goods, have an impulsive attraction which diminishes rapidly 
 with their removal in space or postponement in time. It is much 
 easier to let each moment take care of itself than to act for sake of 
 some end to be realized in the distant future — the here and now seems 
 so much more real, and immediate satisfactions more tangible. In any 
 normal man, therefore, distinctly rational ideas of action — those de- 
 rived from far-sighted consideration — are relatively cold and weak in 
 impulsive power. Such ideas it requires an effort to hold before the 
 mind, in face of the overwhelming surge of stronger impulses. 
 
 4. An act of will involves three things ; first, the presence before 
 the mind of alternative lines of action'; second, the acceptance of some 
 one as our choice ; third, the resulting action. 
 
 The first factor of an act of will — the presence of alternatives — 
 6 
 
82 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 depends upon the working of the laws of association. You cannot 
 will to do a thing unless you first think of it ; and you cannot think of 
 it unless it is called up by the laws of association which determine the 
 appearance of ideas before your mind. How many times we have 
 acted miserably in some situation and afterward were sorry for what 
 we had done — yet we did the best we knew at the moment ! YVe 
 w^uld have chosen the better thing had we thought of it ; the trouble 
 was that it did not come to mind at all. 
 
 The second factor in willing — the power to choose some one of the 
 alternative ideas — depends on the power to keep that idea before the 
 focus of attention. The secret of will is, after all, concentrated atten- 
 tion. Just in the degree that one can keep thinking of the right thing 
 and keep other ideas from taking possession of the mind, he is certain 
 always to choose the right thing. The idea that is consistently kept 
 before the mind is pretty sure to issue in action, simply because of its 
 own impulsive power. 
 
 And this makes plain the third factor of willing. The action is not 
 something that we add to ideas ; it is not some power that we create 
 to help them out. It is the physical result that naturally follows when 
 an idea is kept steadily before the mind — provided, of course, one has 
 the ability to carry it out. 
 
 5. The will is dependent upon the laws of association. We 
 cannot will to do anything of which we have not had some previous 
 experience. The ideas which shape the will come from former 
 actions and "their results — actions which we either have done our- 
 selves or have observed in others. One has a good and efficient 
 will in the degree that he can do just the right thing at each particular 
 time and place ; and his ability to do the right thing depends upon 
 his ability to think of it. What brilliant conversationalists we should 
 all be if we had such command of the stories and epigrams we 
 have heard that we could think each moment of the one that is most 
 apt ! And how sensibly we should act if we could think in every 
 situation of that item of our general body of knowledge which bears 
 most vitally upon it ! 
 
 So, after all, one 's associations measure the degree of freedom which 
 his will possesses. The man who chooses from a wide range of alter- 
 natives is more free than he who can think of only a few possible things to 
 say or do. To develop a strong and efficient will, one must begin at the 
 foundation by widening the range of his ideas, and by making such asso- 
 ciations as shall insure that they will be at hand when he needs them. 
 
 There is another side, of course. The will itself helps to determine 
 
THE WILL 83 
 
 what ideas shall come before the mind. When we thought of the laws 
 of association in the last chapter we left out one factor. In case both 
 of contiguity and similarity, of the many possible ideas which might 
 come up, that is most likely to come which is most in accord with the 
 general trend or purpose of thought for the time. Under stress of a 
 great grief, everything reminds one of his loss ; the happy man never 
 thinks of misfortune. At work on your Bible lesson, the name Paul 
 makes you think of the apostle ; in conversation with your family, it 
 reminds you of your neighbor boy. One set of ideas comes to mind 
 on Sunday, another set at business during the week. A purpose, 
 therefore, if one is really in earnest about it, will keep bringing before 
 the mind such ideas as are consistent with itself. But, remember, a 
 purpose cannot create ideas. The will can only select the best of the 
 resources which experience has put at its command. 
 
 6. The idea which holds the attention is the idea which will 
 result in action. Attention may be either spontaneous or voluntary. 
 Spontaneously, we give attention to ideas which appeal to our inter- 
 ests, our instincts, habits or feelings. Voluntarily, we keep the at- 
 tention upon some idea because of its relation to some other idea or 
 purpose. In general, ideas which appeal spontaneously have a strong 
 impulsive power, while those which appeal more intellectually are 
 relatively weak. 
 
 Undoubtedly a great part of our willing results from attention which 
 makes its choice more or less spontaneously — and it is well that it is 
 so. But we all know, as a matter of experience, that one can pull 
 himself together and keep his attention unflinchingly centered on the 
 right thought, to the exclusion of any number of more strongly impul- 
 sive ideas that seek to crowd it out. It demands effort, it costs sacri- 
 fice, it often means a tremendous battle ; but it can be done. Here, 
 then, is the very wellspring of freedom within a man. The things to 
 which he gives attention are not decided for him ; they are not even 
 the mechanical results of his own instincts and habits. He may some 
 day summon an energy of which he himself had never dreamed, and 
 center his life about a new object. 
 
 He may ; but he most likely will not. This freedom does not lessen 
 in the least the force of habit and association in molding a life. The 
 greatest fool on earth is he who lets bad habits and associations enter 
 into the very building of his soul, relying upon his "freedom of will " 
 to purge him of them some day, and to create his life anew. 
 
 One condition must be fulfilled if effort is in any case to be put 
 forth. To command it, an object must seem worth while. // must 
 
84 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING V SERIES 
 
 bring results, or give very definite promise of them. Attention can- 
 not be kept long, even through effort, upon an unchanging and fruit- 
 less object. If you begin to act, and results come, it becomes easy. 
 If they do not come immediately, the object must be kept alive by 
 thought about it, picturing in anticipation its many desirable conse- 
 quences. The man who can think most fruitfully about some pur- 
 pose, and who can most vividly imagine its concrete results, will be 
 best able to command the effort needed to hold it before the mind. 
 For another, the same idea may simply die out, for the very barren- 
 ness of his thought about it. Great reformers and discoverers are 
 always intensely imaginative men. 
 
 The weak-willed man, on the other hand, is such because he is 
 unable to keep his thought consistently upon the right idea. Professor 
 James gives so concrete a picture of this fatal defect of a weak will, 
 that we must quote it at length. Where the right idea is opposed by 
 stronger impulses, he says, 
 
 "the whole intellectual ingenuity of the man usually goes to 
 work to crowd it out of sight, and to find for the emergency 
 names by the help of which the dispositions of the moment 
 may sound sanctified, and sloth or passion may reign un- 
 checked. How many excuses does the drunkard find when 
 each new temptation comes ! It is a new brand of liquor which 
 the interests of intellectual culture in such matters oblige 
 him to test ; moreover, it is poured out and it is sin to waste it ; 
 also others are drinking and it would be churlishness to refuse. 
 Or it is but to enable him to sleep, or just to get through this 
 job of work ; or it isn't drinking, it is because he feels so cold ; 
 or it is Christmas day ; or it is a means of stimulating him to 
 make a more powerful resolution in favor of abstinence than 
 any he has hitherto made ; or it is just this once, and once 
 doesn't count, etc., ad libitum — it is, in fact, anything you 
 like except bei?ig a drunkard. That is the conception that 
 will not stay before the poor soul's attention. But if he once 
 gets able to pick out that way of conceiving, from all the other 
 possible ways of conceiving the various opportunities which 
 occur, if through thick and thin he holds to it that this is being 
 a drunkard and is nothing else, he is not likely to remain one 
 long. The effort by which he succeeds in keeping the right 
 name unwaveringly present to his mind proves to be his saving 
 moral act." * 
 
 * " Psychology," Briefer Course, p. 453. 
 
THE WILL So 
 
 7. It is thus in the realm of ideas that the real battles of the will are 
 fought. To.gr/the right ideas before the mind, and, once gotten, to 
 hold them there, are the vital issues of good and efficient willing. 
 After that, the action follows as a natural result of the impulsive 
 power which right ideas, like all others, possess. 
 
 One qualification must be put upon this principle. The action will 
 naturally follow, provided we have not gotten into the habit of resting 
 content with mere thinking. It is easy enough to fall into that atti- 
 tude of life which conceives that having ideas is an adequate substi- 
 tute for carrying them out, that mere thinking of good deeds can take 
 the place of doing them, and that feeling noble sentiments is a suffi- 
 cient manifestation of right character. Some of the most inspiring 
 passages in Rousseau's "Emile" deal with the duties of a father 
 and mother in bringing up their children. "Neither poverty, nor 
 work, nor social considerations," says Rousseau, "can relieve a 
 father of the obligation to be his son's constant companion and 
 teacher." Yet Rousseau himself abandoned each of his five children, 
 as soon as they were born, to the mercies of a foundling hospital. He 
 never saw them again, and their identity was completely lost ; while 
 he did not trouble himself so much as to keep a record of the dates of 
 their birth. 
 
 Rousseau was, of course, an abnormal man. Yet everyone who 
 believes in some good principle when generally and abstractly stated, 
 but fails to see its possible application to his particular and concrete 
 opportunities, is treading the same road. We fall into this attitude in 
 just the same way that we fall into any other habit. The man who 
 has had an ennobling thought and has felt its impulsive power, but 
 has let it remain fruitless, will be liable afterward to let that thought 
 come and go before his mind without ever issuing in action. He may 
 detain it in attention, and cherish it in warm devotion — inside ; but it 
 is impotent to make of him a better man. 
 
 The crowning counsel, then, to secure strength and efficiency of 
 will, is the third of the maxims of habit quoted at the end of the last 
 chapter. Act! Act decisively and promptly when once you have 
 decided what is right. Seek opportunities to apply in actual doing the 
 things you believe. This is a counsel of especial importance in con- 
 nection with religion ; and it has a very practical bearing upon the 
 work of the teacher. Do not exhort your class abstractly without 
 giving them concrete things to do ; do not fill them with general 
 truths of morality and religion without helping them to realize those 
 truths in life and service. Otherwise you run the risk that your 
 
86 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 teaching itself may make the means of salvation impotent in their 
 future life. 
 
 8. We have described the will thus far in terms chiefly of its relation 
 to the intellect. But we must not forget that the soul has a trinity of 
 powers — feeling as well as intellect and will. One's will is deter- 
 mined by his feelings as truly as by his ideas. Feeling may enter 
 into each of the three factors of an act of will. As trend or set of the 
 mind, a feeling helps to bring before one ideas consistent with itself. 
 It keeps the attention naturally and spontaneously upon such as 
 appeal to it. And it gives to the idea it chooses a degree of impulsive 
 strength that carries one into prompt and whole-souled action. 
 
 There is a third great counsel, therefore, for the development of a 
 strong and efficient will. To right ideas and habits of decisive action 
 add the power of feeling. Get the affections centered upon things that 
 are worth while. Enlist the heart as well as the mind. 
 
 " The expulsive power of a new affection " is life's eternal miracle. 
 Men have sometimes questioned the possibility of conversion. Yet 
 it has been a blessed fact in thousands of lives. Feeling transforms 
 even the working of that hidden mechanism of association that deter- 
 mines one's thoughts. Many a man's real manhood dates from his 
 winning the love of a wife or from the opening to him of the heart 
 of a child. His thoughts, his choices, his acts, all center about his 
 new devotion. Conversions are natural. They are begotten in human 
 relationships as well as divine. Love is indeed " the greatest thing in 
 the world. ' ' It saves men. 
 
 He who lacks feeling, even were his will strong enough without it, 
 lacks the highest manliness. The ideal of the stoics is as untrue as 
 it is unlovely. They sought to look at the world of things and men 
 calmly, dispassionately and impersonally. Feeling, they thought, but 
 clouds the vision and brings turmoil to the soul. A man ought to be 
 purely rational, his mind what Huxley called a perfect "logic 
 machine." And so one might well be, if he lived alone, the only 
 person in a world of matter, his only problem the comprehension of 
 impersonal forces, and his only aim to manage them. But our world 
 is not such. We live with other persons. Life's real problems are 
 social ; its true values are those of personal relationship. Even a 
 God who was absolutely alone would have nothing to live for. We 
 need feeling, therefore It is the link that binds man to man, the 
 fire that warms an otherwise dead and cheerless world. Without it, one 
 might understand, things, but could never live with and for persons. 
 
 Just as feeling exists forsake of personal relationships, it is begotten 
 
THE WILL 87 
 
 only in personal relationships. You cannot by precept or proverb 
 teach a feeling to your pupil, or generate it by command. It must be 
 by life with him, by giving yourself to him. The secret of " personal 
 work" is personal relationship. 
 
 9. The final secret of strength of will is the grace of God. 
 What is true of the feelings begotten in earthly relationships is in- 
 finitely more true of those that spring from the contact of the soul 
 with its Father. There is no love like His, no feeling mightier than 
 the sense of His presence and help. Not upon ideas and sheer effort 
 of attention merely, not even upon the strength alone that comes 
 from earthly affection, need the wills of men rely ; they may lay hold 
 of the love and grace of an almighty God. The experience that Paul 
 records in the seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans, is true of 
 all humanity. He who fails of his own strength to free himself from 
 "the law of sin and death" may yet live to "thank God through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
88 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 1. Why is every idea an impulse? How does the behavior of 
 hypnotized persons show this ? 
 
 2. Explain the distinction between impulsive and voluntary action. 
 
 3. Upon what does the impulsive strength of an idea depend ? 
 
 4. What three factors are involved in an act of will ? Upon what 
 does each depend ? 
 
 5. Why is the will dependent upon the laws of association ? 
 
 6. In what sense does the will itself help to determine what ideas 
 shall come before the mind ? 
 
 7. Show how choice depends upon attention. 
 
 8. Why is a man weak-willed who cannot concentrate his atten- 
 tion? 
 
 9. Why do good resolutions harm instead of help if they are not 
 carried out in action ? 
 
 10. Explain how feeling helps to determine the will. 
 
 11. What is meant by "the expulsive power of a new affection" ? 
 Show how the final secret of strength of will is the grace of God. 
 
 12. In what way is one's will limited and determined by his past 
 experiences and habits ? In what respects undetermined ? 
 
 13. What are some of the things that a teacher can do to help 
 develop a good and efficient will within his pupil ? 
 
 14. What argument can be deduced from the teachings of this chap- 
 ter in favor of telling children what they ought to do instead of what 
 they ought not to do ? 
 
LESSON XI 
 
 Morality and Religion 
 
 Our primary interest, as Sunday school teachers, is in the moral 
 and religious growth of our pupils. We may well conclude this part 
 of our course, therefore, with a study of the development of morality 
 and religion in childhood and youth. 
 
 I. — MORALITY 
 
 A little child is neither moral nor immoral. He is the creature of 
 his instincts. His actions are neither good nor bad ; they are simply 
 natural. Morality begins when he can will his actions, and when he 
 first sees a difference between a better and a worse way and chooses 
 one or the other. 
 
 i . How does he come to tell the better from the worse ? The ques- 
 tion brings us face to face with one of the great issues of philosophy. 
 On the one hand stand those who believe that the distinction between 
 right and wrong is innate within us, and that conscience is an intuitive 
 and infallible guide. On the other hand are those who maintain that 
 our knowledge of right and wrong, like the knowledge of other things, 
 depends upon experience. 
 
 There is truth on both sides. We shall understand it best if we 
 think of conscience as but another name for the moral instincts. 
 The moral nature is instinctive. Like other human instincts, it is 
 inborn, yet delayed in development, and is indefinite and modifiable. 
 
 ( i ) The moral nature is inborn. Without an instinctive capacity, 
 no child could be trained to be a moral being. The facts of the world 
 could never give birth to an ideal. We possess an innate power to 
 transcend in vision that which is and to apprehend that which ought 
 to be. We are so made, moreover, that we feel in duty bound by 
 our vision ; it weighs upon us as an obligation and inspires us to its 
 own fulfillment. No amount of experience could confer upon us 
 the power so to conceive ideals, nor bring home to us a sense of obli- 
 gation. This comes not from without ; it is the God-given spirit 
 within man. 
 
 (2) Yet the moral nature has to develop ; it is delayed in appearance 
 and ripens slowly. Not until adolescence does it blossom forth into 
 promise of maturity. 
 
 (89) 
 
90 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 (3) The moral instincts are indefinite and modifiable. They impel 
 us to form ideals and to feel obligations — but what in particular our 
 ideals shall be or just what obligations we shall feel, is left to be deter- 
 mined by experience. Our habits and feelings, environment and 
 training, the ideas we have gained for ourselves or have acquired 
 from others — all these go to shape our sense of right and wrong. 
 Conscience is not infallible. It needs to be educated. It may tell one 
 that an action is good or morally indifferent which to another seems 
 bad. The consciences of some men are hardly to be trusted at all. 
 Their finer sensibilities are dulled ; their perspective distorted. 
 
 (4) Like other instincts, conscience becomes more completely 
 rational as life goes on. Feeding, fear, sexual and parental love, 
 sociability, imitation — soon become more than mere instincts. We 
 get to understand them, and give them place in our life because we do 
 understand. So too our moral ideals and feelings grow less vague 
 and inarticulate as experience grows. We understand our duties and 
 make rational our ideals. Conscience might finally be best defined as 
 4 ' reason concerned with moral issues. ' ' 
 
 2. The child is a natural lawmaker and law-observer. . Will 
 implies the recognition of law. When he cries in order to get some- 
 thing, it is because crying has brought it before. No matter how 
 much you tell him not to cry, or assure him that crying will not bring 
 what he wants ; if finally you relent and crying does bring it, he will 
 continue to use crying as a means whereby to attain his purposes. 
 The law he made for himself out of his experience is much more real 
 than the law you laid down in words. 
 
 By law, it is plain, we here mean a rule or principle for voluntary 
 action. As experience grows, the child makes rules for himself, part 
 consciously and part unconsciously. They are in general nothing 
 more than his sense of what means to employ to attain some end ; but 
 they constitute the first definite shaping of the moral nature within 
 him. There are four great sources from which he derives such rules. 
 We may call them the natural roots of law : 
 
 (1) Habit and association — the experienced connection between 
 some action and its result. " If I want some result, I must do what 
 brought it before," is the principle upon which the child acts, though 
 of course he does not avow it to himself in so many words. 
 
 (2) Imitation — the observed behavior of 'others, with its results. 
 44 If I want the result they reached, I must do as they did." 
 
 (3) Authority— -the commands and wishes of other persons, en- 
 forced by the pleasure or pain of personal relations. "If I want to 
 
MORALITY AND RELIGION 91 
 
 please them and avoid the results of their displeasure, I must do as 
 they say." 
 
 (4) Social initiative — the laws of a social group having common 
 aims and interests. " If I want to share with the rest, I must do my 
 share." 
 
 Roughly speaking, the order given is the order of appearance of 
 these roots, and the order in which they reach the culmination of 
 their control. Habit and association are present from the first. Imita- 
 tion appears the latter half of the first year, and reaches the climax 
 of control from the fourth to the seventh years. Authority appears 
 as soon as the child becomes sensitive to the personal attitudes of 
 others, and its control culminates from six to ten. Social initiative 
 begins whenever the child first feels its helpfulness in a common 
 task or play, and assumes constantly larger control with the coming 
 of adolescence. Of course, none of these roots cease to be produc- 
 tive of laws, nor should they. Habit, imitation and authority con- 
 tinue to the end of life. 
 
 3. We may best understand the development of morality if we 
 divide these roots of law into two classes. The first three may be 
 called adaptive roots, and the last the initiative root. Through the 
 first three the child adapts himself to the conditions of his environ- 
 ment, physical and social ; through the last, he helps initiate laws as a 
 member of the group which forms them. 
 
 (1) Throughout early and middle childhood, morality develops 
 mainly from the adaptive roots — habit and association, imitation and 
 authority. The rules of action which the child forms for himself ex- 
 press his sense of the conditions which are imposed upon him from 
 without. His laws are mere statements of natural consequences. An 
 action is good to him just in so far as it brings a pleasurable result, 
 and bad if the result is disagreeable. He has no conception of its real 
 moral quality. He knows no other obligation than that pleasure is 
 desirable and pain and unhappiness to be avoided. He looks upon 
 punishment as simply a particular sort of natural consequence — a way 
 in which those in authority visit upon him their displeasure. He has 
 no idea that it may be for sake of reform or prevention ; it is rather 
 natural retribution. Threats and promises mean little to him ; it is 
 what happens, rather than what you say will happen, that shapes his 
 laws and actions. He thinks only of externals — the outward act and 
 its results — not of inward motives. His laws are literal and partic- 
 ular ; he is unable to penetrate to the general principles involved. 
 
 (2) In later childhood and adolescence, morality becomes more and 
 
92 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 more largely a matter of social initiative. It begins in games with 
 rules and plays that call for team-work. Gangs and clubs are forms 
 of its expression. Lawmaking and law observance are spontaneous 
 and natural under three conditions: (i) There is a social group of 
 some sort of which the boy feels himself to be a member. (2) There 
 is a common end toward which the activity of the group is directed, 
 and for which he with the rest feels responsible. (3) There is a phys- 
 ical material for this activity which makes possible the expression in 
 some concrete way of its results. In other words, if boys get together 
 to do something, and that something is tangible enough for them to 
 see results, they are naturally law-abiding. The rules of the bunch 
 may be but custom ; they may be enforced by nothing but public 
 opinion ; but each boy feels that they are his own, and will stand by 
 them. 
 
 We need not trace out again the development of social initiative. 
 We have done that at length in the chapters upon adolescence. 
 Enough to say that the inward mandate of the newly awakened 
 social sense carries with it an obligation that the pressure of external 
 conditions could never make one feel. The laws of this stage are 
 more than mere statements of natural consequence. They tell what 
 ought to be. Life becomes genuinely moral. 
 
 4. The work of the teacher in moral development is to be 
 thought of in a later chapter. Yet it may be well to note here some 
 immediate practical conclusions. Some of them apply more directly 
 to parents than to us ; but we need to understand the whole if we 
 would do well our part. 
 
 ( 1 ) Moral training must go along with moral instruction. What 
 we tell a child about right and wrong has beyond question a great deal 
 to do with his moral development. He has constant need of in- 
 struction, " precept upon precept, line upon line." But he is all the 
 time working over his experience into laws and ideas of his own ; 
 and these determine the attitude he takes toward our teaching and 
 the way he understands it. Parents and teachers should so manage 
 the conditions of his life that the laws which grow from the natural 
 roots of which we have been thinking, may illumine and enforce 
 their instruction, rather than contradict and weaken it. When there 
 is conflict, the precept generally loses out and the law from life abides. 
 
 (2) In early and middle childhood, training must be mainly through 
 the pressure of external conditions; in later childhood and ado- 
 lescence, it must be through appeal to internal initiative. This oppo- 
 sition, of course, is not absolute. One cannot draw sharp lines. The 
 
MORALITY AND RELIGION 93 
 
 child who is brought up to help and to feel some share of responsibil- 
 ity in the family life will early manifest something of social initiative. 
 The adaptive roots, on the other hand, persist in the later stage of 
 moral development. They are caught up into the higher motive and 
 transformed. Habit and association come to deal with social results. 
 Imitation becomes idealistic. Authority takes the form of public 
 opinion. 
 
 (3) Training upon the adaptive basis requires of us consistency and 
 inflexibility. We are not to force the child to do right ; we are to 
 confront him with such conditions that he will want to do right. We 
 must make his environment, physical and social, express just that law 
 and order that we wish him to make a part of himself. The way is 
 plain. Training will begin at birth, with regular habits of eating and 
 sleeping and bathing. We will see to it that good actions without ex- 
 ception bring pleasant results ; and bad actions, unpleasant. We will 
 be consistent in our demands upon him and in our attitudes toward 
 him. When we reason with him, it will be simply to explain how cer- 
 tain consequences are bound to follow upon certain actions, not to 
 appeal to principles. If we appeal to higher motives, it will never be 
 as an excuse for transgressing a simpler law, rather as an additional 
 reason for obedience. 
 
 Above all, we will do nothing for sake simply of present discipline. 
 A six-year-old disappeared one morning this summer, and his parents 
 got out searching parties and dragged the river. At the end of the 
 day he came home alone and asked whether the "census man" had 
 gone yet. His mother had quieted him a few days before by telling 
 him that the census man carried away naughty boys ; and he had run 
 away when the enumerator appeared. The one unhappy day is by no 
 means the only or the worst effect of such foolish discipline. We are 
 too prone to think of our own wants, and to do and say anything that 
 will make the child fit in with them. But it all forms a part of the 
 material out of which the child makes his laws. It is the effect upon 
 him that we must consider. No bit of discipline should stand alone ; 
 it should be a part of a connected and consistent scheme of moral 
 training. 
 
 (4) Training upon the basis of social initiative requires us to share 
 the life of the boy and let him share ours. Give boys something real 
 to do — something in which they feel that you are as vitally interested 
 as they — and work with them toward its accomplishment. They crave 
 fellowship and responsibility. Be a boy with them, and they will be- 
 come men with you. 
 
94 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 There are two difficulties. The first is with the boy. It is the diffi- 
 culty of making real things seem real. The whole atmosphere of the 
 school seems artificial to him, and remote from his own interests. He 
 does not know his real needs. You will often enough have to throw 
 yourself heartily into some enterprise that seems to you trivial, that 
 you may maintain fellowship and responsibility and in time win him 
 over to more serious things. 
 
 The other difficulty is with you. Can you really make yourself one 
 of the boys, and yet be teacher and guide ? Are you willing to give 
 enough of yourself? Will you abide by the rules of the bunch ? And 
 can you keep from going too far, making yourself silly, and losing 
 their respect ? 
 
 A minister organized the boys of his church into a secret society 
 which took as its object the study of nature. They soon became eager 
 collectors and dissectors. The minister himself, young, athletic and 
 a good biologist, was their leader. But he spoiled it all by telling the 
 secret to an over-inquisitive mother who one day let it slip from her 
 tongue. The boys thought him a traitor ; and he soon closed his work 
 in that community. You ought ask nothing from boys that you are 
 not yourself ready to give. You can never lead them to your virtues 
 if you cannot stand the test of theirs. 
 
 II. RELIGION 
 
 5. What we have learned concerning the development of morality 
 will help us to understand the development of religion. Matthew 
 Arnold said that religion is but " morality touched with emotion." It 
 is more than that ; but it is at least that much. Religion includes 
 morality ; and one's moral development has much to do with deter- 
 mining the character of his religion. 
 
 "The thing a man does practically believe (and this is often 
 enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others) ; 
 the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for cer- 
 tain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, 
 and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary 
 thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is 
 his religion." * 
 
 You can find no better definition of religion than this of Carlyle's. 
 One's religion is his sense of the disposition of the universe toward 
 himself and his assumption in turn of an attitude toward it. It in- 
 
 * Carlyle : " Heroes and Hero Worship," ch. i. 
 
MORALITY AND RELIGION 95 
 
 volves three terms : one's own interests, his sense of the disposition 
 of the universe toward them, and a working plan for the reconciliation 
 of the two.* 
 
 This may seem a needlessly complex statement of what religion is. 
 We might have said the same thing in simpler words — that it is one's 
 sense of God's disposition toward him and his answering attitude 
 toward God. The more complex definition is worth using, however, 
 because it makes plain how closely the development of religion is 
 bound up with the development of intellect and will. One's religion 
 becomes different if any one of the three terms be changed — if he gets 
 new interests and ideals, if he arrives at a clearer understanding of the 
 world about him and of the God whose disposition it shows forth, if 
 he conceives a better working-plan for his life. The whole se/f, as a 
 matter of fact, enters into religion. Belief is a matter of intellect, 
 feeling and will. Religion changes as the intellect matures, as feeling 
 deepens and the will gives life direction. It develops with personality. 
 One's religion is always a reflection of what one is. The religion of a 
 child must be different from that of a youth, and the youth's again 
 from that of a man. 
 
 This insistence that religion develops with the rest of personality 
 will not be understood as a denial of its instinctive character. Like 
 morality, religion rests upon an inborn capacity. God has made us 
 for Himself, as Augustine says, so that we can find no rest save in 
 Him. And like morality and other human instincts, the religious in- 
 stinct is indefinite and modifiable and must be shaped by experience. 
 
 We will not be understood, again, to deny the supernatural character 
 of religion. It is true that in prayer man stands face to face with God, 
 and that the Spirit works within us to the salvation of souls. It is 
 true that the Father reveals Himself and His will to the hearts of His 
 children. But revelation depends upon the capacity of the recipient 
 as well as upon the will of the Giver ; and the hardened heart may 
 resist even the Spirit of God. There is a law of apperception for 
 spiritual things as well as for material. Jesus spoke often of it, and 
 put it in a parable when He told about the sower. 
 
 6. The religion of early and middle childhood is one of na- 
 ture and of home. There are four chief factors which contribute to 
 the development of religion in the life of a child : 
 
 (i) His interest in nature. His unwearied senses; his eager ques- 
 tions about the causes of things and their purposes ; his personifying 
 imagination ; his delight in stories of the miraculous and supernatural 
 * Cf. Perry : " The Approach to Philosophy," p. 87. 
 
96 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 — throw his mind open to the conception of God as the Creator and 
 Sustainer of the world about him. 
 
 (2) His credulity and faith. At first the child accepts without ques- 
 tion whatever we tell him of God simply because he believes anything. 
 
 1 ' A little girl was questioning her mother minutely concerning 
 the domestic habits of the angels. Her mother replied that she 
 was sorry she could not answer all the questions, as we really 
 do not know very much about what goes on in heaven. At this 
 the child looked very much astonished, and said, ' Oh, don't 
 you know? Why, cook knows all about it!' " * 
 As rational curiosity develops and he begins to put things together, 
 
 he carries out to many a naive and fantastic conclusion the things that 
 
 he has been told about God. 
 
 Two boys were talking about the rain. J. was giving what- 
 ever information he had to W., and finally said, "When the 
 clouds are rent, the rain drops out. Rent means torn, just as 
 you would tear your clothes." W., after thinking for a time, 
 exclaimed, "I should think God's mother would get tired 
 mending." A little girl was convalescing from typhoid. Her 
 mother was telling her of God's great love ; that even the spar- 
 rows are included in it. She retorted quietly, "Don't you 
 think God spends too much time on sparrows ? If He gave a 
 little more attention to me, possibly I shouldn't have to go for 
 a whole month without a bit of real, solid food." A little girl 
 heard a man in argument use the phrase, "There is not a spot 
 on this footstool," etc. She asked, "What footstool ? " Being 
 told that he referred to the earth as the footstool of God, 
 " O-h-h ! " she muttered in astonishment. " What long legs ! " 
 Her face was perfectly grave ; not for a moment did she think 
 of irreverence. The suggested idea was that God must be an 
 exceedingly big man. f 
 
 Such interpretations are neither to be feared nor laughed at. They 
 result from the child's attempt to make his ideas coherent, with his 
 literalness and inability to comprehend our figures of speech. We 
 should meet them by a simple explanation of the truth, not by a 
 reiteration of figures or by telling the child that he will understand 
 better when he grows up. Certainly they need not be taken, as they 
 are by Oppenheim, as an argument against giving children any re- 
 
 * Drummond : "An Introduction to Child-Study," p. 301. 
 
 t Condensed from Oppenheim : " The Development of the Child," p. 136. 
 
MORALITY AND RELIGION 97 
 
 ligious ideas. Their reasoning is similarly naive concerning everyday 
 things. Kirkpatrick tells of a little girl who was promised something 
 at noon. Becoming impatient later, she was told, "Noon is coming 
 soon." " Has noon footies?" she asked. "No." " Well, how does 
 noon come, then ? " A little boy asked what made the locomotive go 
 so fast, and received the not precisely true answer that it was the 
 smoke that he saw coming from its stack. "But I don't see any 
 smoke coming from that man's head," he objected a moment later as 
 a bicycle rider whizzed by. 
 
 If parents meet the naive questions of childhood with the simple 
 truth, the child's credulity becomes/*?////. He comes to know whom 
 he can believe. There is a great difference between credulity and 
 faith. The one is mere acceptance because no alternative presents 
 itself ; the other is positive trust. Theologians have argued a good 
 deal about the possibility of infant faith. There is one kind of early 
 faith whose reality none can doubt— the faith of a child in its father 
 and mother. The father can do no greater service in the religious de- 
 velopment of his child than so to meet the dawning reason that cre- 
 dulity is replaced by perfect faith in himself. We need not worry 
 then about the child's faith in God — the heavenly Father. 
 
 (3) His affection and sensitivity to the personal attitudes of others. 
 The child's capacity to love and to be loved is of the very heart of re- 
 ligion. To the end of his life, his acquaintance with the God who is 
 Love will be influenced by the response which his affections meet in 
 these early days. His conception of God as Father and of himself as 
 God's child will reflect the life of the home. 
 
 (4) His imitation and suggestibility. " If anyone should ask me," 
 says Bishop McCabe, " what most impressed me in my boyhood days, 
 I would answer, The sight of my father coming out from the secret 
 place of prayer every day at noon." * The child's impressionable 
 nature gains much that he does not understand, and that we ought not 
 try to make him understand until he seeks to know. A child has no 
 business to have a religious "experience." But our own reverent 
 worship, the prayers and songs of God's house, its solemn sacraments, 
 its music, its beautiful windows and stately architecture — most of all, 
 the quiet devotion of the family altar — all these enter into the very 
 making of his soul. 
 
 So we see the justification of our brief characterization of the re- 
 ligion of childhood : it is a religion of nature and of home. The 
 child's interest centers in the great world that lies open to his senses, 
 
 * Pattee : " Elements of Religious Pedagogy," p. 149. 
 
 7 
 
98 LUTHERAN TEACHKR-TRAININCx vSERlES 
 
 and he seeks its Maker. But the positive content of his religion 
 comes from the home. It is what father and mother make it. God 
 enters his life because He first dwells in theirs. God lets them for a 
 little while stand in His place. His trust and the child's alike rest in 
 them. 
 
 7. The religion of later childhood is one of life and law in life. 
 The boy's interest is in God's dealings with men rather than in His 
 works in nature. 
 
 (1) The social instincts bring a new sense of law. Conscience 
 awakens. Right is conceived, no longer as from an external authority, 
 but as resting upon inward grounds of obligation. 
 
 (2) The development of the historical sense begets a new interest 
 in life as revealed in biography and history. It is the time, we remem- 
 ber, of hero-worship. Tales of the mighty doings of great men are 
 eagerly sought and read. 
 
 (3) The religion of the period, therefore, centers about God as re- 
 vealing Himself to men. The boy thinks of God the Law-giver and 
 Redeemer, rather than God the Creator. His is a God of Right and 
 of Might, who moves in human history and accomplishes His will 
 through the lives of the great heroes of faith. 
 
 (4) We may remind ourselves of three things that make this period 
 especially significant in religious education : its plasticity to habit, its 
 quick and retentive memory, and the fact that life's decision time 
 comes at its close. 
 
 8. In adolescence religion becomes PERSONAL. In later as 
 well as in early childhood, interest in religion is objective. The child 
 learns about God, His works and His life with men. But now religion 
 comes home to the will. It presents itself as a way of life, to be ac- 
 cepted or rejected. God claims the soul that is His. 
 
 We have already thought of the characteristics of adolescent re- 
 ligion ; and we shall discuss its problems in a coming chapter which 
 will treat of the spiritual goal of our work. We need here only to 
 remind ourselves of the three great periods of religious awakening : 
 
 ( 1 ) Decision at twelve or thirteen is usually the natural result of a 
 normal religious nurture and of social suggestion. The Lutheran 
 Church, with its ideals of education in religion, its belief that baptized 
 children are members of the church, and its rite of confirmation, does 
 well to center its attention here. Its great problem is to care for the 
 spiritual activity and further development in grace of those who have 
 been confirmed. 
 
 (2) Conversions at sixteen and seventeen are more apt to be of the 
 
MORALITY AND RELIGION 99 
 
 emotio7ial type. There is a conflict of impulses and feelings, with a 
 final triumph of those that lead to God. There wells up something 
 within that breaks down the barrier of selfishness, indifference or 
 distrust. 
 
 (3) Conversions at nineteen or twenty arc apt to be of a more intel- 
 lectual and practical type. It is because new insight has come, or 
 some doubt has been resolved ; or because the youth reaches the prac- 
 tical conviction that he needs religion as part of life's equipment. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 1. Is conscience an intuitive and infallible guide ? Give reasons 
 for your answer. Explain the instinctive character of the moral 
 nature. 
 
 2. In what sense is the child himself a natural lawmaker and law- 
 observer ? 
 
 3. What are the natural roots of law in a child's life ? Distinguish 
 the adaptive roots from the initiative root. 
 
 4. What is the character of the child's moral development through- 
 out early and middle childhood ? What change takes place in later 
 childhood ? 
 
 5. Discuss the work of the teacher in the moral development of 
 the pupil. 
 
 6. What is religion ? Show how the whole self enters into religion 
 and how it develops with personality. 
 
 7. Characterize the religion of early and middle childhood. Dis- 
 cuss those factors in a child's life which contribute most to the devel- 
 opment of religion within him. 
 
 8. Children often get naive and fantastic ideas about God, and it has 
 been argued from this that we ought not to teach religion until later 
 childhood or adolescence. Is the argument sound ? Give careful 
 reasons for your answer. 
 
 9. Characterize the religion of later childhood. 
 
 10. What change in religious development comes with adoles- 
 cence ? What is apt to be the character of a conversion in each of the 
 three great periods of religious awakening ? 
 
PART TWO 
 
 THE TEACHER 
 
PART II.— THE TEACHER 
 
 LESSON XII 
 
 Grades 
 
 We have finished our study of The Pupil, and turn now to the work 
 of The Teacher — its principles and methods. 
 
 1. It is first of all essential that we lay fast hold upon the conviction 
 that the Sunday school is a school. It is not a prayer-meeting or a 
 social or philanthropic organization ; it is not the "children's church." 
 Its work is educational. It is a place of instruction. We are put here 
 to teach ; the pupils to learn. Our sessions center about the lesson. 
 
 There will be devotion, of course ; but we do not meet for sake of 
 worship. There will be giving ; but we are not organized to raise 
 and bestow money. There will be social fellowship ; but the Sunday 
 school is not a club. These things have place in our work just be- 
 cause they, too, are educational. As training, they supplement instruc- 
 tion, and are essential factors in the spiritual development of those we 
 teach. But they are means to an end ; and they are subordinate to 
 the chief means which the Sunday school employs — definite instruc- 
 tion in the Bible. 
 
 "Such a conception of the work of the Sunday school recog- 
 nizes the peculiar relation of our religion to the Bible, and the 
 necessity that underneath worship and devotion, ethical instruc- 
 tion and the persuasion of the will, missions and philanthropy, 
 there shall be a firm foundation of knowledge of that pre- 
 eminent revelation of God which is the source and support of 
 Christianity. It recognizes the need of one service, which, 
 having the same ultimate aim as that which is sought in all the 
 activities of the church, shall seek that end specifically and 
 mainly by instruction in the Bible."* 
 
 2. The Bible is the chief text-book of the Sunday school. It 
 
 is God's Word — the record of His life with men and His revelation 
 of Himself to them. It is more than history ; it is a divine interpre- 
 tation of history. Its poetry and prophecy breathe the Spirit of the 
 living God ; its letters of counsel and comfort were written by men 
 who were moved from on high. It shows us Jesus, "the Way, the 
 
 * Burton and Mathews : " Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," p. 6. 
 
 (102) 
 
GRADES 103 
 
 Truth and the Life." For a score of centuries, men of every nation 
 have found in it inspiration and help, strength and peace. There is 
 no other such book. 
 
 Two misconceptions of the Bible's pre-eminence are possible, which 
 we must be careful to avoid : 
 
 ( i ) The Bible is not the sole text-book of the Sunday school. You 
 need helps for its interpretation — the best that scholarship can afford. 
 There is no class more barren than one that accepts too literally the 
 well-meant but misleading statement that "the Bible is its own best 
 commentary." You must supplement its teaching, again, with lessons 
 drawn from human life, and, especially in the lower grades, from 
 God's other book of nature. There should be definite lessons and 
 courses in applied Christianity — in missions and in social betterment. 
 Catechetical instruction in the history and doctrines of the Church 
 should be a part of the organized work of the Sunday school, not 
 something extraneous to it. There should be a normal course, fitting 
 young people to become teachers. 
 
 (2) The fact that the Bible is God' 1 s Word does not relieve us from 
 using our minds to understand it. It is no magic book, with a mes- 
 sage that miraculously imprints itself upon idle souls. It is true that 
 spiritual truth must be spiritually discerned. Yet the Bible is to be 
 understood as is any other book — by earnest and patient study in light 
 of historical conditions and literary form. It calls for the best that 
 there is within us — for reason as well as for heart and will. God never 
 contradicts Himself. His miracles do not abolish the natural laws 
 which He has ordained, but use them for higher ends. The Spirit does 
 not do away with human reason, but gives to it a higher light and 
 power. The laws of the mind abide. We shall understand the Bible 
 just in so far as we use the powers which God has given us to under- 
 stand anything, and so make ready for the Spirit's enlightenment. We 
 shall teach the Bible rightly just in so far as we follow those principles 
 which the nature of the mind itself sets for the teaching of 'any subject. 
 The spiritual nature crowns and completes the intellectual and the 
 moral ; it is no substitute for them. 
 
 3. Four fundamental principles underlie all teaching. They 
 are implied in what we have learned concerning the development of 
 personality. We need only bring them together here, and give them 
 definite statement. 
 
 (1) The principle 0/" self-activity. Not what you tell a pupil, but 
 what he thinks as the result of your words ; not what you do for him, 
 but what he does for himself ; not the impression, but his reaction 
 
104 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 upon it — determine his development. You cannot put ideas into his 
 head ; your words are but symbols of the ideas that are within your 
 own. He must interpret the symbols and from them construct his 
 own ideas. Teaching succeeds only in so far as it enlists the activity 
 of the pupil. He must think for himself. It is your business to wake 
 him to thought, to engage his interest, to get him to want ideas, and 
 to set before him the material out of which he can make them. 
 
 (2) The principle of apperception. The pupil never makes an 
 idea wholly of new material. He understands the new only by 
 relating it to the old. The body of any new idea, therefore, is old ; 
 it is made of material that has come from his own experience, re- 
 shaped and altered only enough to take in the new item. The pupil's 
 instincts, his habits, his old ideas determine the very meaning for him 
 of any new impression. If you do not know what they are, you can- 
 not be sure that he is getting the meaning you intend.* The teacher 
 must present the truth in terms drawn from the pupil's own k?iowledge 
 and experience. 
 
 (3) The principle of adaptation. The pupil is growing and devel- 
 oping. As life goes on, experience widens, powers mature, in- 
 stincts ripen and petrify into habits, interests come and go. We 
 remember Professor James' striking statement of these facts, quoted 
 in a former chapter, and his conclusion that "in all pedagogy the 
 great thing is to strike the iron while hot, and to seize the wave of the 
 pupil's interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come." 
 Teaching must appeal to what is zuithin the pupil ; its matter and its 
 method, therefore, mttst constantly be adapted to his changing powers 
 and interests. 
 
 (4) The principle of organization. No bit of teaching, whether 
 that of an hour, a day or a year, should stand alone. It must be 
 coupled up with what went before and what comes after — and it must 
 be coupled up, remember, in the pupil's mind, not simply in our own. 
 Further, the teaching as a whole must head up into something ; it 
 must have a goal and work steadily toward it. The one-sidedness of 
 the principle of adaptation is here corrected. We must do more than 
 simply feed the changing interests ; we must feed them to some pur- 
 pose. The goal of education cannot be left to the child's spontaneous 
 instincts, however largely they determine its matter and method at 
 
 *Dr. McKinney tells the story of a boy who seemed repelled by the thought of 
 God's fatherhood. The teacher was much puzzled until he called one day at the 
 boy's home, to find out that the father had kept him and his mother out in the 
 cold the whole of the previous night, threatening in his drunken frenzy to kill 
 them.—" Bible School Pedagogy," p. 60. 
 
GRADES 105 
 
 any particular stage. Teaching aims at an organization of ideas and 
 powers within the pupil ; and it viust work toward this in an orderly 
 and consistent ?<. 'ay. 
 
 4. If we are to follow these principles the Sunday school must 
 be graded. " One of the chief problems before the Sunday school 
 to-day is how to make of it a real school."* In late years, this 
 problem has centered definitely about the question of a graded cur- 
 riculum. 
 
 Practically all Sunday schools have recognized the principle of 
 grading in organization and method. They have at least separated 
 the ''infant school" from the "adult school," and, though both 
 schools have had the same lesson, have made some attempt to suit 
 the method of teaching to the maturity of the pupil. From this simple 
 beginning there have developed graded organizations of all degrees 
 of elaborateness, with a corresponding differentiation of methods. 
 
 The great question has been : Should the lessons themselves be 
 graded? The plan of uniform lessons, adopted in 1872 by what then 
 became the International Sunday School Association, did not recog- 
 nize this principle. The lessons were uniform in two senses. The 
 material to be taught was the same ( 1 ) for every class in the school, 
 as well as (2) for every school cooperating in what soon became a 
 world-wide movement. Uniformity between schools is eminently 
 desirable. It means practical cooperation in the enlistment of 
 resources that single schools could not begin to command. We owe 
 to this cooperation the present development of the Sunday school. 
 I 'niformity between classes was once desirable for the same reason. 
 But with the widening of resources and the growth of educational 
 ideals in late years, its value has come more and more to be called in 
 question. 
 
 The advantages of uniformity between classes cannot be .better 
 stated than they have been by Burton and Mathews : 
 
 " It secures unity in the school, enabling the teachers to co- 
 operate in the study of the lesson, and giving the superintend- 
 ent an opportunity to direct and stimulate the work of instruc- 
 tion throughout the school. It secures unity in the home, 
 making it possible for the father or the mother to assist and 
 guide in the study of the lesson at home by the whole family 
 from youngest to oldest, and facilitating the association of 
 family prayer with the study of the Bible in the Sunday school. 
 It immensely facilitates the preparation and publication of helps 
 * Coe : " Education in Religion and Morals," p. 287. 
 
106 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 on the part of religious papers and in the form of quarterlies 
 and lesson papers. It enlists on the side of Bible study in the 
 Sunday school an immense capital of brains and money. It 
 appeals powerfully to sentiment, and secures the help of that 
 important ally. The superintendent and teacher in every city 
 and hamlet in the land, the parent in every home, even the 
 child himself, feels, or may feel, the stimulus and inspiration of 
 the fact that the prayerful thought of the Christian world is 
 turning with him to the portion of Scripture assigned for a cer- 
 tain Sunday's study." * 
 
 The chief disadvantages of such uniformity are : 
 (i) The lessons are not adapted to the pupil. The principle of 
 adaptation applies to matter as well as to method. We have seen how 
 the religion of early childhood differs from that of later childhood, 
 and it again from that of adolescence. Shall we attempt to teach the 
 same doctrines, or the same portions of the Bible, to pupils in such 
 widely different stages of development? A little child cannot under- 
 stand the messages of the prophets or the spiritual insight of John. 
 You have doubtless experienced the difficulty of trying to teach chil- 
 dren under eight or nine such matters as Isaiah's conception of the 
 Messiah, the temptation of Jesus, the parable of the unjust steward, 
 Thomas' doubt, or Paul's doctrine of justification by faith. 
 
 Such was not God's own way of teaching. The Bible contains the 
 record of His education of the human race. Its parts are not all 
 alike. It is a progressive revelation. He taught simple lessons to the 
 race in its childhood, and only in the "fullness of time," when the 
 experience of thousands of years had made men ready to understand, 
 did He show Himself to them in the life of Jesus. 
 
 "The Bible, on the whole, is pedagogical in its general 
 arrangement. ... In the Old Testament the wonder and folk 
 stories, the creation and nature stories, come first. These ap- 
 peal to the little child under six. Farther along are the law and 
 order books, the spectacular scenes of Egypt, the Red Sea, 
 Sinai, Marah, Nebo and the like. Then come the historical, 
 military, patriotic, then the prophetic and reformatory, with an 
 occasional glimpse of the Utopian world in the future. That is 
 all pedagogical. So also is the New Testament. The doc- 
 trinal part is near the close where it belongs in any proper 
 course of study for the school." f 
 * " Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," p. 128. 
 t Haslett : " The Pedagogical Bible School," p. 55. I have hesitated to use this 
 
GRADES 107 
 
 (2) In the mind of the pupil, the system contains no principle of 
 progression. He does not feel himself advancing from year to year. 
 He knows that, however thoroughly he may study and however rapidly 
 be promoted from class to class, he will still have set for him the same 
 lesson as every other pupil in the school. There is no incentive in the 
 thought. There seems to be no tangible result ; he does not feel that 
 he is getting anywhere. 
 
 This lack of progression results often in a dulled interest as the 
 pupil approaches the lessons of later years. He enters Sunday school, 
 let us say, at four ; then by eleven he has covered about the whole 
 Bible, in so far as the Sunday school ever gives him a chance at the 
 whole. Just at the time of life when his interest in religion and in the 
 Bible should be most fresh and vigorous, he begins again the round of 
 lessons. What if the passages are somewhat different and the titles 
 new ? He is bound to feel that he is learning again something that he 
 already knows. "One of the most real difficulties in the Sunday 
 school," says Forbush, "is the fact that to the boy the Bible is trite. 
 It is hard to find a boy who does not know as much about the Bible 
 as he wants to."* College teachers of Biblical literature have to 
 combat an inertia caused by the student's tacit assumption that he has 
 not much to learn about the familiar old Book. The uniform Sunday 
 school lessons may lead to a premature sophistication which deadens 
 the interest of adolescence. The youth does not revise his childish 
 conceptions of religious doctrines, and the man becomes a weakling 
 or a doubter. 
 
 (3) Such a curriculum has no connection with the rest of the' 
 pupiV s education. Religion is worthless if kept apart from life. Yet 
 we educate our children as though we aimed at their separation. The 
 public schools give religion no recognition ; the Sunday school teaches 
 the same lesson to the high school senior as to the child in the first 
 grade. Then we try to put together by exhortation what by education 
 we have torn asunder. 
 
 (4) The lessons fail to give a cornice ted view of the Bible in its 
 wholeness and in the onward sweep of its progressive revelation. The 
 Bible is not a collection of dogmas or of proof-texts, in all its parts 
 
 quotation, or to refer at all to God's method of teaching the race, because I attach 
 little value to the "recapitulation theory" which colors so much of Haslett's 
 thought. Our point is not that the child does, or ought to, pass through all the 
 stages of religious life that the race has passed through, and in the same order; 
 but simply that God Himself fitted the content of His teaching to the capacity of 
 His pupils. 
 * " The Boy Problem," p. no. 
 
108 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 of equal value. Neither is it a body of writings and records, each of 
 which carries its own moral and spiritual message independently of 
 the rest. It is the record of a great religious experience — the religious 
 experience of a nation taught by God Himself, yet learning slowly 
 and with many mistakes. It culminates in the life and teachings of 
 Jesus, in whom dwelt "all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." We 
 fail to grasp God's revelation if we take it text for text, or incident 
 for incident, and seek in each some spiritual truth. The parts have 
 meaning only in light of the whole. "The law was our schoolmaster 
 to bring us unto Christ." 
 
 The International Committee has sought earnestly to realize this 
 principle in its choice of lessons ; yet in practical effect the lessons 
 have lent themselves to a split-up mode of interpretation. There is 
 question whether a system of uniform lessons can ever avoid this 
 tendency, in view of the necessity of choosing passages which can 
 convey some truth to the mind of every pupil. Certainly a graded 
 course can more definitely compel the assumption of the historical 
 point of view. 
 
 (5) A uniform curriculum takes no account of the critical periods 
 in the spiritual development of the pupil. Adolescence has its special 
 needs. The lessons should be such as to win a consecration of the 
 life. 
 
 5. The International Graded Lessons, authorized by the Conven- 
 tion at Louisville in 1908, are proving to be the practical solution of 
 the problem. Carefully prepared by teachers of long experience, 
 they accord with the principles of teaching set forth above, and defi- 
 nitely fulfill the requirements which the uniform lessons failed to 
 meet. They combine all the advantages of uniformity and coopera- 
 tion between schools with none of the disadvantages of uniformity 
 between classes. 
 
 Those who have used these lessons have found the pros and cons of 
 this chapter so much ancient history. If your experience has been 
 that of most schools, you will never go back to the uniform lessons. 
 You need no discussion of the work of the various departments. It 
 is already familiar to you ; and you can find no sounder and more 
 practical methods than those given in your teacher's text-book. 
 
 Those who have not yet used these lessons face no more serious 
 issue than that of whether or not to take them up. A few practical 
 suggestions may help you : 
 
 ( 1 ) You ought to know what the graded course is like. Send for a 
 text-book of the grade you are interested in, and find out. If you get 
 
GRADES 109 
 
 the first book of the year, it will be worth a great deal just for the 
 practical suggestions it contains as to methods of teaching. 
 
 (2) Do not be afraid of the seeming complexity of a graded course. 
 It is flexible. You may make it as elaborate as you please. Begin 
 easily, with just one grade in each department. For that matter, you 
 need. not have departments at all if you do not wish. Simply have 
 separate classes, each studying the course best adapted to the develop- 
 ment of its members. 
 
 (3) Do not be afraid of physical conditions. Ideally, a graded course 
 calls for the complete separation of departments, each having its own 
 room and its own opening and closing services as well as its own 
 lessons. Practically, the best you have will do ; and you can handle 
 the course even if your whole Sunday school must meet in one room, 
 and that the auditorium of the church. 
 
 (4) Do not be afraid of the pupils — that they will not like the 
 stricter work, or the separation into grades. The added interest of 
 the lessons will make up for that. If you find it difficult to begin the 
 grading, follow that of the public schools. 
 
 (5) Do not be afraid of yourself. You will no longer be able to read 
 comments on the lesson in every paper, or to study it at a weekly 
 meeting of all the teachers of your school. You will have to stand 
 more squarely upon your own feet. But the teacher's text-books give 
 definite and wise guidance for every lesson, and you, as well as the 
 pupil, will feel the stimulus of a new interest. Moreover, you will 
 stay within the same grade, or at least the same department ; and that 
 means that you will get a better mastery each year of both lesson 
 material and methods. You can meet each week with the teachers of 
 your grade in other Sunday schools, just as you used to meet with the 
 teachers of your own school, to study the lesson and to help one 
 another by an exchange of experience. 
 
 6. Whether your school adopts graded lessons or not, its aims 
 and methods must be graded. You must strive, in so far as you 
 can, to teach according to the principles of self-activity, apperception, 
 adaptation and organization. 
 
 The fundamental aim of every Sunday school class is the same — the 
 moral and spiritual development of the pupil. We seek to bring 
 those we teach to a knowledge of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, 
 and to loyal, whole-hearted service in His kingdom. But this general 
 aim can be realized only in so far as we meet the particular interests 
 and needs of the pupil at each stage of his development. Each de- 
 partment of the Sunday school, therefore, will have its specific aim. 
 
110 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 (i) The Beginners are getting their first acquaintance with God 
 as the loving Father. The child's life in the home and the eager 
 reaching out of his senses toward nature about him, form the apper- 
 ceptive basis upon which we must build. 
 
 (2) The meaning which the Primary pupil gets out of the stories 
 we tell him is determined by the new ideas he is gaining in public 
 school and by the distinction he is coming to make between the world 
 of fact and that of the imagination. We must seek to coordinate our 
 teaching with that of the school, and so to present the simple truths 
 about God, His works in nature and His dealings with men, that the 
 child may feel them to have a place in the world of fact. 
 
 (3) The Junior apperceives the truth in light of his social instincts 
 and his hero-worship. Our teaching must center about the moral life, 
 as commanded in God's law and revealed in the person of Jesus and 
 in the heroes of the faith. We seek to present the ideal of moral hero- 
 ism, to deepen the sense of responsibility for the right, and to give a 
 vision of the glory of service. 
 
 (4) The work of the Sunday school centers about the Intermediate 
 department. It is the decision time. We shall bend all our energies, 
 first to secure a consecration of heart and will to God's service, then 
 to help the pupil carry out his decision in actual living and doing.* 
 
 (5) Our aim in the Senior department is (a) to meet the doubts and 
 intellectual difficulties which are often characteristic of later adoles- 
 cence ; (b) to help the pupil clear up his moral and religious concep- 
 tions and formulate his beliefs ; (c) to train for definite and specific 
 service. The work of the department should be in large part elect- 
 ive ; and the courses will include both some of a predominantly 
 intellectual character and others more definitely practical. The nor- 
 mal course should begin in this department. We shall seek earnestly 
 for the conversion of those who have not yet dedicated themselves 
 to God. 
 
 (6) We have said nothing thus far about the men and women of the 
 
 * It is very unfortunate that the International Wessons have saddled this de- 
 partment with so meaningless and inappropriate a name as "Intermediate." It 
 is not intermediate, but central ; and we should do everything to make the pupi! 
 feel it to be such. The term, furthermore, has often been applied to the depart- 
 ment below this ; and this has been called the Junior. An adolescent dislikes 
 anything that savors of childishness. He feels himself reaching out toward 
 maturity. It would be far better to give the department a name that would con- 
 vey some impression of itsimportance and appeal to this sense of life's expansion. 
 The term " Secondary " would do ; but it would, perhaps, be better frankly to call 
 it the " High School " of the church. 
 
GRADES • 111 
 
 Advanced department. We shall deal with some of the problems of 
 the department in a later chapter. Enough here to say that its 
 courses should be wholly elective, and largely of a practical character. 
 The advanced students should get what they want and what they 
 need. No one ought ever graduate from the Sunday school. We 
 all need it for sake of the spiritual nourishment of stated Bible study, 
 and for maintenance of the intellectual vigor of our faith. More than 
 this, the Advanced department has wonderful possibilities as a school 
 of practical religion. A well-conducted class for mothers will help 
 solve many problems respecting the children, as well as give to the 
 mothers themselves a new inspiration. A class for men in social and 
 civic problems may help toward better conditions in your city, as well 
 as make religion vital to the men themselves. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. Why is instruction in the Bible the chief work of the Sunday 
 school ? From what other sources than the Bible may it draw mate- 
 rial for instruction ? 
 
 2. Explain the four principles of teaching brought out in this lesson 
 — self-activity, apperception, adaptation and organization. 
 
 3. State the chief advantages of a system of ungraded and uniform 
 lessons. 
 
 4. What are the chief disadvantages of such a system ? Give a 
 careful statement of reasons for each. 
 
 5. What is the specific aim of each department of the Sunday 
 school ? Show how this aim depends upon the interests and needs of 
 the pupil in each stage of development. 
 
LESSON XIII 
 Methods of Teaching 
 
 The teacher must do more than study his lesson ; he must plan 
 definitely just lioiv to teach it. You cannot know your subject too 
 thoroughly. It is the primary requisite of good teaching. But it will 
 not insure good teaching. You must know how, as well as what to 
 teach. 
 
 We are often misled by the ease and spontaneity of a great preacher 
 who uses no notes, or of a teacher who inspires us with his own vision 
 of the truth. We suppose that they need not prepare in the pains- 
 taking way that we must. We wish that we had their genius. But 
 the secret of genius, it has been well said, is hard work. Many hours 
 of mental travail lie back of that clear-cut, inspiring sermon ; the per- 
 fect mastery of a plan gives surety of movement to the thought of the 
 teacher. We hear sometimes of "born teachers." They are few; 
 and those few love their work too much ever to attempt it without 
 preparation. The moment one begins to think of himself as a born 
 teacher, he is in danger of losing his birthright. 
 
 There is no one method for Sunday school teaching. Methods 
 are means to an end. They depend upon the nature of the pupil, 
 upon the subject to be taught, upon the material conditions which the 
 teacher faces and the resources at his command. Each Sunday pre- 
 sents its specific problem. You must fit your method to conditions ; 
 it is your solution of the problem of the day. 
 
 In this chapter we shall think of the general methods of conducting 
 a class. We shall consider the more important advantages and diffi- 
 culties of each, and the grade of pupils to which it is best adapted. 
 
 i. Story-telling. Whether it deal with fact or fancy, a story is a 
 work of the imagination. It makes the truth live. It makes us see 
 the things it tells, and stirs our hearts to feel and our wills to act. 
 "Of all the things that a teacher should know how to do," says 
 President Hall, "the most important, without exception, is to be able 
 to tell a story. ' ' 
 
 There are three ways in which we may use the story : 
 
 (i) As presentatioi. The lesson itself may be cast into story form. 
 This is essential in the two lower departments ; and there the telling 
 
 (112) 
 
METHODS OF TEACHING 113 
 
 of the story is the central work of the hour. In the higher depart- 
 ments, too, it is sometimes well to present the lesson as a story if it is 
 full of dramatic action. 
 
 (2) As preparation. A story may be very effectively used to lead 
 up to the lesson — some bit of everyday experience, perhaps, that will 
 arouse interest in the subject to be presented ; or a review of previous 
 lessons in quick, vivid narration ; or the tale of what happened be- 
 tween the events of the last lesson and those of this. 
 
 (3) As illustration. The teacher needs no power more than that 
 of conceiving analogies— seeing what the truth is like, and presenting 
 it in terms of its likeness. That is what Jesus did. He was always 
 telling stories. He taught in concrete pictures that brought home 
 the truth to the simplest mind. " Without a parable spake He not 
 unto them." 
 
 2. The recitation method involves three steps : ( 1 ) assignment of 
 the lesson ; (2) the pupil's study ; (3) the recitation itself. It enlists 
 the cooperation of teacher and pupil. Each must do his part. The 
 pupil must study and recite ; the teacher must assign the lesson and 
 conduct the recitation. Most Sunday school classes are conducted 
 ostensibly in accordance with this method. In comparatively few, 
 however, is it really carried out. It makes much greater demands 
 upon both teacher and pupil than we are wont to think. 
 
 Some of us may have had the fortune to be in a class where the 
 teacher asked only the questions printed in the lesson leaf. They 
 went something like this : " Where did Peter and John go at the ninth 
 hour? (v. 1). What time was this? (see notes). Why did they go? 
 Whom did they see there? (v. 2). How long had he been lame? 
 What did he ask of them? (v. 3). What did Peter say ? (v. 4). What 
 did the lame man expect? (v. 5). What did Peter then say? (v. 6). 
 What then? (v. 7). What did the lame man do? (v. 8)." The teacher 
 put these questions to the members of the class in turn ; and each 
 answered by reading the passage indicated. 
 
 That was not a recitation at all. It was simply nibbling at a few pre- 
 digested Bible verses. Neither the teacher nor the pupils did anything 
 except look at the page and open their mouths. There was no think- 
 ing going on. There had been no study on the part of the pupils ; 
 and there was no evidence of it on the part of the teacher. 
 
 Our example is purposely somewhat extreme. No lesson leaf would 
 ask quite such feeble questions, or indicate so precisely the answer to 
 every one. No teacher of any common sense would do nothing more 
 than read off for answer such a list. But most pupils will, if they get 
 
 8 
 
114 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 a chance, do exactly what those pupils did. So long as their lesson 
 leaves are open at all, they will " look up " the answer to any ques- 
 tion addressed to them, and read it, either from the verses of the 
 lesson or from the editor's notes. Now and then a pupil is to be 
 found who will put on an air of knowledge by paraphrasing the an- 
 swer he finds in the book ; but most of them are not ashamed frankly 
 to read it. 
 
 Now, it may be quite legitimate for pupils to do this, but it is not 
 reciting. The recitation method holds the pupil responsible for some 
 definite piece of work, which he is to do outside of the recitation 
 period, and upon which he is to report in class. It demands that he 
 study. 
 
 It exacts yet more of you — the teacher. It makes you study two 
 lessons for every Sunday — that upon which the class recites and that 
 which you assign for the coming week. It makes you divide the 
 teaching period into two parts — one devoted to the recitation and one 
 to the assignment of the next lesson. It confronts you, moreover, 
 with two practical difficulties : 
 
 ( i ) Hozu shall you get the pupil to study ? That is a hard problem, 
 and one upon which any teacher of experience speaks with becoming 
 humility, (a) You should show him how to study. Public school 
 teachers are just finding out that it pays to take stated periods to study 
 with their children and to teach them how to go at their lessons, (b) 
 Your assignment of the lesson for the coming Simday should be such 
 as to arouse his interest and give him a motive for study. It should 
 make him feel that the lesson contains something that he wants to 
 know, (r) You should assign a definite task to each pupil, for which 
 you will hold him responsible. It is not enough to say that you ex- 
 pect each to study the lesson, or to answer the questions of the 
 text-book, or to do whatever writing or picture-pasting or map-draw- 
 ing it requires. There must be some special bit of work for each, the 
 results of which he is to bring back to class the next Sunday. The 
 fact that you have the work so outlined makes him feel that you are 
 really interested in the lesson, and he is ready to help you. His doing 
 that bit of work, then, gives a motive that generally leads him to do 
 the work that all are to do. (d) Above all, never assign anything 
 that you will not call for at the next period ; never fail to call for and 
 use everything assigned. This is a rule that will often be hard to live 
 up to ; but you must hold to it as rigidly as you can. It is the one 
 that clinches all the rest. Laxity here takes vitality out of the pupil's 
 work, and soon begets carelessness and indifference. 
 
METHODS OF TEACHING 115 
 
 (2) How shall you retain the attention and interest of the pupil 
 throughout the recitation t It is quite possible that your very success 
 in getting the pupil to study may be your undoing in the recitation 
 period. If you do nothing more than hear a recitation, testing knowl- 
 edge and receiving reports on tasks assigned, the period will be very 
 monotonous and dry to the pupil — and more so the more thoroughly 
 he has studied the lesson. This becomes more certain as pupils 
 grow older. It is a frequent complaint of college students that " Pro- 
 fessor So-and-so gives you nothing more than is in the text-book." 
 The pupil must feel that he is getting something out of the recitation 
 period itself. 
 
 Testing, therefore, is only the beginning of your work in the recita- 
 tion. You must be able to use the pupils' 1 answers and reports in a 
 further development of the lesson. You must be able to explain, illus- 
 trate, amplify, and finally sum up the results of their work and your 
 own. The ideal recitation is in fact cooperative. All have studied a 
 common assignment which becomes the basis of discussion. To that 
 discussion each pupil brings in his special contribution, the bit of re- 
 search or of memory work that was assigned to him, and for which he 
 alone is responsible. The teacher, too, makes his contribution to the 
 common store, and with tact and ingenuity weaves together what all 
 have brought into a unified development of the truth. At the end the 
 pupils know the truth, for they have themselves seen it grow in the 
 discussion of the hour ; and they feel that it is their own, for each has 
 had his share in its development. The recitation has been social ; 
 the pupils feel the glow of helpfulness, and go home with an added 
 zest to prepare to do their part on the coming Sunday. 
 
 Ideal ! Impracticable ! some of you are doubtless saying to your- 
 selves. Such a conception of the recitation is ideal ; but it is not im- 
 practicable. The thing has been done. Classes in many schools are 
 now working in this cooperative way, and are getting results. You 
 can realize this ideal if you will but put your whole heart into it, and 
 take the time it demands. For it does demand work on the part of 
 the teacher. Success depends primarily on two things : the care with 
 which you. plan the lesson before you assign it, and the tact with which 
 you make inadequate and even partly false answers contribute to the 
 working out of your plan. It takes patience, foresight and ingenuity ; 
 but it is worth the while. 
 
 Two remarks must be added. The first is that the degree to which 
 ouch a social conception of the recitation can be realized depends 
 upon the age of the pupils. It cannot be used in the beginners' 
 
116 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 department, and not much in the primary ; but we have already seen 
 that story -telling is the essential method of these departments. But it 
 will work well with the juniors, and better throughout adolescence. 
 The other is that it must by this time have become perfectly plain that 
 the ideal recitation is no mere recitation at ail, but rather a discussion 
 which uses the results of preliminary assignments, and of which re- 
 citing is therefore a part. This leads us to the consideration of the 
 next method. 
 
 3. The discussion method develops the lesson within the class 
 period. By skillful questions, the teacher sets the pupil to thinking 
 and gets him to express his thought, then uses it as a basis for further 
 question and discussion. The truth of the lesson is thus gradually 
 educed. The teacher draws the pupil out. The work of the hour is 
 constructive and, in the primary sense of the word, educative.* 
 
 The great virtue of the method is its live and cooperative character. 
 There is nothing mechanical or rigid about it. Things keep moving. 
 It demands the activity both of teacher and pupil. The class goes 
 away with no ready-made information loosely lodged in their heads, 
 but with ideas of their own making. 
 
 But this method, too, has its difficulties and dangers : 
 
 ( 1 ) It is a mistake to attempt to educe particular facts by discussion. 
 You must tell them to the pupil, or he must find them out somewhere. 
 
 Socrates' method of questioning and discussion has long been 
 pointed to as an ideal. It is true that he was a master at stirring his 
 hearers to think for themselves. We can learn much from him and 
 his questions. But there is a great difference of presupposition be- 
 tween Socrates' method and our own. He believed that all truth 
 dwelt within the soul of the pupil himself. He held that knowledge 
 is in reality recollection. He thought that the human soul had lived 
 before coming to this earth, just as it will live hereafter ; and that the 
 truths known in that former existence had left their print upon it. 
 Truth lies, therefore, implicit within one ; to know is but to become 
 clearly conscious of one's own latent memories. The duty of the 
 teacher is to help bring them to the light. By questioning and discus- 
 sion he makes the pupil think, not only for himself, but upon that which 
 is within himself. Socrates meant far more by the maxim, ' ' Know 
 thyself," than we do when we quote it. 
 
 We do not believe in this doctrine. Facts, we now know, come to 
 us from without. Men might have peered forever into their own 
 
 * The word " educate " comes from the I,atin " educo," which was derived from 
 " e," meaning "out," and "duco," meaning " to lead." 
 
METHODS OF TEACHING 117 
 
 souls and might have discussed with one another until doomsday, 
 without ever learning the simple fact that salt is made of sodium and 
 chlorine. Someone had to observe that. You can never by ques- 
 tioning get out of a pupil the fact that Peter was a fisherman, or 
 that Paul was born at Tarsus, unless that fact has first been put into 
 him. 
 
 You waste time, then, in attempting to pull facts out of the class that 
 they do not know, or to create such knowledge by discussion. The 
 province of the method is the organization of facts. You are to make 
 the pupil think about the facts of the lesson, relate them to one 
 another, draw inferences from them and arrive at new truths. But the 
 facts themselves he must find out, either in his previous study, or by 
 looking them up as you ask for them, or by having others tell him. 
 Any other method than previous study, moreover, is poor economy. 
 Every pupil should come with the main tacts of the lesson already 
 fixed in his mind. You will rapidly question the class upon them ; 
 and then you have a common basis upon which discussion may pro- 
 ceed. You are ready to go on, to inquire into matters that have 
 escaped notice, to round out the pupil's knowledge and to develop the 
 truth of the lesson. 
 
 (2) There is danger that the pupils will not study. The discussion 
 method can get along without previous preparation on their part. 
 Each can look up his facts in the text-book as the lesson proceeds, or 
 catch them from the answers of someone else. But the result is that 
 the pupils make no real contribution to the discussion, and lack the 
 basis of knowledge which they need to comprehend its more vital 
 truths. The discussion is bound to degenerate. The class flits about 
 on the surface of the passage for the day ; and the teacher is driven to 
 catch-penny devices of entertainment. 
 
 (3) There is danger of wandering from the point— this even if the 
 pupils do study. Answers that are not quite right will throw you off 
 the track ; questions will be raised about remote and minor issues ; or 
 some suggestive remark will entice you to spend too much time in its 
 development. It is hard to keep perspective. Everything seems im- 
 portant at the time. In teaching a class, as in writing a book, the 
 biggest problem is to know what to keep out. You must have a plan 
 well thought out before. You will have to adapt it, of course, to the 
 exigencies of the discussion. You may even have to leave it. But it 
 will at least give you a sense of direction and proportion. 
 
 4. The best method is, therefore, a combination of recitation and 
 discussion. We may call it the cooperative method, for it alone 
 
118 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 deserves the name. No recitation is genuinely social unless the results 
 of previous study are used in live discussion. No discussion is really 
 cooperative unless the pupil is prepared to do his part ; and this is 
 insured only by definite assignment. 
 
 The essential characteristics of this method are implied in what 
 we have said concerning recitation and discussion. We may sum 
 them up briefly : 
 
 (i) The teacher keeps a week ahead of the class. He studies, not 
 only the lesson for the coming Sunday, but the lesson which he is 
 then to assign for the next. He blocks out carefully the course which 
 its discussion is to take, and finds a definite piece of work for each 
 pupil. 
 
 (2) After the main teaching period, he devotes a second period of 
 five or ten minutes to the assignment for the next Sunday. It is a task 
 that demands his best efforts. The way that he uses these minutes 
 determines the way in which the pupils will study throughout the 
 week. The teaching of the lesson begins right here. This is the 
 introduction. It must tell enough of what is coming to make the 
 pupil want to know more, and to set him to work intelligently. Simply 
 to say, "Next Sunday we will study about so-and-so," is no assign- 
 ment at all. 
 
 (3) On the next Sunday, he develops the lesson by a discussion, in 
 the course of which each pupil gets called upon, in one way or another, 
 for the results of his work. The union of recitation and discussion is 
 organic, not mechanical. The pupil's reports are made a vital part of 
 the development of the lesson. 
 
 (4) The motive of the hour is social. The method is adapted to 
 pupils, therefore, who have reached the age of social initiative — those 
 of the junior and higher departments. 
 
 (5) The method may be adapted to the development of the pupils by 
 changing the character of the assignments. In the lower grades only 
 bits of memory work can be assigned for home study ; then definite 
 questions whose answers are to be written out, and manual work to 
 be done. In higher grades questions will be assigned for. oral, rather 
 than written answer ; then topics may gradually be substituted for 
 questions. The topical method of assignment finally may be adapted 
 to the maturity of any class, by broadening the topics and making them 
 demand more research. 
 
 5. With adult pupils who are intellectually mature, the research 
 method is best. The teacher becomes simply the leader of a group 
 of students who are together pursuing an investigation. A topic is 
 
METHODS OF TEACHING 119 
 
 assigned to each pupil, upon which he is to find out all he can and 
 bring back a report to the class. If the subject .be the social teachings 
 of Jesus, the pupil is not given a text-book wherein they are all set 
 down in order, ready for him to learn in the shortest possible time, 
 neither is he told them by means of a lecture or discussion. He is 
 rather assigned a given topic and sent to the gospels to find out for 
 himself just what Jesus said about it, then to the histories and com- 
 mentaries to learn what were the social conditions of Jesus' time with 
 respect to it. He comes back to the class with the facts he has dis- 
 covered and with the conclusions he draws from them, and himself 
 leads the discussion on his topic. It is clear that this is simply the 
 cooperative method carried to its highest development. Not nearly 
 all adult classes can use it, however. It demands an exceptionally 
 strong and well-equipped teacher ; and it can be used only with pupils 
 who have the intellectual ability to do such research work and are 
 willing to take the time for it. 
 
 6. In the lecture method the teacher does all the talking. Its 
 virtues are : ( i ) its definite and systematic presentation of the lesson ; 
 (2) its economy of time ; (3) its attractiveness to many busy men and 
 women who do not have the time or, more often, the inclination to 
 study a lesson for themselves. Its weakness is, of course, the fact 
 that the teacher does all the work and there is little or no study by the 
 pupil. It is an excellent method with advanced classes, if you can- 
 not get them to work in a better way. It demands the very best of 
 teachers, and one who is a direct and resourceful public speaker. 
 Such a teacher may attract large numbers of men and women to the 
 Sunday school who would not enter any other class. 
 
 7. Drill lessons and review lessons have a place in the work of 
 the Sunday school, and methods of their own. We shall think of 
 them in a later chapter. 
 
120 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 1. Why is there no one method of teaching that one may always 
 follow? 
 
 2. In what ways may a teacher use a story ? 
 
 3. What are the steps involved in the recitation method ? With 
 what difficulties does it confront you ? 
 
 4. How shall you go to work to get the pupil to study ? 
 
 5. How shall you endeavor to retain the attention and interest of the 
 pupil throughout the recitation period ? 
 
 6. What are the difficulties and dangers of the discussion method ? 
 
 7. Describe carefully the cooperative method, and show how it may 
 be adapted to the maturity of the pupil. 
 
 8. Describe the research method. What are its advantages and its 
 difficulties ? 
 
 9. What are the advantages of the lecture method ? What its dis- 
 advantages ? 
 
 10. What do you consider the best method in general for each de- 
 partment of the Sunday school ? Give reasons for your choice. 
 
LESSON XIV 
 
 The Plan of the Lesson 
 
 The discussion of methods has made plain how much depends upon 
 the teacher's own preparation of the lesson. He must do more than 
 master it for himself ; he must organize his material for teaching. 
 
 I. First of all, the teacher must get the meaning of the lesson. 
 He is set to teach the Bible, not what men have thought or the Church 
 has said. No comment or dogma or application is of importance as 
 compared with what the writer himself actually meant to say. That is 
 fundamental. It must come first. 
 
 Three conditions must be fulfilled if the teacher is really to get the 
 meaning of the lesson : 
 
 ( i ) He must study it in light of its literary form and its relation to 
 the book from which it is taken. Despite the unity of revelation 
 that runs through it all, the Bible is not one book, but many. It is a 
 library of books. It contains histories and biographies, letters and 
 poems, dramas and lyric idyls, the writings of prophets and the pithy 
 sayings of wise men. We should study, not passages only, but books. 
 The teacher ought always to read the whole book from which the 
 lesson is taken, with a view to its literary form and the intent of the 
 author. Only through this knowledge of the whole can he grasp the 
 full meaning of the part. 
 
 (2) He must study it in light of the historical circumstances 
 under which it was said or written. Eternal as is the truth of God's 
 revelation in the Bible, it had its times and places. The prophets 
 spake, not to future generations, but to the men of their day. They 
 were political leaders and social reformers, revealing God's will in a 
 nation's crises. St. Paul wrote to particular churches and to individual 
 men, and because he had something specific to say to them. The 
 teacher needs both knowledge and imagination. He must be able in 
 thought to live in Bible times. He must appreciate the situation. He 
 must catch the point of view of the man who wrote the words he 
 studies, and of those for whom they were written. He must understand 
 what they meant then, if he is rightly to interpret them now. 
 
 (3) He must study it sympathetically. The men who wrote the 
 books of the Bible were practical men ; but they were not matter-of- 
 
 (121) 
 
122 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 fact. They were seers. History spoke to them of the living God. 
 The heavens declared to them His glory, and the firmament showed ' 
 His handiwork. Unless the teacher, too, has the vision of faith, he 
 will not comprehend. Not as mere literature or history may he look 
 upon the lesson he studies. In prayer he will seek the truth of God. 
 "Spiritual sympathy is indispensable for the sound interpretation of 
 books written to convey spiritual truth. As the Bible is intended to 
 set forth religious truth, so must it be studied in a religious spirit." * 
 
 2. The teacher must choose an aim for the teaching of the 
 lesson. The ultimate aim is always the same — the spiritual develop- 
 ment of the pupil. But it is not enough to purpose this in a general 
 way ; he must plan just how to make this particular lesson work toward 
 that end. 
 
 (i) He should choose a single aim for each lesson. Have one pur- 
 pose, one central thought ; and stick to it. Some teachers go at a les- 
 son piece-meal. They have a pupil read a verse ; then ask, "Now, 
 what do we learn from that?" There follows a discussion of the 
 spiritual truth supposed to be contained in that verse, and its applica- 
 tion to life ; then the next verse is taken up in the same way, and so 
 on to the end. This is not teaching a lesson ; it is rather a mulling 
 over of as many lessons as there are verses in the assignment for the 
 day. The unity of the passage is lost. It is treated as a mere collec- 
 tion of separate texts. Each stands alone and is made to carry its 
 own lesson. 
 
 Such a procedure is wrong, first, because it embodies a false concep- 
 tion of the Bible. The Bible is not a mere collection of texts. Its 
 books are coherent. There is a connection of events in the history it 
 records. Its letters are such as sensible men write, with a beginning, 
 a middle and an end. Its prophecies contain, not the scattered and 
 enigmatic oracles of soothsayers, but the sane and sober vision of 
 practical men who saw life no less reasonably because they saw it in a 
 divine light. If the teacher, in fact, has fulfilled the conditions set 
 down above, and has gotten the actual meaning of the lesson, he will 
 not think of teaching in this scattered way. The passage will have a 
 point for him, and he will direct his teaching toward making that point 
 clear to his pupils. 
 
 Such a procedure is wrong, again, because it is not good teaching. 
 It lacks unity and force. The pupil carries away nothing just because 
 too much has been given. He does not get the point because confused 
 by too many points. Do not use every thought that the lesson sug- 
 
 * Burton and Mathews : " Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," p. 24. 
 
THE PLAN OF THE LESSON 123 
 
 gests. Pick out only what you need to help develop the main theme. 
 Not "Is this thought good?" but "Will it help my pupils to grasp 
 the point of the day's lesson ? " must be the criterion. 
 
 ( 2 ) Not every lesson need aim directly at the formulation of some 
 moral or spiritual truth. There are teachers who have learned not to 
 try to squeeze a spiritual application out of every verse, who yet 
 attempt to get one out of every lesson. But the fact that every lesson 
 can yield such a conclusion does not prove that it ought. Nor does 
 the fact that our general aim is spiritual imply that each single pas- 
 sage should be studied with reference to its separate spiritual message. 
 
 Such a procedure may, in fact, hinder the fullest realization, of our 
 ultimate aim. It is yet a piece-meal method of studying the Bible, less 
 objectionable than the verse-by-verse method only because the pieces 
 are not quite so tiny. It conveys no idea of the continuity of events or 
 of the onward movement of the Spirit in the minds of men. And it 
 begets within the pupil a habit of mind which will keep him from 
 looking beyond the single lesson for the truth. He will not organize 
 rightly what he learns. He will not grasp the great things of God's 
 teaching. He will study the Bible in cross-section and miss the per- 
 spective of a third dimension. 
 
 Some lessons are but links in a chain, items in the development of 
 a truth so great that many lessons are needed to bring it out. Our 
 immediate aim in such a lesson is intellectual rather than moral or 
 spiritual. We seek, not to jump at applications, but to prepare for 
 other lessons and to organize the data from which the spiritual conclu- 
 sion will ultimately be drawn. The teacher ought squarely to face 
 the issue : " Is this lesson one for conclusion and application, or for 
 preparation and organization ? Is it complete in itself, or a part with 
 other lessons of a larger whole ? Shall I finish it off at the end of the 
 period and start again next Sunday, or shall I make it point on to the 
 coming lesson and remain incomplete without it? " 
 
 (3) He should aim to present, as simply and directly as possible, the 
 meaning of the Bible passage itself This is implied in all that we 
 have said. It is the sum and substance of the whole matter. Having 
 himself gotten the actual meaning of the Bible writer, it is the teach- 
 er's business to make the pupil see that meaning as he does. His 
 work is expository. The lesson should have a single aim, not because 
 one may be chosen at random, but because the writer had a single 
 aim. He wrote the passage because he had a point to make. And 
 not every lesson need aim directly at the formulation of a moral or 
 spiritual truth, just because his point in writing was not always such. 
 
124 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 It is the vice of much Sunday school teaching of our time to wander 
 far from this expository ideal. It does not draw the central thought 
 of the lesson from the Bible itself, but reads into the Bible one 
 brought from without. Just as some preachers first write their ser- 
 mon, then hunt for a text to serve as a point of attachment to the 
 Word of God and certificate of authority, so some teachers seize 
 upon any attractive "application" that presents itself, however 
 remote it may be from the actual intent and meaning of the passage, 
 and make the whole lesson work toward it. They have a single aim, 
 but it is the wrong one. They are not teaching the Bible ; they are 
 using it simply for illustration and as a sort of external authority. 
 
 3. The teacher must lay out a plan for the teaching of the les- 
 son. He dare not rely upon the inspiration of the moment. For 
 sake of economy of time and definiteness of presentation, as well as 
 to insure the interest and cooperation of the class, he must organize 
 his material beforehand and plan the steps to be taken in the develop- 
 ment of the theme. 
 
 4. The Herbartian plan of the lesson has become traditional.* It 
 contains five formal steps : 
 
 ( 1 ) Preparation. The lesson begins by getting the pupil ready for 
 the truth which he is to learn. The teacher calls up in his mind what- 
 ever he may already know about it or related matters, that he may 
 feel a need of further knowledge, and that those ideas may be upper- 
 most which will enable him rightly to comprehend and assimilate it. 
 
 (2) Presentation. Then comes the presentation of the lesson 
 material. The teacher imparts the particular facts from which the 
 new truth is to be learned. 
 
 (3) Association. This step is often called comparison and abstrac- 
 tion. It is a working over of the lesson material. The facts pre- 
 sented are compared with one another, and points of likeness and 
 difference are made clear. The teacher inquires into their relations 
 to one another and the pupil is made to see the common factor that 
 runs through them all, or the links of time and place, cause and effect, 
 reason angl consequence, that bind them together into a. coherent 
 whole. If the previous step is one of perception, this is one of rea- 
 soning. Presentation seeks to make the pupil see facts ; association, 
 to understand their relations. 
 
 (4) Generalization. The new truth embodied in the facts is f Gr- 
 ille German philosopher Herbart (1776-1841) was the first to make a scientific 
 
 study of the process of education itself. His followers '.carried on his work, and 
 the Herbartian pedagogy has had a wide influence. For a detailed treatment of 
 
THE PLAN OF THE LESSON 125 
 
 mulated in a definite and compact statement. The conclusion is 
 drawn. 
 
 (5) Application. Finally, the truth is used. The pupil is set to 
 apply the principle or definition or rule which he formulated in the 
 fourth step, to new situations. Since it is true, he is asked what would 
 happen under such and such circumstances, different from any that 
 had been used in its presentation. 
 
 "These formal steps of the recitation have a universal application," 
 says Rein.* But it is a question how far they may be applied to the 
 teaching of the Sunday school lesson. If we use the plan at all, it must 
 be in spirit rather than in letter. The teacher would fail miserably 
 who would divide the recitation period into five parts and attempt to 
 fit this framework upon every lesson. Yet it is in a sense true that 
 we must each day prepare the pupil's mind for the truth, present it 
 clearly, think out its parts and relations, formulate and apply it. 
 
 The fact is that these are not the natural steps of every lesson, 
 as Rein thinks. They are the steps of an inductive lesson — one 
 wherein the pupil is led to infer a general truth from a number of 
 particular instances. If the aim of a public school teacher be, for 
 example, to teach to children the meaning of the word "although," 
 after a brief preparation she would present a number of sentences 
 containing the word, then lead the class to compare them and to pick 
 out the single idea that is common to all. This idea, then, they 
 wou\d formulate in a definition of the word " although," or a rule for 
 its use ; and finally they would be set to work to use it for themselves 
 in new sentences. 
 
 Many Sunday school lessons are inductive, but not nearly all. The 
 plan may well be followed with a research class, for example, study- 
 ing such a subject as the Messianic ideas of the prophets ; or with an 
 elementary class, to make plain God's love and care as shown in 
 manifold ways in nature and in His dealings with His children. It is 
 the best method for a review which is to bring together and formulate 
 the results of a group of lessons upon a common theme. In these and 
 like cases there must be explicit comparison of a number of presented 
 facts and generalization from them. 
 
 But there are other lessons which cannot well take this form. Some 
 aim simply at the connected presentation of historical facts or at an 
 
 the formal steps, see De Garmo's " Essentials of Method," or McMurry's 
 " Method of the Recitation." Bagley's treatment is brief, but clear and to the 
 point — "The Educative Process," pp. 284-304. 
 * Rein : " Outline of Pedagogics," p. 187. 
 
126 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 exposition of the teaching of some man or book. Some, too, that aim 
 directly at the formulation of a moral or spiritual truth, develop it by 
 interpretation of a single instance rather than by generalization from 
 many. Jesus often used a single story to bring out the truth. Ideals, 
 in fact, are never mere inductions. They must appeal to that which 
 is within one. 
 
 It is thus impossible to lay out a general sch,eme that will fit all 
 lessons. The plan must vary with the aim and the material. At least 
 three parts, however, every lesson^should have— preparation, presen- 
 tation and conclusion. 
 
 5. Preparation. A great deal depends upon the way that you 
 begin a lesson. And it is no easy task to begin rightly. There must 
 be more than an introduction ; there must be a real preparation for 
 what is to follow. The aim of this first part is threefold : ( 1) to bring 
 up within the pupil's mind such ideas as he may already possess con- 
 cerning the theme to be treated ; (2) to arouse his interest and give 
 him a motive to seek further knowledge ; (3) to set a definite subject 
 for the work of the day. 
 
 (1) You must begin with the pupil's own ideas. This follows from 
 the principle of apperception. The pupil will understand the lesson 
 in terms drawn from his own experience. You cannot help that. It 
 is the only way that he can understand at all. It is your business, 
 then, to call up within his mind such items of his previous knowledge 
 as may enable him rightly to comprehend it. 
 
 It does not matter where these ideas may have come from, pro- 
 vided they are his own and are really to the point. You must not in- 
 troduce new material here. You may revive his memories of former 
 lessons, or call up things he has read, or remind him of concrete experi- 
 ences that he has had. In any case the one great question is — Is this 
 idea one that will really help him to understand the lesson as he ought 
 to understand it ? Some introductions arouse interest enough, but 
 not in the point of the lesson ; they call up vivid ideas, but such as 
 distract the pupil's attention and distort his final comprehension of 
 the truth. They are introductions, but in no sense preparations. 
 
 ( 2 ) You must arouse the pupil's interest. You must make him zvant 
 to know the truth you are going to teach. The preparation ' ' should 
 show the need oi the new material from the pupil's standpoint."* 
 
 You must take account, therefore, not only of the pupil's previous 
 
 *Bagley : " The Educative Process," p. 291. The simple plan which we are now 
 discussing makes preparation include what Bagley calls the sub-step " statement 
 of the aim." 
 
THE PLAN OF THE LESSON 127 
 
 ideas, but of his attitude toward them. You must bring up such as 
 have life in them and worth in his eyes. By tactful remark or pointed 
 question you will show him their incompleteness. You will awaken 
 within him a sense of need. You will make him conscious of a gap 
 in his knowledge, and get him to feel that it is worth filling up. 
 
 This is what Du Bois has so finely called "finding the point of con- 
 tact. ' ' * The preparation must succeed in bringing together the pupif s 
 interests on the one hand and the point of the lesson on the other. It 
 fails if it deals with either alone. There are introductions which work 
 up logically enough to the truth of the lesson, but do not direct toward 
 it the pupil's active interest; just as there are others which awaken 
 interest, but in something else than the lesson point. If the pupils are 
 interested enough in what they have been learning and the lessons 
 have historical or logical continuity, the ideal preparation may be a 
 brief review. But more often you must set out from some concrete 
 experience. And there are times, be it admitted, when all rules fail ; 
 and you will be driven to use anything to get the attention of the class. 
 
 (3) You must set a definite subject for the lesson. This is the con- 
 clusion of the preparation and the transition to presentation. It gives 
 form to the pupil's sense of need, and direction to his interest. It 
 centers attention upon the thing to be learned. 
 
 The subject of the lesson is not the same as the aim. "When we 
 face the child who has wandered from the point, it seems easier to ask, 
 1 What are we talking about? ' than to ask, 'What is the aim of our 
 talk? ' " f Moreover, the aim that we have formulated for ourselves 
 may not appeal to the pupil immediately or at all. The subject must 
 be stated from his standpoint, not from ours. It should be brief and 
 attractive. It should be worth remembering, and serve as a clue for 
 the subsequent recall of the lesson. It should, therefore, whenever 
 possible, contain both a proper name and the lesson event or a charac- 
 terization. "Abraham willing to offer Isaac," " Joseph's kindness to 
 his brothers," "Joshua's battle against five kings," "Jeremiah, the 
 man who suffered to save his city" — are examples taken at random 
 from the International Graded Lessons. Such titles set up an associa- 
 tion between the lesson story and the name, so that each is bound to 
 bring up the other. 
 
 The method of the preparation, with reference to its first two aims, 
 should be that of questions and answers. It must enlist the pupiPs 
 
 * Du Bois : "The Point of Contact in Teaching." The phrase "point of con 
 tact " was used by Herbart himself. 
 t Brown : " How to Plan a L,essou," p. 27. 
 
128 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 activity, bring out his ideas and arouse his interest. Sometimes a 
 good story may come in well ; but it should not be used alone or with 
 mere comment by the teacher. The subject should be stated, how- 
 ever, by the teacher — for the obvious reason that the pupil cannot be 
 expected to formulate a subject for lesson material that he has not yet 
 gotten. 
 
 The whole part should be brief and to the point. Many teachers 
 take entirely too long. They dull the edge of the pupil's interest 
 before they reach the presentation. It is always easy to wander from 
 the point when questions are asked ; and especially easy when the 
 pupils do not know what the questions are leading up to, as is the case 
 here. 
 
 If your method of conducting the class involves the giving of assign- 
 ments, the greater part of the preparation must come on the Sunday 
 preceding the discussion of the lesson. It may include, too, a brief 
 blocking out of the course that the presentation will take, that each 
 pupil may understand just what he is to do, and the relation of his 
 assignment to the whole. 
 
 6. Presentation. The presentation of new material is the body 
 of the lesson. In general, it should occupy at least two-thirds of the 
 time. We need not discuss it here in detail. The preceding chapter 
 and the three succeeding deal directly with methods of presentation. 
 
 (i) The presentation varies, of course, with the general methods 
 of conducting the class discussed in the last chapter. In case of any 
 method involving home study by the pupils, a part of the presentation 
 comes from the text-book and from their use of the Bible. Each pupil 
 may nave his share, then, in the class presentation. 
 
 (2) Present the essential facts first. Go over the whole lesson 
 quickly, touching on the big things. Get the facts clearly and in per- 
 spective. 
 
 (3) You are then ready for the discussion — working over the facts, 
 inquiring into their relations and implications, clearing up obscure 
 points, hearing reports from pupils, organizing their results, and all 
 the time working steadily toward a fuller comprehension of the main 
 point. 
 
 (4) You will use whatever illustrative material you need to hold 
 the pupil's interest and to help him understand — object-teaching, 
 manual work, correlation with previous lessons or with the work of 
 the public schools, stories, pictures, blackboard, stereoscope, and the 
 like. We shall discuss these in succeeding chapters. Just one cau- 
 tion here. Remember the carpenter's rule reported by Dr. W. M. 
 
THE PLAN OF THE LESSON 120 
 
 Taylor: "We must never construct ornament, but only ornament 
 construction." * 
 
 7. Conclusion. Intellectually, the conclusion is the final step in 
 the organization of the lesson material ; practically, it brings home an 
 obligation. 
 
 (1) The discussion should end with a definite summing up 0/ results. 
 The pupil should be led to look back over the lesson and to formulate 
 its essential point in a compact statement. It should be an answer to 
 the question with which you began your own study : " Just what did 
 the writer himself mean to say?" If you have taught as you should, 
 the pupil's conclusion will be his statement, in his own way, of the same 
 thought that you chose as the aim of the lesson. 
 
 (2) When the lesson is o?ie of a series, the conclusion should formu- 
 late its bearing upon what went before and what is to come. The point 
 of the lesson may be in itself comparatively unimportant, yet essential 
 to the development of a greater truth. It may be that the only good 
 of a certain lesson is to supply a link-of historical connection ; yet if it 
 really succeeds in helping to make the history of the Hebrew people 
 clear and coherent, its service is as real as that of one which deals 
 directly with some great spiritual insight. 
 
 (3) These two elements of the conclusion are intellectual ; they 
 deal with the organization of ideas. But our aim is practical as well. 
 God's truth touches the conscience. It brings us face to face with 
 ideals. 
 
 Sometimes the practical conclusion should be definitely and explicitly 
 stated; sometimes not. To know when is one of the teacher's most 
 serious problems. There is need here of tact and good sense as well 
 as of consecration. We shall take up this problem when we come to 
 the chapter upon the spiritual goal of our work. Enough now to say 
 that there are two reasons why a teacher may make a mistake who 
 insists upon bringing home in so many words the practical bearing of 
 each lesson : (a) because indirect suggestion is often more potent than 
 direct suggestion ; (b) because in the mind of the pupil such a state- 
 ment of obligation may substitute our own authority for that of God's 
 Word. We shall discuss these reasons later. The practical aim of 
 our work dare never be forgotten ; it is a question simply of method. 
 
 (4) The pupil should make the conclusion for himself. It should be 
 his own. It so means more, both to you and to him, than if you present 
 a conclusion for his acceptance. Of course, you will often have to 
 correct a wrong impression and help to reconstruct a poor statement ; 
 
 * Hervey : " Picture-Work," p. 30. 
 
130 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 but the right of summing up results belongs to the pupil. Indeed, he 
 only can sum up the real results, for they are within him. 
 
 8. Finally, we must remember that no plan is sacred. Our plans 
 must be adaptable. They must fit the materia}. You will not teach 
 history in the same way as poetry or even as biography ; neither will 
 you present the soul-stirring sermons of the prophets as you would the 
 worldly wisdom of a collection of proverbs. You cannot apply the 
 same plan to letters such as those of Paul and to a dramatic dialogue 
 like the book of Job. They must fit the pupil. What may be an ex- 
 cellent form for a junior lesson would fall flat with senior pupils. 
 They must be fitted to the exigencies of the occasion. The discussion 
 will take many an unexpected turn. Some of these will reveal real 
 needs. No class can have life that is held too rigidly to a prearranged 
 scheme. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 i. What conditions must the teacher's study fulfill if he is to get 
 the real meaning of the lesson ? Give reasons for each of them. 
 
 2. Why should the teacher choose a single aim for each lesson ? 
 
 3. " Not every lesson need aim directly at the formulation of some 
 moral or spiritual truth." Why? 
 
 4. Why must the teacher lay out his lesson plan beforehand ? Why 
 is it not enough, without this, to study the lesson thoroughly ? 
 
 5. Explain the steps of the Herbartian plan. 
 
 6. Why is the Herbartian plan not applicable to every Sunday 
 school lesson ? 
 
 7. Explain clearly what you understand by an inductive lesson. 
 
 8. What three parts must every lesson have ? 
 
 9. What is the threefold aim of the part of preparation ? Give a 
 reason for each aim. 
 
 10. Discuss the method of the part of preparation, with respect to 
 each of its three aims. 
 
 11. Why should the essential facts of the whole lesson be presented 
 first, and the detailed discussion follow ? 
 
 12. What should the conclusion accomplish, intellectually and 
 practically ? Why should the pupil draw the conclusion for himself ? 
 
LESSON XV 
 The Pupil at Work 
 
 The true class, we have seen, is cooperative. The teacher will not 
 do all the work. He will enlist the activity of the pupil. In this les- 
 son we shall think of the pupil's work. What can the teacher get his 
 pupils to do ? 
 
 I. Three principles underlie the work of the pupil : 
 
 (i) There is no learning without men tat activity on the part of the 
 pupil. This is the principle of self-activity, already familiar. You can- 
 not think for your pupil. He must make his own ideas. The point 
 we need here to emphasize is that learning requires mental activity. 
 The pupil must think, not simply do. A class may be very active, yet 
 learn little. They may answer every question — looking it up in their 
 lesson leaves — and at the end know nothing. They may make beauti- 
 ful maps and portfolios, even write out careful and correct answers in 
 the blank spaces after the questions in their text-books ; yet do it all so 
 unthinkingly that they fail to lay hold of the truth. You must arouse 
 the mind, not simply mouth and hands. 
 
 (2) To insure definite mental activity, the pupil must in some way 
 express its results. This is one meaning of the oft-quoted pedagog- 
 ical maxim, "No impression without expression." To make sure 
 that the pupil gets the truth, you should have him express it. "We 
 learn by doing." We never really know a thing until we give it to 
 someone else. You experience this every Sunday that you teach. 
 After the class hour is over, you know the lesson as you never could 
 know it before. The teaching has reacted upon yourself. Thoughts 
 that before were vague have taken shape as you sought to express 
 them ; your mind has moved with sureness of purpose ; your convic- 
 tions are aglow. You feel that you would like to teach the lesson over 
 again, and that you could now do it much better. 
 
 The pupil's expression of what he has learned is thus much more 
 than a mere test. It is not simply for sake of letting you know what 
 he has gotten and what he has failed to get. The expression is itselj 
 a means of impression. It helps him to learn. It moves his mind to 
 act. It gives him a motive to think. It impels him to clear up his 
 ideas and to make thoughts definite which might otherwise remain 
 
 (131) 
 
132 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 vague and formless. The expression is a revelation to the pupil him- 
 self of just what he really does know. 
 
 We often hear people say, " I know that, but I cannot express it" 
 — meaning that they cannot put it into words. It is undoubtedly true. 
 We all know many more things than we can put into words. Words 
 are only arbitrary symbols ; language is but one of many forms of ex- 
 pression. Much of our thinking is in mental pictures rather than in 
 words. We express ourselves in intonation, gesture, action, as well 
 as in language. Indeed, the real meaning of an idea is better ex- 
 pressed in the action it leads to than the form of words that it calls up. 
 It is the man of action rather than the man of words that we should 
 rely upon if we had to choose between them. 
 
 Yet it is language that makes knowledge socially usable. Thoughts 
 that we cannot put into words may be our own inner sustenance ; but 
 they can be shared with no one else. We may apply here what Paul 
 said to the people of Corinth about the value of mystical babbling in 
 "tongues" : " He that speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself ; but he 
 that prophesieth edifieth the church. ... I had rather speak five 
 words with my understanding, that I might instruct others also, than 
 ten thousand words in a tongue."* If one cannot express in w r ords 
 what he knows, he does not yet know it in the way that he ought. 
 While it is not our business to tell everything that we know, we ought 
 to know everything so definitely that we could tell it if there were 
 occasion. 
 
 (3) There is no expression zvithout a social motive. It is to other 
 persons that we tell things, and for others or for recognition by them 
 that we do what we do. Without them, we should have no motive 
 to express what is within us. We do not speak just for sake of speak- 
 ing, or write merely for the pleasure of feeling a thought form itself at 
 our finger-tips ; we speak to somebody and write ybr some reason. So 
 with a pupil. Bid him simply to tell what he knows, and you will dry 
 up the springs of thought and speech within him. He has no vital 
 motive. But arrange a social situation such that he may tell it to 
 somebody and for some reason, and he will express himself in a natural 
 and spontaneous way. Public school teachers have found that the girl 
 whose compositions are formal and stilted may yet write a simple and 
 natural letter to a girl in another town ; that the boy who cannot 
 write an essay worth looking at may- hand in an excellent article for 
 the school paper ; that a pupil who seems tongue-tied when called 
 on to recite may be able to tell to another pupil the very thing he 
 
 * 1 Cor. xiv. 4, 19. 
 
THE PUPIL AT WORK 133 
 
 could not in class find words for. It is your business as teacher not 
 merely to demand expression from your pupil, but to furnish motives 
 and material^ to provide social situations such as naturally call it 
 forth. 
 
 2. In the beginners' department we must provide for and use 
 the child's physical activity and play. The department should 
 have a separate room, if possible ; if not, it should be screened off 
 from the rest of the school. It should have little chairs that can be 
 arranged in a circle about the teacher. The program of the hour 
 should be informal, the instruction periods short. Better have two 
 short periods than one longer one, and a time between for rest, change 
 of position and physical activity. 
 
 The use of physical activity and play in the Sunday school can be 
 objected to only by those who do not understand children. It does 
 not mean that the department is to be in constant turmoil, each pupil 
 doing what he pleases and moving about where he will, while the 
 teacher distractedly tries to keep all busy. It does not mean that the 
 atmosphere of reverence and worship is lost. It means rather that 
 the teacher recognizes that there is sure to be physical activity, for 
 children are so made ; and plans to use and direct it and so confine it 
 within proper bounds, instead of trying to repress it and only suc- 
 ceeding in spreading it over the whole hour in form of mischievous 
 interruption. 
 
 Marches, drills and motion songs and plays have both a recreative 
 and an educational value for children of this age. They may be used 
 to illustrate and impress the truth of the lesson, as well as to engage 
 active hands and feet and little bodies full of play. And it is often wise 
 to use them just for rest and recreation. After five minutes of such 
 bodily activity, with fresh air, the children are ready in perfect quiet 
 to give eager attention to the lesson story. Care must be taken, of 
 course, not to lose the quiet spirit of the hour. Jig-time music and 
 violent exercises are out of place. There is no need, moreover, of a 
 physical material for play, such as the kindergarten gives. 
 
 The little child's play, we have seen, is imaginative and dramatic. 
 You need nothing more than simple little plays that enlist at once the 
 body and the imagination. Let the children represent trees or birds 
 or flowers, snow or rain, and go through appropriate motions to the 
 accompaniment of piano or song. A little child's play instinct is easily 
 met. It demands nothing elaborate or boisterous. The one require- 
 ment is that you satisfy the imagination. You must enter with him 
 into the land of make-believe. 
 
134 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 3. In the primary department, the work of the pupil centers 
 about his reproduction of the story. If the lesson story has been 
 well told, nothing will give the children greater delight than to repro- 
 duce it for themselves. And nothing can be of more educational 
 value. It is real self-expression, socially motived. It makes the truth 
 the child's own. There are three ways in which the children may 
 reproduce the story : 
 
 (1) Telling it. "It is such fun to listen to a good story that chil- 
 dren remember it without effort, and later, when asked if they can tell 
 it, they are as eager to try as if it were a personal experience which 
 they were burning to impart. Each pupil is given a chance to try 
 each story, at some time. Then that one which each has told espe- 
 cially well is allotted to him for his own particular story, on which he 
 has an especial claim thereafter. It is surprising to note how indi- 
 vidual and distinctive the expression of voice and manner becomes, 
 after a short time. The child instinctively emphasizes the points which 
 appeal to him, and the element of fun in it all helps bring forgetfulness 
 of self."* 
 
 This is an account of story-telling by children in the public schools, 
 where the interest of the teacher was not primarily in the content of 
 the story itself, but in the development of the child's power of expres- 
 sion. It applies as well to the work of the Sunday school teacher, 
 who is interested in having the child lay hold of the truth of the story. 
 Let not the word "fun" mislead us. The fun of story-telling is not 
 amiss in the Sunday school. It is the joy of the creative imagination, 
 the happiness of inwardly seeing and feeling what one tells and of 
 putting one's whole self into the telling. It is the delight of making 
 others see and feel, and sharing with them the truth that seems so real. 
 What matter if the story is old, and the child tells it time after time in 
 the same words, and often with the very inflections that the teacher 
 first used? That, for children, only adds to the pleasure of the telling. 
 They do not want different words. They like to recognize the old 
 forms, and even to join in the refrain when certain striking phrases are 
 reached. It is a blessed boon to the teacher — this natural love of repe- 
 tition. It makes easy the permanent implanting of the truth. 
 
 (2) Drawing. Every child likes to draw, and every child should 
 be allowed to. It is not that we hope to develop artists, but simply 
 that drawing is a natural form of expression. The child who tries to 
 tell a story in a picture must have a definite and clear mental picture. 
 
 * Bryant : "How to Tell Stories to Children," p. 112. The quotation is slightly 
 abridged by the omission of local references. 
 
THE PUPIL AT WORK 135 
 
 "In the simplest and most unconscious way possible, the small artist 
 is developing the power of conceiving and holding the concrete image 
 of an idea given, the power which is at the bottom of all arts of ex- 
 pression." * The story afterward is more vivid and real to his mental 
 vision. He can tell it better in words just because he has tried to tell 
 it in pictures. 
 
 The most convenient forms of drawing for the Sunday school are : 
 (a) Drawing with pencil or black or colored crayons upon fairly large 
 sheets of paper. " No tables are needed, as it takes less time and is 
 more convenient to place the papers in the seats of the chairs, and let 
 the children kneel before them to work. " f (^) Drawing upon the 
 blackboard. Children like this, for the novelty of going to the board, 
 and for the prominence it gives to the one chosen to draw a picture 
 for the class. It also permits cooperative drawing — one child making 
 part of a picture and others completing it — which engages the hearty 
 interest of the whole class if you do not have it too often, (c) Cut- 
 ting out silhouettes from paper. This may be called drawing because 
 it, too, is outline work. Children take a great deal of pleasure in it, 
 and produce far better illustrations than one would at first think. 
 
 The drawings will be very crude, but that does not matter. You 
 are not teaching drawing, but Bible stories. Do not waste time trying 
 to get a perfect picture. It is but a means by which the child may ex- 
 press his own ideas and get the benefit that comes from such expres- 
 sion. Of course, in so far as the drawing reveals a misconception of 
 the story, you will correct it, just as you would one revealed in the 
 child's telling the story. You will take care never to suggest a draw- 
 ing when the story is one that would be hard for a child to illustrate, or 
 when his attempt would be apt to lead to misconceptions. 
 
 (3) Playing the story. Children are naturally dramatic. They 
 take keen delight in acting out a story. It is the spirit of make- 
 believe play. Each little actor, creating his own part, himself lives 
 in the story and expresses in the most natural way possible its mean- 
 ing to him. He has the most concrete of social motives for his expres- 
 sion of the truth, for he feels the motive that the one in the story him- 
 self felt. 
 
 Teachers in the public schools are just beginning to understand what 
 an instrument is afforded them by this natural instinct for dramatic 
 expression. It is plain how it lends itself to the teaching of reading 
 
 * Bryant : " How to Tell Stories to Children," p. 115. 
 
 f "International Graded Wessons : Beginners' Teacher's Text-Book, First Year, 
 Part I.," p. 24. 
 
136 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 and composition and to the development of a love for good literature. 
 The class is never ready to stop with the first impromptu acting out of 
 a story ; they want to try again and improve their presentation. Classes 
 have spent several months of earnest work in writing out their own 
 dramatization of " Rip Van Winkle " ; and it has given a new motive 
 to all their school work, besides bettering their reading and composi- 
 tion and helping them learn a lot of history and geography. 
 
 The Sunday school might well learn something here from the ex- 
 perience of the public school. There is no reason why children 
 should not act out Bible stories just as they do others. There is no 
 irreverence in the thought, provided we choose such stories as do not 
 necessitate anyone's acting the part of God or of Jesus. There is one 
 use, at least, for such dramatizations that would be a great improve- 
 ment upon the present practice of most schools. On festival occa- 
 sions, instead of presenting a ready-made cantata or a "service" full 
 of dance music and bad " poetry," let the children give a little play of 
 their own composition, the result of several months of work upon a 
 suitable Bible story. 
 
 The first of these forms of reproduction — the child's telling the story 
 — is obviously the most usable. It never loses its charm, and may be 
 used with any story. All three methods may be used in the beginners' 
 department as well as the primary, to the degree that you find them, 
 by actual experience, to be adapted to the particular children you have 
 to teach. 
 
 The time for the first reproduction of a story is on the Sunday fol- 
 lowing its presentation ; and after that it may be retold or reacted as 
 often as seems worth while. The period for reproduction should be 
 the first of the two instruction periods, the second being given to tell- 
 ing the new story. This applies as well to the beginners' department 
 as to the primary. In each, whatever work the children do at home 
 throughout the week should be about the story told on the previous 
 Sunday and in preparation for its reproduction ; rather than in antici- 
 pation of the new story that is to come. In this respect the story 
 method of teaching differs from the other methods which we have dis- 
 cussed. Its home work comes after the presentation of the lesson 
 story ; they involve an assignment of new material for study, in 
 preparation for the class presentation. 
 
 4. We shall enlist the activity of junior pupils by handwork. 
 The term " handwork " has been applied rather loosely in discussions 
 of Sunday school methods. We shall understand by it the construc- 
 tion by the pupil of some object or record which shall express the re- 
 
THE PUPIL AT WORK 137 
 
 sutts of his study in a more or less permanent way. It differs from the 
 mere activity of the beginners' department in that it gives form to a 
 physical material, and from the drawing of the primary department 
 in that it aims at some permanent perfection of result. It is more 
 than a transient means of expression ; it aims to make something 
 worth keeping. There are as many sorts of handwork as there are 
 possible things for a pupil to make in connection with the Sunday 
 school lessons. We may sum up the more important occupations in 
 five great classes : 
 
 (i) Picture work. Drawing pictures illustrative of the lessons, or 
 coloring pictures with water-color or crayon ; collecting pictures from 
 various sources, especially those of the great masters as reproduced in 
 the many excellent series now so cheaply available ; cutting pictures 
 out and pasting them in a portfolio or note-book, either as a simple 
 collection or as illustrations for a written text. 
 
 (2) Map work. Coloring outline maps ; locating places ; tracing 
 journeys ; drawing maps ; modeling relief maps in sand, clay or pulp ; 
 drawing plans of cities and diagrams of buildings ; constructing a series 
 of maps to show historical and political changes ; and the like. There 
 is room here for a great variety of work, and it can be made of absorb- 
 ing interest. 
 
 (3) Written work. Text-books filled out, portfolios constructed, or 
 note-books written up. They may contain written answers to ques- 
 tions, copies of verses, outlines and charts ; stories and narratives ; a 
 life of Jesus or Paul, or a record of their travels ; a brief history of 
 the period studied ; a harmony of the gospels ; collections of Bible 
 poems or speeches ; and the like. The book should be illustrated 
 with pictures and maps, drawn by the pupil himself or pasted in ; and 
 when finished it should be neatly and permanently bound, to serve as 
 a record of the year's work. Such books, of course, may be of all 
 degrees of elaborateness. 
 
 (4) Object work. The construction of objects to illustrate the les- 
 sons, such as models of the tabernacle or temple, miniature tents, 
 houses, carts, furniture, weapons, etc. The girls will enjoy making 
 clothes such as were worn in Bible times and dressing dolls in them ; 
 the boys may make figures of clay or pulp to represent characters and 
 scenes. 
 
 (5) Museum work. The collection of articles to illustrate the les- 
 sons, to be given by the class to the school and made part of a perma- 
 nent museum, available for use by future classes. They may secure 
 relics of Bible times or articles from the Palestine of to-day — such as 
 
138 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 coins, garments, weapons, stones, grain, flowers. Of especial useful- 
 ness will be such additions as they can make to the school's collection 
 of pictures, lantern slides or views for the stereoscope. 
 
 These manual methods are very flexible. You must adapt the work 
 to your own particular situation. You must put to yourself at least 
 three questions : 
 
 (a) What sort of handwork shall we try to do, and how much ? Such 
 work, and only so much, as is needed to engage the pupil's interest 
 and cooperation. The handwork is not an end in itself ; it is but a 
 means to a higher end. The Sunday school does not exist for sake of 
 manual training ; its aim is spiritual. Handwork is of value in just so 
 far as it helps the pupil to get the truth he needs ; it becomes a hindrance 
 if it keeps him from lifting his soul above mere things. 
 
 (b) Shall the handwork be done in the class or at home ? Wherever, 
 by actual experience, you find that you can get the best results. It is 
 hard to get pupils to do the work at home with any regularity. They 
 are busy with public school work and there are too many distractions. 
 On the other hand, the lesson period on Sunday is too short for any- 
 thing more than the discussion of the lesson. If you do the work in 
 class, you must have a longer period, seat the children about a table 
 and work with them, not for them. It is best, but not necessary, to 
 have a separate class-room. There is, of course, a third possibility, 
 which may be combined with either of the other two. The class 
 will be glad now and then to meet on a weekday evening for sewing 
 or modeling or some other particularly interesting piece of work. 
 
 (c) Shall the handwork be dojie before or after the preseiitation of 
 the lesson. It depends upon the maturity of the pupils. Younger 
 children, to whom the lesson must be presented in story form, will do 
 the work best after the story has been told. Older children will take 
 more interest in doing work that looks forward to a coming class dis- 
 cussion than in work that reviews the discussion of the previous Sun- 
 day. They want to find out things for themselves. If we follow the 
 story method, then, the first instruction period will be for review and 
 for handwork or reports upon handwork done at home ; the second 
 will be given to the new story. If we follow other methods, the first 
 period will be given to discussion of the lesson for the day, using the 
 results of home study and handwork, or actually doing the work ; the 
 second, generally shorter, will be devoted to assignment and prepara- 
 tion for the lesson of the coming week.* 
 
 * A concrete account, with illustrations, of two manual courses that have stood 
 the test of practical service, is found in the Third Report of the Committee on 
 
THE PUPIL AT WORK 139 
 
 5. Memory work should have an increasing place in the three 
 lower departments, culminating in the junior. The beginners 
 may learn little Bible verses ; the primary pupils will memorize longer 
 verses and hymns. The juniors are in the "golden memory period." 
 They should store the mind with such Bible passages and religious 
 forms as they ought to remember word for word i?i after life. 
 
 (1) Memory work requires actual class drill. It is not enough to 
 ' ' hear the children say ' ' the verses they are supposed to have learned 
 at home, and help them out when they stumble. You must squarely 
 face the fact that most children will not learn their verses at home. 
 You must teach them yourself. You must by drill make them mem- 
 orize what they ought. 
 
 (2) Memory drill depends upo?i the law of habit. Two conditions 
 must be fulfilled : (a) the pupil must put his whole attention upon 
 the material to be learned, apprehending it clearly and distinctly ; 
 (b) there must be sufficient repetition to fix it. 
 
 (3) The time for drill should be early in the hour, before the pupil 
 has begun to tire and while his power of attention is unjaded. It is 
 a mistake to assume, as many teachers do, that memory work, being 
 mechanical, can be done at any time. It demands the most favorable 
 conditions. Teacher and pupils should be at their best. 
 
 (4) You must make sure that the pupil understands clearly and 
 defijiitely just what he is to learn. Mere concert repetition amounts to 
 little ; there must be individual drill as well. If the children can read, 
 the material to be learned should be presented to their eyes as well as 
 to their ears. It is extreme to maintain that a child should commit 
 nothing that he does not comprehend, for the full meaning of many 
 precious verses can be realized only in later life. Yet we seldom err 
 on this side. And certainly a child should never memorize anything 
 that he cannot understand in some degree. We must always explain 
 the meaning of that which w r e ask him to commit, and make sure that 
 he gets it. A young woman who is now a missionary in the far east 
 admitted that until her senior year in college she thought that " Eben- 
 ezer" meant "voice," having learned in early childhood the hymn, 
 " Here I raise mine Ebenezer." 
 
 (5) Repetition is monotonous work; and your ingenuity will at 
 times be taxed to hold the pupils to it. In general, however, they 
 
 Graded Bible Schools, published by the Association of Congregational Churches 
 in Illinois, 153 I,a Salle Street, Chicago. An excellent discussion of manual 
 methods is found in Cope's "The Modern .Sunday School in Principle and Prac- 
 tice." A modification of his classification is used in this chapter. 
 
140 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 like it better than you do, for the primitive rhythmic instinct is strong 
 within them. The best way to hold them is to put life into the drill. 
 Make it quick and snappy. Children like a brisk mental exercise. In- 
 troduce variety by alternating concert with individual recitations. Let 
 one pupil begin a verse and another finish it. Get competition be- 
 tween this boy and that, or between sections of the class ; or train your 
 class for competition with another. Give only so much time to each 
 pupil called on ; if one fails, go on to the next, and later help him indi- 
 vidually. Do not waste the time of the class and wear out their 
 patience by dealing too long with individual cases of stupidity or lack 
 of effort. Take them separately and in private. The old system of 
 prizes for verses learned had better be given up. 
 
 (6) There must be frequent review. Do not drop a verse after it 
 has been learned. Keep calling for it from time to time. It not only 
 keeps old verses fresh in the memory ; it helps to maintain variety and 
 interest. The fact that review Sunday comes at the end of the quarter 
 does not mean that reviews may be let go until then. 
 
 6. In the higher departments the pupil works at assigned study. 
 We have already discussed the teacher's problems in connection with 
 this. We shall simply remind ourselves of three counsels then brought 
 out : 
 
 ( i ) Assign a specific bit of study to each pupil and hold him re- 
 sponsible for it. It will generally lead him to study the whole lesson. 
 
 (2) Suit the assignments to the maturity of the class. Beginning 
 with bits of memory work or handwork, the method should aim to 
 make pupils able to study a given topic intelligently and to report upon 
 it concisely. 
 
 (3) Show your pupils how to study. Take a class period now and 
 then to study with them, instead of the usual discussion ; and teach 
 them how to go at their lessons. Watch your opportunity for a talk 
 with each pupil individually, and work with him some week in the 
 preparation of his topic, to show him how you would do it. Most 
 of all, begin as early as you can to use the reference library, and de- 
 velop within your pupils the ability to handle its books for themselves. 
 Show them how to use Hastings' Bible Dictionary, the concordance, 
 atlas, histories and books of travel and exploration. 
 
 Many an adolescent loses interest in the work of the Sunday school 
 because it seems so pinched intellectually. His lesson leaf presents 
 such a meager lot of material, he thinks, and that all digested for him. 
 You can do such a boy no greater service than to bring him into con- 
 tact with the work of the great Bible scholars. Give him references to 
 
THE PUPIL AT WORK 141 
 
 real books instead of text-books — to Ramsey, Edersheim, Thompson, 
 George Adam Smith, Schiirer. He may be repelled because he finds 
 them too hard, but he will at least have acquired a new respect for the 
 text-book that brings him the results of such work. Best of all, he 
 may refuse to be daunted by something hard, and acquire a permanent 
 interest in the problems of Biblical interpretation. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 i. What three principles, according to this chapter, underlie the 
 work of the pupil ? 
 
 2. Is it true that one may know a thing without being able to express 
 it in words ? Can one know a thing without being able to express it 
 in any way at all ? Give reasons for your answers. - 
 
 3. Why must we provide for physical activity and play in the begin- 
 ners' department ? What sort of play is best adapted to the work of 
 the Sunday school ? 
 
 4. Describe the three ways in which pupils may reproduce the les- 
 son story. Explain some of the difficulties attending each. 
 
 5. What part of the class hour should be given to story reproduc- 
 tion ? Why ? 
 
 6. What do you understand by handwork as employed by the Sun- 
 day school ? 
 
 7. What are the five great sorts of handwork available for the Sun- 
 day school ? Describe an example of each. 
 
 8. Should handwork be done in the class or at home ? Give rea- 
 sons. 
 
 9. Should handwork be done before or after the presentation of 
 the lesson ? Give reasons. 
 
 10. What sort of passages and formulas should the pupil commit to 
 memory ? 
 
 11. Discuss the methods of the teacher in memory work. What part 
 of the class hour should he devote to it ? Why ? 
 
 12. What ways of getting pupils to study are mentioned in this chap- 
 ter? Explain any other methods you know, bringing out both their 
 advantages and disadvantages. 
 
LESSON XVI 
 
 Attention and Apperception : Principles 
 
 How to engage the pupil's attention and make sure that he gets the 
 meaning we want him to get, is the problem of this chapter.* 
 
 I. PSYCHOLOGICAL principles 
 
 i. The nature of attention. The best way to describe attention 
 is by a figure of speech. The field of a camera, we all know, 
 has a focus, a central point where the picture is perfectly clear and 
 distinct. Things upon the margin of the field appear blurred and 
 vaguely outlined in proportion to their distance from the focus. Just 
 so the field of consciousness has a focus and a margin. The activity 
 of the mind always centers itself about some one thing or group of 
 things, some single idea or thought. It is the object of attention. 
 Something else may take its place in the fraction of a second, for 
 thought is quick ; but for the moment it stands at the focus and other 
 things are upon the margin. It is clear and distinct to the mental 
 vision ; they are more or less dim and blurred. 
 
 We are always paying attention to something or other. Attention is 
 a constant characteristic of the mind's action. Every moment of con- 
 sciousness has its focus. Not to give attention to anything would 
 mean to be unconscious. 
 
 Attention cannot be kept long upon an unchanging object. It shifts 
 rapidly. " Quick as thought " is a proverb. As soon as a thing has been 
 brought into focus and has been clearly and distinctly apprehended, 
 the mind moves on. That thing is now known ; that problem is 
 solved — now what next? Try to keep your attention upon an un- 
 changing object — say the word " Lesson " at the top of this page — and 
 you will find that you cannot, except by constantly having new 
 thoughts about it. But to have a new thought is to change the object 
 of attention. If the mental object changes — if we keep looking at it 
 from new points of view, asking new questions about it, relating to new 
 
 *ln connection with this chapter, the class should review what is said on atten- 
 tion in Lesson X., Section 6 ; and on apperception in Lesson IV., Section 3 ; Lesson 
 XII., Section 3 ; and Lesson XIV., Section 5. 
 
 * (142) 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : PRINCIPLEvS 143 
 
 things — we can keep the attention steadily upon the most wooden and 
 changeless of external things. 
 
 2. There are two kinds of attention — voluntary and spontane- 
 ous. Attention is voluntary when we keep it directed upon some ob- 
 ject by an act of will. It requires effort. We are more or less con- 
 scious of a split of impulses. We feel the pull of other things that 
 claim attention ; but we resist them and hold our minds to the chosen 
 object. Attrition is spontaneous when it is drawn to some object 
 naturally and without effort. While tremendous effort may be put 
 forth under stress of spontaneous attention, there is none needed to 
 hold the attention itself upon its object. We are hardly conscious of 
 the pull of other things, for the mind is being given to the strongest. 
 
 ( i ) / r oluntary attention is a state of unstable equilibrium. It can- 
 not long be sustained without lapsing into spontaneous attention. 
 Either the mind wanders from the topic set, and must by an effort be 
 pulled back to work ; or we get interested in the task that was begun 
 voluntarily, and further attention to it becomes spontaneous. 
 
 (2) Spontaneous attention depends upon o tie's interests. A man's 
 interests, moreover, reflect what the man himself is. Interest may be 
 best defined as a feeling of worth that accompanies self-expression. A 
 thing is interesting to one just in so far as it gives him a chance to express 
 what is within him, to realize in action his instincts, habits and ideas, 
 and to press toward completion what he has begun. Interests may be 
 classed as native or acquired, according as they depend chiefly upon 
 instincts or upon habits and ideas. Yet most human interests spring 
 from both sources. Instincts get set into habits, overlaid by experi- 
 ence and transformed by reason ; yet they remain at the heart of life's 
 deepest interests. He whose interests are instinctive merely is a sav- 
 age ; but he who has no other than acquired tastes is a fop. 
 
 3. Attention is apperceptive. We attend to things that we may 
 understand them. It is for sake of getting the meaning of a given 
 sensation or idea that we focus the activity of the mind upon it. At- 
 tention is an assimilative process. It brings what we know to the in- 
 terpretation of what is as yet unknown ; it arouses that which is 
 within us to receive what comes from without ; it throws the light of 
 experience upon the new problem of the moment. 
 
 Attention is, in fact, the focal point where past and present meet to 
 determine a meaning. A repetition of the old and familiar, with no 
 new element, cannot hold the attention and may even fail to arouse it 
 to a passing look. A presentation of the absolutely new, with no link 
 of connection with past experience, would fail just as completely, for 
 
144 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 it would be unintelligible. Neither the old alone nor the new alone 
 can engage the attention. The old alone is flat and stale, and is met 
 mechanically by habit ; the new alone is meaningless. But when we 
 can bring the past to bear upon the present ; when we can see the old 
 in the new and the new in the old, the new giving life to the old and 
 the old giving meaning to the new — then interest awakens, the mind 
 is alert and attention intent upon its problem. The best way for the 
 teacher to get and hold attention is to fnlfitl the conditions of apper- 
 ception. 
 
 And it is just as true that whatever means you use to get attention 
 will enter vitally into the pupil 's apperception of the truth presented. 
 He must make his ideas for himself, we have said, and out of material 
 from within himself. The meaning a new truth has for him depends 
 upon the old ideas, the instincts and habits that he brings to bear upon 
 it. And he will bring to its interpretation just those ideas, instincts 
 and habits that you arouse within him as you seek to gain his atten- 
 tion. We might, indeed, compactly restate the law of apperception in 
 these terms : The meaning of each new experie7ice is determined by 
 the appeal it makes upon attention. 
 
 II. THE TEACHER'S PROBLEM 
 
 4. The teacher must get and hold the attention of his class. It 
 
 is for the teacher to get rather than for the class to give. If our pupils 
 would only pay attention, we sometimes think, how well and interest- 
 ingly we could teach ! But that is to begin at the wrong end. If we 
 would only teach as we ought, they would pay attention. The atten- 
 tion of a class depends upon the teacher. It is not so much a condi- 
 tion as a result of good teaching. If you need ask for attention, 
 there is something the matter with you. It is your business so to 
 teach that you grip the minds and hold the interest of your pupils. 
 
 There is no use to teach without attention. The pupil's body is with 
 you, but his mind is not, and you are wasting words. Without atten- 
 tion you can do nothing. When it slips away your first concern must 
 be to get it back. 
 
 It is positively harmful to teach without attention. Your pupils will 
 go away with ideas distorted and garbled, a mixture of your teaching 
 and their own fancies, yet will think that they have gotten the truth. 
 No inattentive pupil feels that he is missing anything. He gets what 
 is worse than no impression, a wrong one. Moreover, attention, like 
 any other power of the mind, is subject to the iaw of habit. If you 
 teach without it, you beget within your pupils the habit of inattention. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : PRINCIPLES 145 
 
 Spiritually, they grow to think lightly of sacred things ; intellectually 
 and morally, they are weakened. 
 
 " Teachers have a great deal to do with the formation of the 
 intellectual habits which will cling to their pupils for the rest of 
 their lives. . . . We ought all to feel some interest in the sort of 
 mental character which our little scholars are acquiring during 
 their intercourse with us. We must look forward to the time 
 when the children will be men and women, and consider what 
 sort of men and women we would have them be. We cannot help 
 desiring that when, hereafter, they read a book, they shall read 
 seriously ; that when they hear a sermon, they shall not bring 
 preoccupied or wandering minds to what they hear ; that as they 
 move along in life, they shall not be unobservant triflers, gazing 
 in helpless vacancy on the mere surface of things, but shall be 
 able to fix their eyes and their hearts steadily on all the sources 
 of instruction which may be open to them. If they are ever to 
 do this, it is necessary that they should have acquired in youth 
 the power of concentrating their attention. This power is the one 
 qualification which so often constitutes the main difference be- 
 tween the wise and the foolish, the successful and the unsuccess- 
 ful men. Attention is the one habit of the mind which, perhaps 
 more than any other, forms a safeguard for intellectual progress, 
 and even, under the divine blessing, for moral purity. Now, 
 every time a child comes into your class, this habit is either 
 strengthened or weakened. Something is sure to be done, 
 while the children are with you, to make them either better or 
 worse in this respect for the whole of their future lives. . . . 
 Every time you permit disorder, trifling or wandering you are 
 helping to lower and vitiate the mental character of your pupils. 
 You are encouraging them to a bad habit. You are, in fact, 
 doing something to prevent them from ever becoming thought- 
 ful readers, diligent observers and earnest listeners, as long as 
 they live." * 
 
 5. The teacher must engage the interest of his class. There are 
 other ways, of course, of getting attention. You might demand it or 
 coax for it, scare it into pupils or cajole it out of them, bribe them with 
 rewards or appeal to their respect for yourself. But attention so gotten 
 is unstable and of little worth. It cannot be long sustained, and while 
 it does last, has no apperceptive value. These are but external 
 
 * Fitch : " The Art of Securing Attention," School Bulletin edition, pp. 117-119. 
 
 10 
 
1 46 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 means. They bear no relation to the truth you teach. You must 
 arouse the pupil's interest in the subject itself ] not merely in pleasing 
 you, getting rewards or avoiding punishments. You ought so to teach 
 that the truth may make its own appeal. You should make the pupil 
 "feel that the subject claims attention for itself, not that you are 
 claiming it for the subject." * 
 
 But this only brings us to the real problem of every teacher. 
 Granted that we must get attention, and the kind of attention that 
 springs from interest, the great question is — how? It is no easy 
 thing to hold the interest Of a class. And it is not a problem that can 
 be solved once for all. You face it anew each Sunday. 
 
 (i) First of all, remove the distractions. Begin your effort to hold 
 the attention and interest of your class, by eliminating all those things 
 that would be apt to get it away from you. You are, in fact, a com- 
 petitor for the attention of your pupil. You must contend with other 
 things for it. It is not the total lack of attention that your teaching 
 must combat so much as his proneness to pay attention to something 
 else that is, for the moment, more interesting. Few inattentive pupils 
 are mentally inert. Their minds are active, but in the wrong direc- 
 tion. They are busy thinking of something, but it is not what you 
 want them to think of. The wise teacher, therefore, does all he can 
 to weaken the competition of other things. He removes as com- 
 pletely as possible all distracting conditions. 
 
 This is why, ideally, each class should have a room of its own. It is 
 hard to hold the interest and attention of a class if there are other 
 classes all about it in the same room, each with its own buzz of discus- 
 sion, and some with the inevitable loud-mouthed teacher who mistakes 
 intensity of sound for forcefulness. The room should be furnished sim- 
 ply and comfortably, and for the use of the class. It should contain 
 nothing in the way of furniture, pictures or paraphernalia that is not in 
 line with the work you expect to do. This does not mean that it is to 
 be bare and unattractive. Pictures, books, maps, tables for manual 
 work, have their rightful place. It is the home and work-room of the 
 class, and it should be both homelike and usable. But the teacher will 
 rigidly exclude anything that has no connection with the work of the 
 class and might distract their attention. 
 
 The teacher will see to it that the physical conditions of the class- 
 room are favorable. The seats should be comfortable, the heat right, 
 the air kept fresh. No one can give attention when fatigued or dulled 
 by bad air. We must be at our best physically to do good mental work. 
 
 * Fitch : op. cit., p. 89. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION: PRINCIPLES 147 
 
 This is one of the factors that ought to be considered when the hour for 
 the Sunday school session is chosen. A teacher may be attempting 
 the impossible who tries to interest a class of boys who are getting 
 hungry, or even a Bible class of adults who have just listened to a long 
 sermon and meet in the audience room vacated by the congregation. 
 A great deal depends upon the way the class is seated. One rule is 
 absolute and invariable, the teacher ought to be able to see every pupil. 
 Seat your class so that you can. Put them in a circle about you if you 
 cannot see them all in any other way. Stand while you teach if you 
 cannot see all from your chair. However you do it, see them. Know 
 everything that is going on. Read their faces. Learn from their expres- 
 sion who is paying attention and who is not, who has understood your 
 teaching and who has failed to grasp it. It is often best for the teacher 
 to determine, not simply the general form of seating, but the particular 
 place where each pupil should sit. If each sits where he pleases, 
 those are apt to get side by side who are most intimate, and there is 
 likely to be more talking, inattention, and even mischief, than if you 
 seated the class according to a plan of your own — alphabetically, let 
 us say. You need not fear that the pupils will rebel, if only you go at 
 it with a degree of common sense. It must not be as punishment for 
 misbehavior, either of individuals or of the class as a whole. Arrange 
 them at the beginning of the year's work. Make the assignment of 
 seats a part of your general plan, not an after-thought or a corrective 
 measure. Let the class feel it to be what it really is, an item of routine 
 that makes for economy and efficiency. 
 
 The teacher's own perso?iality may be a distraction. Anything that 
 calls attention to yourself takes it away from the subject. Be natural. 
 Avoid affectations and peculiarities. Nervous diffidence and over- 
 weening self-confidence are equally bad. Mannerisms of speech or 
 gesture may spoil a lesson. An extreme new dress or hat may upset 
 a class for a whole period. Remember that the fact that a pupil has 
 his eyes fixed on you does not necessarily mean that he is absorbed in 
 what you are saying. 
 
 "A lady told me that one day, during a lesson, she was de- 
 - lighted at having captured so completely the attention of one of 
 her young charges. He did not remove his eyes from her face ; 
 but he said to her after the lesson was over, ' I looked at you all 
 the time, and your upper jaw did not move once ! ' That was 
 the only fact that he had taken in." * 
 
 * James : " Talks to Teachers on Psychology," p. 93. 
 
148 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING vSERIES 
 
 The teacher may introduce distractions in the course of the teaching 
 itself. To reprimand a pupil or to call for the attention of one whose 
 mind you see to be wandering, is simply to make matters worse. You 
 distract the class as a whole, and instead of one pupil not thinking of 
 the lesson, you now have ten or twenty to win back. Teachers who 
 use objects to illustrate the lesson must be especially careful. Do 
 not bring out your objects too soon. They only distract attention if 
 seen before they are actually used. And do not use them at all unless 
 you are perfectly sure that they will work in just the way you plan. 
 Stories and illustrations are to be avoided, too, that do not clearly 
 illustrate or that are suggestive of other trains of thought than that of 
 the lesson itself. 
 
 The administrative department of the Sunday school ought not in 
 any way interrupt the teaching. The officers of a school may greatly 
 hinder the effectiveness of its work if they go about their duties in 
 such a way as to attract the attention of pupils. A superintendent may 
 mean well, yet strut about importantly and confer with this person or 
 that in more or less audible tones, till he creates more disorder and 
 inattention than he can ever correct with the bell that such as he use 
 for that purpose. The secretary may make himself the biggest 
 nuisance in the school. He has no more right than anyone else to 
 walk about during the teaching period, gathering class-books and col- 
 lection envelopes, counting visitors or distributing lesson leaves and 
 weekly papers. These things must be done, but a time should be set 
 apart for them. The teaching period must be kept for teaching. 
 
 (2) Know your lesson thoroughly. It is not enough to remove distrac- 
 tions ; you must make your teaching a positive attraction. You must 
 fill the hour with interest. You must teach with power. And there is 
 only one way to attain power in teaching. It is to begin at the very 
 foundation — by first learning the truth you are to teach. To know his 
 subject and to know it thoroughly, is the primary qualification of a 
 teacher. What you do not have you cannot give. What you do not 
 know you cannot teach. And unless you are at home in your sub- 
 ject, and master of its material, you cannot hope to teach "interestingly. 
 
 This means that you ought to make a definite and careful study of 
 each lesson. The teacher who relies upon his general knowledge, or 
 upon his familiarity with a round of lessons that he has taught before, 
 is bound to lose the interest of his pupils. The teacher who no longer 
 feels the need of a special preparation of each lesson, might as well 
 give up his class. 
 
 But it also means that you ought not to be content with the mere 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : PRINCIPLES 149 
 
 getting together of the particular points you wish to discuss with the 
 class. A teacher needs to know a great deal more than he ever 
 attempts to give to his pupils, for sake both of perspective and in- 
 terest. Professor Palmer has well expressed this need in his charac- 
 terization of the ideal teacher. He is speaking primarily of his own 
 experience as a college professor ; but his words apply as well to 
 teachers of every sort. 
 
 " In preparing a lecture, I find I always have to work hardest 
 on the things I do not say. The things I am sure to say I can 
 easily get up. They are obvious and generally accessible. But 
 they, I find, are not enough. I must have a broad background 
 of knowledge which does not appear in speech. I have to go 
 over my entire subject and see how the things I am to say look 
 in their various relations, tracing out connections which I shall 
 not present to my class. One might ask what is the use of this ? 
 Why prepare more matter than can be used ? Every successful 
 teacher knows. I cannot teach right up to the edge of my 
 knowledge without a fear of falling off. My pupils discover this 
 fear, and my words are ineffective. They feel the influence of 
 what I do not say. One cannot precisely explain it ; but when 
 I move freely across my subject as if it mattered little on what 
 part of it I rest, they get a sense of assured power which is com- 
 pulsive and fructifying. The subject acquires consequence, 
 their minds swell, and they are eager to enter regions of which 
 they had not previously thought. . . . Even to teach a small 
 thing well we must be large." * 
 
 (3) Be yourself interested in the lesson. You can teach nothing well 
 that you have not made a real part of yourself. You can rouse no in- 
 terest in that for which you do not yourself care. The pupil's attitude 
 toward the truth is generally a reflection of your own. You must be 
 earnest and sincere, enthusiastic and magnetic, if you would win your 
 boys and girls. But these qualities are not to be acquired at will, or 
 put on as one would a robe. They spring from the inward depths of 
 the soul. They are rooted in your own secure possession of the truth 
 which you seek to give to others only because it has first meant so 
 much to yourself. 
 
 (4) Find the " point of contact.'" Know your pupils. Understand 
 their experience and get into sympathetic touch with their interests. 
 Look at the truth through their eyes. Present the lesson in terms 
 
 ♦Palmer : ' The Teacher," p. 17. 
 
150 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 drawn from their life, and adapt it to the needs they feel. In short, 
 fulfill the conditions of apperception. So present the truth that they 
 may both understand and welcome it. It is not enough simply to 
 keep a class interested. Any entertainer could do that. You must 
 get them interested in the right thing. You must bring into contact 
 the point of the tesson on the one hand and their wants and needs on 
 the other. 
 
 (5) Keep ative. Keep the discussion moving, and get somewhere. 
 Avoid the dead monotony of a set routine. Adapt yourself to the 
 exigencies of the moment, and grasp its opportunities. 
 
 Make your subject live. No dead, unchanging subject can ever hold 
 the attention. The lesson must grow at your hands, and blossom out 
 into new aspects and meanings. 
 
 Be alive to the attitudes of your pupils. Read their faces and 
 postures. Know who is giving complete attention and whose mind is 
 wandering, who is understanding and who is not ; then fit your teach- 
 ing to the conditions you face. 
 
 " Every teacher greatly needs a quick eye and a compre- 
 hensive glance, which will take in the whole class at one view, 
 or travel instantly from one part of it to the other. He should 
 be able to detect the first rising of disorder, and the first symp- 
 toms of weariness, in an instant, and to apply a remedy to it the 
 next instant. . . . Among the minor characteristics of a suc- 
 cessful teacher, few things are so important as alacrity of move- 
 ment ; promptitude and readiness both in seeing and hearing ; 
 skill in finding out, at a moment's notice, who is the idlest boy 
 in the class, and in giving him a question, or giving him a verse 
 to read, before his mind becomes thoroughly alienated from the 
 subject, and before the contagion of his example has had time to 
 spread among the rest. A sluggish, heavy, inactive-looking 
 teacher can never gain the sympathy of children, or keep up their 
 attention long." * 
 
 Be alive to the ideas of your pupils. Get them to think for them- 
 selves and to express what they think. Then respect their thoughts. 
 Take pains to understand them. Use them in the development of the 
 truth. There will be many misconceptions and blundering statements, 
 of course. But you will not treat them as one might the guesses at the 
 answer to a conundrum — reject or accept them, and nothing more. 
 Those very misconceptions are the material upon which you must 
 
 * Fitch : " The Art of Securing Attention," pp. 99, 100. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : PRINCIPLES 151 
 
 work. You will take them at their face value, as expressions of the 
 pupil's real understanding of the matter in hand and his honest attempt 
 to contribute to the discussion. You will lead him to see where they 
 are wrong, and so to revise and correct them. A mistaken statement, 
 expressing the pupil's own thought, is worth much more to you than a 
 perfectly correct one which is only an echo of what you have told him 
 or he has read in a book. It is your business, not to put ready-made 
 ideas in at the pupil's ears and then pull them out again at his mouth, 
 but to help him to construct right ideas of his own. No class can have 
 life and interest where the teacher s ideas are the only ones expressed 
 or ultimately used. There must be a real exchange of thought. The 
 best teacher is he who can most skillfully use the pupil's own ideas.* 
 
 6. The teacher should appeal to that interest whose apper- 
 ceptive value is highest. Interesting a pupil and getting him to 
 understand the lesson should be one and the same thing. The interest 
 to which the teacher appeals should be such as may help the pupil to 
 grasp the truth and develop a right permanent attitude toward it. If a 
 boy learns a Bible verse because he will get a ' ' ticket ' ' for it, ultimately 
 redeemable in a prize, his interest neither helps him to understand the 
 verse, nor begets within him an attitude toward the Bible that is per- 
 manently desirable. If the teacher tells a funny story or two "to get 
 the class interested," and then plunges into a lesson discussion to 
 which they apply but remotely, the class will remember the stories 
 but not the teaching. In both these cases the interest appealed to is 
 external. It bears no vital relation to the content of the lesson. The 
 teacher seems to assume that the arousal of interest and the presen- 
 tation of the lesson are separate problems. 
 
 But we fail unless we get the pupil interested in the lesson itself. 
 And that means that we must translate the whole lesson material into 
 terms of the pupil's own experience, that answer to his instincts and 
 
 *I once heard a teacher in the fourth grade of a city public school attempt to 
 make her pupils understand the function of the nerves in the human body. " If 
 your father were in Chicago," she said (it being several hundred miles distant), 
 "and your mother wanted to get word to him right away, what would she do?" 
 " Telephone "—at once cried a half dozen of the children. " Why, yes, that might 
 do ; but I am thinking of a better way," was the answer. None could think of the 
 better way ; and she finally had to tell them that she meant telegraph. She not 
 only failed to use the pupils' own idea ; she pressed upon them a poorer illustra- 
 tion than they had themselves suggested. Every child knew and used the tele- 
 phone ; few knew anything of the telegraph. She rejected an analogy of high 
 apperceptive value for one little understood— and all because she could not adapt 
 herself. She was not alive ; she mechanically followed the plan she had thought 
 out beforehand. 
 
152 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 felt needs. We must do more than put a sugar-coat over an unchanged 
 inner material ; we must leaven the whole lump. Our problem is not 
 to viake a lesson interesting by tricks of method or by adding to it 
 stories or other material pleasant but extraneous ; it is to bring out of 
 each lesson its intrinsic interest. * 
 
 There are times of extremity, of course, when the teacher has no 
 choice He is driven to appeal to any interest, however remote, that 
 will give him access to the mind of the pupil. Such extremity may 
 result from his own failure to bring out the essential interes 'of the 
 lesson. Usually, however, it comes simply from the lack of that per- 
 sonal confidence and respect of the class for the teacher that underlies 
 all effective teaching. The teacher just beginning work with an unruly 
 gang of boys or with a self-satisfied, giggling bevy of girls, must win 
 them first in any way he can. He may have to begin with something 
 utterly foreign to the truth he means ultimately to bring out. The 
 " point of contact " he first seeks is that between his pupils and him- 
 self ; only later can he seek to make contact between their needs and 
 a lesson point. 
 
 7. Attention, interest, 'apperception, are but three aspects of 
 one and the same mental process — that, in short, is the point which 
 this chapter seeks to make plain. Attention is a name for clear and 
 definite mental activity ; interest is its motive and apperception its 
 result. Interest determines both the direction of attention and the 
 meaning of that to which attention is paid. To know how to call 
 forth the right interest is one of the vital secrets of effective teaching. 
 
 We cannot learn that secret all at once. But we shall be kept from 
 many mistakes if we remember that interest is more than a means 
 which the teacher may employ ; it is an end of education. We must do 
 more than use the pupil's interests to get his attention for a passing 
 hour ; the chief aim of our work is the development within him of a 
 genuine, many-sided, comprehending interest in all those things of 
 life that have real worth. Our pupils will likely forget every par- 
 ticular fact that we teach them ; but the interests we have fed will re- 
 main. The teacher does well, therefore, to put to himself now and 
 then the question, "Am I, or am I not, appealing to interests that I 
 would have permanent, or that I can use in the development of worthy 
 life attitudes?" If you can answer that question in the affirmative, 
 and really get and hold the interest of your class, you are succeeding 
 in your work. 
 
 * Cf. Dewey : " The Child and the Curriculum," p. 38. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : PRINCIPLES 153 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. What do you understand by attention? 
 
 2. " Attention cannot be kept long upon an unchanging object" — 
 why? 
 
 3. What two kinds of attention are distinguished in this chapter? 
 
 4. What do you understand by the "unstable equilibrium" of 
 voluntary attention ? 
 
 5. What is interest ? Discuss the relation of interest and attention. 
 
 6. In what senses is attention an apperceptive process ? 
 
 7. Why must the teacher get and hold the attention of his class? 
 
 8. Why is it a positive harm to teach without the attention of the 
 class? 
 
 9. Discuss some of the distractions to attention which lie within 
 the teacher's power to remove. 
 
 10. What positive conditions must the teacher fulfill if he would 
 engage the interest of his class ? 
 
 11. Why ought a, teacher know more than he intends to present 
 to his class ? 
 
 12. What do you understand by the phrase "point of contact" as 
 used in this chapter? What by " keeping alive " ? 
 
 13. Why should the teacher appeal to that interest whose appercep- 
 tive value is highest ? 
 
LESSON XVII 
 Attention and Apperception : Methods 
 
 The last chapter dealt with principles ; in this we shall seek to apply 
 them. We shall consider some of the particular methods which the 
 teacher may use to hold the attention and interest of his pupils and 
 to help them understand the truth. 
 
 i. Continuity. By continuity we shall understand the connection 
 of lessons with one another. The lessons should have connection — 
 historical or logical ; and the teacher should try to make the pupil see 
 and understand it. 
 
 It is possible, of course, to present each lesson in and for itself. 
 The lessons of a quarter or a year thus constitute a mere series — like 
 a string of pearls, each in itself a finished work of art, but only strung 
 together. But such a procedure involves a great waste of energy. It 
 is poor economy to begin over again each Sunday, and to face anew 
 the problem of engaging the interest of the class. Yet that is what the 
 teacher does Mho fails to make clear the continuity of the lessons. 
 The class may often enough compel you to begin anew the battle for 
 interest ; but you are foolish deliberately to plan to do so. Strive to 
 carry interest over from Sunday to Sunday. Make each lesson lead 
 up to the next and help set its problems. So teach that what the pupil 
 gets may make him want more. Gather a headway of interest. Every 
 day's teaching should make the next easier. 
 
 Teaching that lacks continuity, moreover, fails to realize one of the 
 ends at which all teaching should aim. It fails to organize the truth 
 within the mind of the pupil. He learns so many scattered stories and 
 facts, moral maxims and spiritual truths ; but never gets them put 
 together, save in some haphazard fashion of his own. Much of what 
 has been taught him will drop out of mind, simply for lack of connect- 
 ing links with the rest of his knowledge ; and the whole will lack per- 
 spective. The teacher must help the pupil, not only to get ideas, but to 
 systematize and unify them. Organization is no less important than 
 impression. 
 
 Three counsels are important, though obvious : 
 
 ( i ) The work of organization must be done a bit at a time, week after 
 week. Do not wait until review Sunday, and expect to do it all then, 
 
 (154) 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : METHODS 155 
 
 (2) Make sure that the connection you teach is the real one. You 
 must find continuity in the Bible, not put it there. You have no right 
 to substitute an imagined connection of your own for that which the 
 lessons actually possess. 
 
 (3) Study the whole before you attempt to teach the part. Many Sun- 
 day school teachers study wrongly. They simply keep a week ahead 
 of the class, or even — be it confessed with shame— right with the class. 
 They live from hand to mouth, each week preparing just enough 
 material to fill out the teaching period on the coming Sunday. They 
 cannot rightly connect lesson with lesson in the mind of the pupil 
 because their own vision is limited to the matter immediately in hand, 
 with, perhaps, a glance ahead. The teacher ought to know his whole 
 subject be/ore he begins to teach. When you enter upon a new series 
 of lessons — say the life of David or the history of the early Church — go 
 over the whole ground. Get a plan for the series. You will then 
 know how to plan each lesson, that it may not only be clear in itself, 
 but contribute to the final organization of the truth. 
 
 2. Correlation. By correlation we shall understand the connectio7i 
 of the Sunday school lessons with the rest of the pupiPs education. 
 The teacher should not ignore, but build upon the work of the public 
 schools. 
 
 Of all the ideas which the pupil will bring to bear upon your teach- 
 ing, and which will determine its meaning for him, none are more 
 easily accessible than those which he is acquiring day by day in the 
 schools. That much of his experience at least you can get definitely 
 acquainted with. You can find out just what ideas he has gotten, 
 what stories he knows, what facts of history and science he has learned, 
 what things he can and cannot do, what interests he has acquired. 
 You can meet him then on common ground, and present the truth in 
 ways that he will understand. 
 
 This does not mean that you are to use the methods of the public 
 school, simply that you take account of the ideas it gives to your 
 pupils and use them as an apperceptive basis. You will question the 
 pupil about what he has already learned, and use his answers in the 
 development of new truth. You will illustrate the lesson with stories 
 that the school has made familiar. You will appeal to biography and 
 history, and to his growing acquaintance with the facts of nature. 
 You will connect Bible geography with that of the world at large. 
 
 The advantages of such correlation are : ( 1 ) It arouses the interest 
 and self-activity of the pupil. It unites new and old within him. It 
 makes him think, and gives him a chance to express himself and con- 
 
156 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 tribute to the discussion. (2) It gives the class confidence in their 
 teacher. Every item of correlation is to them so much evidence of the 
 breadth and accuracy of his knowledge. (3) It begets within the pupil 
 a sense of the unity of spiritual truth and material fact, of religion 
 and the life of every day. (4) It actually brings about this unity, and 
 so makes the truths learned in Sunday school more permanent and 
 usable. We really possess ideas only in so far as we are able to call 
 them up when needed ; and that ability depends, we remember, upon 
 the laws of association. To insure the permanence and future useful- 
 ness to the pupil of anything we teach, we must multiply its associa- 
 tions with other things — and with such things, be it marked, as he is 
 apt often to meet or to have in mind. If the spiritual truths we teach 
 in Sunday school are ever to count for much in the actual life of our 
 pupils, we must not be content simply to connect the lessons with one 
 another or to construct a system of doctrine that is internally self-con- 
 sistent. We must reach out into the rest of knowledge and into life 
 itself to make associations. We must, by question and illustration, by 
 allusion and direct cross-reference, weave connections with the rest of 
 the pupil's ideas. We must make religion an integral part of that 
 larger organization of ideas and powers at which education aims as a 
 whole. 
 
 The dangers to be guarded against are : ( 1 ) That of wandering 
 from the point. It is easy to be led off into details of correlation, till 
 the real point of the lesson is obscured. (2) That of a wrong attitude 
 on the part of the pupil. He may dislike his school work ; and your 
 attempt at correlation may only succeed in transferring the dislike. 
 Correlation is most valuable at those periods in the pupil's develop- 
 ment when he is most interested in what he is learning at school. We 
 have seen that middle childhood is such a period. Later adolescence 
 is another, for those who are still in school or college and are laying 
 hold of the great truths of science. In later childhood and early ado- 
 lescence, on the other hand, school is often enough a bore. In any 
 case, your problem is an individual one. You must find a "point of 
 contact" for each pupil. (3) That of too little knowledge. on your part. 
 Do not attempt to correlate your teaching with that of the public 
 school unless you know thoroughly just what your pupils are getting 
 there. Otherwise they will soon find out that you do not know 
 everything that you are talking about ; and you will lose their con- 
 fidence. 
 
 3. Illustration. There is no surer way to bring the truth home to 
 the minds and hearts of those we teach than by effective illustration. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : METHODS 157 
 
 The teacher needs the gift of imagination. He must be able to see the 
 truth concretely, and quick to conceive its analogies. Illustrations are 
 of two great sorts — stories and figures of speech. Jesus used both. 
 To teach the fatherhood of God He told the story of a prodigal son ; 
 to teach the brotherhood of man He told the story of a good Samaritan. 
 He spoke of Himself as the "good shepherd," the "bread of life," 
 the " stone which the builders rejected"; and of the relation of His 
 disciples to Himself as that of "branches" to the "vine." He likened 
 His service to a " yoke " that is "easy " ; the spread of His kingdom to 
 the growth of a "grain of mustard seed." 
 
 (i) The ittustration must be more famitiar than the truth it is meant 
 to illustrate. It should be simple and concrete, dealing with matters 
 that lie well within the range of the pupils' own experience. Its aim is 
 to cast the light of the known upon the unknown. If it, too, deals with 
 what is unknown, we simply double difficulties. Jesus always drew 
 His illustrations from the common experiences of everyday life. It is 
 one of the things that made Him the ideal Teacher. 
 
 We need to remember this principle even with respect to those 
 illustrations which are recorded in the Bible itself. They reflect the 
 life of Bible times and Bible lands. And because our life is different, 
 we may not understand them. Missionaries have learned that they 
 must put the truth in terms of the life of the people they address, 
 even though it may compel a very free paraphrasing of the Scripture 
 story. 
 
 "One Sunday, in Ceylon, I was addressing, through an in- 
 terpreter, a large congregation of native Christians, and unfor- 
 tunately chose the subject of the good shepherd. My inter- 
 preter told me afterward that not one of my hearers had ever 
 seen a sheep, or knew what it was. ' How, then, did you ex- 
 plain what I said ? ' I asked. ' Oh ! ' he replied, ' I turned it 
 into a buffalo that had lost its calf, and went into the jungle to 
 find it.'"* 
 
 It is a question how much a city child can get out of the many figures 
 in the Bible which are drawn from pastoral life — a child who has seen 
 sheep only in pictures, and knows nothing whatever of shepherds. 
 A child, again, whose only experience of fishing has been gotten on 
 an occasional picnic, will hardly comprehend the illustrations which 
 Jesus used in teaching the fishermen whom he trained to be "fishers 
 of men." Nor are children the only ones. We all fail often enough 
 
 * Canon Tristram, quoted by Du Bois : " The Point of Contact in Teaching," 
 p. 91. 
 
153 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 to grasp the point of some Bible figure because we lack real acquaint- 
 ance with the life and thought-forms to which it appealed. The hyper- 
 bole, for example, of Jesus' remark when the rich young ruler " went 
 away sorrowful," is utterly lost if we talk about a tiny gate called the 
 "needle's eye" through which camels actually were forced, stripped 
 of their loads. It need no more be literally true that camels go 
 through the eye of a needle than that men " strain out the gnat and 
 swallow the camel." The point is precisely that they do not. In 
 both these cases Jesus probably made use of expressions that were 
 common in His day. If we had been close enough to the everyday 
 life of the people who made up Jesus' audiences, we should doubtless 
 have heard men say " easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye " 
 in just the same way as we used to say before the day of the Wrights, 
 " I could no sooner do that than fly.'' 
 
 We must remember, moreover, that an illustration perfectly familiar 
 and simple to ourselves may not be such to our pupils. It is from 
 their standpoint that its effectiveness is to be judged. 
 
 " I once heard a preacher explain hope to a number of chil- 
 dren thus : ' Now, I will explain hope, so all these little girls 
 can go home and tell their mothers what hope is. Now, chil- 
 dren, you know that this beautiful stream of water that runs 
 behind this meeting-house is composed of two elements, oxygen 
 and hydrogen ; so hope is composed of desire and expectation.' 
 And on he went." * 
 
 This preacher gives an excellent example of what not to do. He 
 not only uses a poor illustration, he tries to make up for its lack of 
 simplicity by a sort of playful intimacy of manner and irrelevant re- 
 mark. If he were a Sunday school superintendent, he would be the 
 sort to stand up and deliver questions like this : "Now, what bright 
 little boy or girl, on this beautiful crisp Sabbath morning, when I know 
 you all must be feeling glad and happy and thankful to the good God 
 who has given you sunshine and food and dear parents, can stand up 
 real straight and fine and recite for me, without missing a word, the 
 Golden Text ? ' ' Too many teachers are like him. They are convinced 
 that they must get down to the plane of the child ; and make the mis- 
 take of thinking they can do it by elephantine playfulness, needless 
 remarks and a forced familiarity. They do more than get down to the 
 plane of the child ; they fall below it, and children are not slow to feel 
 that fact. The only way to get simplicity is to make the lesson material 
 
 * " The Sunday School Teacher's Pedagogy," p. 106. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : METHODS 150 
 
 itself simple ; to find something in the child'* s own experience to which 
 it may be likened, and so to develop the new on the basis of the old and 
 fan/ilia/'. 
 
 This principle is so important that we may well stop to get another 
 example : 
 
 " I remember once hearing an address to children based upon 
 the text, 'The little foxes that spoil the vines.' These little 
 foxes were our small vices or weaknesses. Why did the speaker 
 choose such a point of departure ? I suppose ' the little foxes ' 
 had a simple, childlike sound about it to him, and seemed as 
 though it would be easily a point of interest to little children. 
 Perhaps it was, in so far as it aroused their curiosity. Whatever 
 the children got out of the address, they got in spite of, rather 
 than because of, the point of departure, which was not a point 
 of contact with common experience. To very few children does 
 a fox exist in more than name, if that ; and the propensity of 
 foxes for spoiling vines is one that they could not appreciate un- 
 less they had lived in a country where they had actually seen 
 this kind of destruction wrought, or heard it talked about until 
 it became a familiar fact." * 
 
 (2) Illustrations should be natural, spontaneous and to the point. 
 Stories that impress one as being lugged in to keep things lively, 
 figures that are strained and artificial, have no place. Illustration is 
 not an end in itself, neither is it for sake of ornament. It is to help 
 the pupil understand. If it does not really help, or is not needed, 
 better cut it out. 
 
 (3) It is a mistake to use too many illustrations. Just enough to 
 make the point clear and impress it strongly is the rule. And one 
 illustration to a single point, if it be well chosen, is generally enough. 
 If more be used, they are apt to confuse. On the other hand, care 
 must be taken not to use the same illustration always for a given point, 
 lest the pupil's conception of the truth be narrowed and distorted by 
 constant association with one particular instance. 
 
 (4) The illustration should not be incongruous. It should not be 
 more unlike than like the truth it is meant to picture. I once heard an 
 evangelist speak of the "knock-out blow" that Christ gave to the 
 church at Ephesus when He wrote to them through John : " Never- 
 theless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first 
 love." And he was not content to leave it a metaphor ; he made it a 
 
 * Du Bois: " The Point of Contact in Teaching" p. 85. 
 
180 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 story, and launched into a vivid description of a certain disgusting 
 prize-fight which had taken place a few months before, picturing how 
 all that the beaten fighter had done through round after round was of 
 no avail against that one blow that finally knocked him out. 
 
 (5) The illustration should not be too suggestive. It is but a window 
 through which the truth is to shine. If it attracts attention to itself, it 
 distracts the mind and clouds the vision. Some illustrations are too 
 vivid and interesting. They start new and inviting trains of thought, 
 and the pupil is soon far from the lesson. 
 
 "A mission [Sunday school was listening to a talk upon the 
 fixedness of habits formed in youth, and to make it clearer the 
 speaker said, ' Boys, do they ever lay cement walks in this 
 neighborhood ? ' Every eye was riveted on him, as they ans- 
 wered, 'Yes!' 'Did you know,' he continued, 'that if you 
 were to take a sharp-pointed stick and write your name in the 
 cement while it was soft, it would harden and remain there as 
 long as the walk lasted?' 'Of course,' he hastily added, as a 
 significant expression appeared on their faces, 'no boy here 
 would be mean enough to do such a thing;' but it was too late 
 — the picture had done its work, and the purpose of handing 
 autographs down to posterity would be executed at the first 
 opportunity." * 
 
 4. How to tell a story. There are two standpoints from which we 
 may judge a story. We may inquire, first, whether it is well told or 
 worth telling, just as a story, to be enjoyed ; second, whether it teaches 
 anything or drives home a moral. As Sunday school teachers, we think 
 of stories generally from the second of these standpoints, and it is our 
 vice to neglect the first. But the truth is, that the teaching value of a 
 story depends upon its enjoyment value. If it is not worth telling just 
 as a story, or if it is poorly told, it will not fulfill its purpose as a bit of 
 teaching. 
 
 A good story is, as Miss Bryant reminds us, a work of art.f It ex- 
 ists, primarily, to be enjoyed. Its worth is intrinsic. It claims atten- 
 tion for its own sake. We gaze in rapt wonder at a beautiful land- 
 
 * L,amoreaux : " The Unfolding Iyife," pp. 117, 118. 
 
 t Every teacher should be familiar with Miss Bryant's book on "How to Tell 
 Stories to Children." Its title is too narrow. It really tells how to tell stories to 
 anybody. The teacher of an adult class, who uses stories only for illustration, 
 may profit from it as much as the teacher of children who must present every 
 lesson in story form. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : METHODS 161 
 
 scape or a great picture, not for the sake of what we ultimately hope 
 to get from either ; but simply because its beauty entrances our souls. 
 So children and men alike love a good story, not because they seek 
 from it an ulterior benefit, but because it fires the imagination and 
 moves the feelings. Like landscape and picture, it has an appeal of 
 its own. It just naturally grips us, we know not how or why. 
 
 The teaching value of a well told story is thus indirect. The pupil 
 gives himself up to its enjoyment. Like a bit of play, it relaxes the 
 tension of the classroom. There is no effort needed to hold the 
 attention ; the story grips his interest, and he surrenders to it without 
 reserve. It brings before him a mental picture, and stirs the heart 
 within him. But at the end he has gotten more than a mere picture, 
 and experienced what is deeper than an idle play of feeling — he has 
 gained a concrete impression of the truth and has felt its power. Sir 
 Joshua Fitch has brought this out admirably in his description of how 
 Nathan taught David the greatest lesson of his life. 
 
 ''When Nathan was commissioned to reprove David, you 
 know that if he had gone at once, and taxed him with the 
 offence, and said, ' You have committed a great sin, and I have 
 come to rebuke you,' David would probably have been prepared 
 with some answer. That was a form of accusation which he very 
 likely anticipated, and we do not doubt he had so armed him- 
 self with pleas of self-justification, and so skillfully 'managed' 
 his conscience, that the charge would scarcely have impressed 
 him at all. But instead of this, the prophet began to tell 
 him a narrative : ' There were two men in one city, the one 
 rich and the other poor.' He went on further, as you know, 
 detailing the various incidents of his story, until 'David's anger 
 was greatly kindled against the man,' and he exclaimed, 'As 
 the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely 
 die.' Not till the solemn. words, 'Thou art the man ! ' had been 
 uttered in his hearing, did the conviction come thoroughly home 
 to his heart that he was really guilty. Now, why was it that 
 Nathan's method was so effective ? Because David had listened 
 with interest to the story without supposing that it concerned him. 
 His judgment was clear and unbiased, and he came to the right 
 conclusion before he perceived that the conclusion applied to 
 himself. How much deeper and more permanent was the im- 
 pression thus made than if the prophet had confined himself to 
 a plain, literal examination of the right and wrong of David's 
 own case. And we may see the same thing illustrated in our 
 
 11 
 
1(i2 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIEvS 
 
 Lord's parables constantly, that they not only chain the atten- 
 tion of the listener by their pictorial character, but they set him 
 thinking for himself, and drawing inferences about truths of the 
 highest value almost without being aware of it. The most effect- 
 ive lessons which enter the human heart are not those which take 
 the form of lessons. It is when we are least conscious of the 
 process by which we are impressed that we are impressed most 
 deeply. ' ' * 
 
 We now see the truth in President Hall's statement, before quoted, 
 that story-telling is the most important of all things that a teacher 
 should know how to do. It is a thing, moreover, that every teacher 
 can learn to do. We are mistaken if we assume that the story-teller's 
 gift is all inborn, and not to be cultivated. 
 
 ( i) To tell a story well one must prepare and practice it. There are 
 times, of course, when the inspiration of the moment gives both vision 
 and power of expression. But he who relies upon such inspiration 
 will miserably fail. Here, as everywhere, the secret of success is 
 work. 
 
 ( 2 ) To tell a story well, one must first possess it and make it a very 
 part of himself. He must possess it in imagination. He must really 
 see the thing he hopes to make others see. He must possess it logic- 
 ally — grasping its point, and holding its details in right relation. He 
 must possess it in feeling — putting his heart into the situation he de- 
 scribes. It is worse than useless to tell a story that you do not your- 
 self appreciate and enjoy, or to try to move others to a sympathy you 
 do not feel. 
 
 (3) Reduce the story to its simplest terms. Find the main plot, and 
 let everything else go. Eliminate rigidly all unnecessary details, irrel- 
 evant incidents and secondary characters. Then tell the story in direct 
 and simple language, and in terms of action rather than of description. 
 "Tell what was done, not how somebody felt or thought when some- 
 thing was being done. . . . Those of us who have grown away from 
 childhood tend to reverse the true order, to place the emphasis on the 
 question, ' What kind of a man was he ? ' and not on ' What did he 
 do ? ' Let what he did tell what he was. Your story will thus have 
 'go,' as all Bible stories have." f 
 
 (4) Maintain logical unity and movement. Nothing spoils a story so 
 utterly as a confusion of points of view, or the failure to get some point 
 
 * Fitch : " The Art of Securing Attention," pp. 107, 108. Italics not in the original, 
 f Hervey : " Picture- Work,'' p. 41. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : METHODS 163 
 
 in at its rightful place, then backing up later to supply it. No story- 
 teller Ought ever to be obliged to stop and say, " Oh ! I forgot to tell 
 you that—." 
 
 (5) Use direct discourse. When you tell what somebody said use 
 the first person instead of the third. Note the confusion and obscurity 
 of the indirect form of telling the story of the Good Samaritan : "And 
 then when he left he gave the innkeeper some money, and told hint to 
 take care of him, and that if he spent any more for him, he would 
 repay him." 
 
 (6) Put your whole self into the tetling. This is the hard thing for 
 most people. The difference between a good story-teller and a poor 
 one is most often a difference of temperament. The first naturally and 
 spontaneously expresses what he feels ; the second is ashamed and 
 afraid to let himself go. The one is naturally dramatic ; the other 
 diffident and reserved. To tell a story well, you must really act it out, 
 in changes of voice inflection, in expression of eyes and feature, in 
 quiet gesture. Anything more than this, however, is out of place, 
 and but calls attention to the incongruity of the present situation with 
 that which the teller is attempting too realistically to portray. 
 
 "To all who are not by nature bodily expressive I would re- 
 iterate the injunction— not to pretend. Do nothing you cannot 
 do naturally and happily. But lay your stress on the inner and 
 spiritual effort to appreciate, to feel, to imagine out the tale ; 
 and let the expressiveness of your body grow gradually with 
 the increasing freedom from crippling self-consciousness. The 
 physique will become more mobile as the emotion does. The 
 expression must, however, always remain suggestive rather 
 than illustrative. This is the side of the case which those who 
 are over-dramatic must not forget. The story-teller is not play- 
 ing the parts of his stories ; he is merely arousing the imagi- 
 nation of his hearers to picture the scenes for themselves." * 
 
 5. Pictures have a threefold value as illustrative material : 
 (a) Sense value. Appealing to the eye as well as to the ear, the 
 teacher is better able to attract the attention and hold the interest of 
 the pupil. The impression through both senses is stronger than 
 through either alone. 
 
 (d) Pact value. Seeing gives more definite knowledge than hear- 
 ing. " I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear ; but now mine 
 eye seeth thee." Pictures help to make Bible scenes real, and give 
 
 * Bryant : " How to Tell Stories to Children," p. 102. 
 
164 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 material to the imagination. The pupil's ideas become more concrete 
 and definite, his mental pictures clearer. 
 
 (c) Ideal vat ue. The pictures of a great artist do more than repre- 
 sent facts ; they present ideals. They give insight into life's spiritual 
 meanings, and uplift the heart to higher levels of feeling. The Sistine 
 Madonna is not a photograph of Jesus and His mother ; but it is 
 more. We do not know whether it reproduces the features of Mary ; 
 but it does what is of infinitely more moment — it reveals to us her 
 spirit. It is the eternal spirit of motherhood, with all its love and joy 
 in suffering, its beauty and dignity. That is no mere picture of a par- 
 ticular person ; it portrays that which is universal to humanity. It is 
 the picture of the Ideal Mother. 
 
 The Sunday school has always used pictures ; but it. has at times 
 relied too exclusively upon the first of these values. It has used such 
 pictures as would appeal to the senses, without sufficient regard for 
 their faithfulness to fact or for their artistic and ideal value. The result 
 has been the common use of great charts or pictures, one for each 
 lesson, crudely drawn and splotched over with garish color. We 
 have now come, however, to see that children are just as ready to 
 enjoy good pictures as poor ones ; and that we need lose nothing of 
 the appeal to the senses by striving as well for the fact and ideal values. 
 It is now possible, moreover, to obtain copies of good pictures so cheaply 
 that there is no excuse for compelling children to look at poor ones. 
 
 (i) The pictures of great artists are worth more than any other, 
 for the reason that they combine all three values. Even a child sees 
 more than faces when he looks at such pictures as Hofmann's " Christ 
 in the Temple with the Doctors," " Christ and the Rich Young Man," 
 and " Christ in Gethsemane." He is able to read the heart beneath. 
 We owe it to our children to bring them into contact with the best 
 pictures as well as with the best books, and to make them able to 
 appreciate the spiritual values of art. No one has a better oppor- 
 tunity to do this than the Sunday school teacher ; and few things that 
 he can do will better quicken and develop the spiritual capacities of 
 the pupil. It is significant how the world's greatest artists have turned 
 to the Bible for their subjects. The life of Christ particularly is well 
 portrayed by modern painters, whose conception of Him is in general 
 better suited to our present ways of thinking than that of many of the 
 old masters. 
 
 (2) Photographs of Palestine as it exists to-day, of its people and 
 their occupations, help very much to make real to pupils the scenes 
 and circumstances of the Bible story. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : METHODS 163 
 
 (3) Stereoscopic views are better yet. Shut off by the hood from 
 the world of here and now, the boy who looks through a stereoscope 
 seems raally transported into Bible lands. The picture stands out in 
 all the perspective of the third dimension, and its figures even seem 
 life-size. 
 
 (4) Any Sunday school that can afford it should have a stereopticon 
 for use in reviews, illustrated lectures, and the like, before the whole 
 school or before a single class at some special meeting. The possi- 
 bilities of such illustration are now greatly increased by the use of 
 reflectors which throw upon the screen a page of any book with its 
 print, diagrams or pictures, just as clearly as the old lantern would 
 a prepared slide. In this way the teacher may make available to the 
 class a great amount of material which they would otherwise never 
 get. 
 
 (5) Schools and colleges are just awaking to the possibilities of 
 moving pictures as an educational instrument. The Sunday school, 
 too, would do well to bring before its pupils now and then moving 
 pictures of the Passion Play, of scenes in the Holy Land of to-day, of 
 scenes illustrating missionary work in foreign lands, and the like. 
 The craze for moving picture shows which has in the past few years 
 spread over the country is but an indication of the interest which 
 pupils are bound to feel in pictures which actually bring life before 
 them. 
 
 6. Objects as illustrative material have both a sense and a fact 
 value. In dealing with young children especially, the appeal to the 
 senses is needed to hold their attention and interest and to make the 
 needed impression. For pupils of all ages, there is great value in 
 objects or models that help to make more real the conditions about 
 which the class is studying. Relics of ancient times or articles from 
 the Palestine of to-day or from mission fields, help to give a definite 
 knowledge that could be gotten in no other way. 
 
 (1) We must carefully distinguish, however, between those objects 
 7uhose relation to the truth we teach is merely symbolic, and those 
 whose relation is real. A Roman coin, an old Greek lamp, models 
 of the temple or of the agricultural implements or clothes of Bible 
 times, a model house to show how Peter could go "up upon the 
 house top to pray," or how a sick man could be let down into a room 
 from the roof — these have a real relation to the truth. From such 
 objects we get both sense and fact values. But to use a crown to 
 illustrate the "crown of life," a magnifying glass to explain Mary's 
 joy as expressed in the Magnificat, a paper pattern and scissors as a 
 
166 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 symbol of Christ our pattern, is to appeal to the senses merely, and 
 to run grave risk of a misapprehension of the truth. There is always 
 danger that children will not understand our figures of speech ; and 
 we more than double the danger when we present the figure in object 
 form, because of the greater strength with which the object itself will 
 enchain their interest and attention and tie their minds down to its 
 literal presence and quality.* 
 
 (2) If symbolic objects be used as illustrations — and there are doubt- 
 less times when it is well to use them, despite the danger involved — 
 they must conform to the general principles of effective illustration 
 noted earlier in this chapter. They must be natural, not forced ; they 
 must be more familiar than the truth to be illustrated ; they must not 
 be incongruous or too suggestive. Perhaps the most common of all 
 "object-lessons " is the use of chemicals by which a colorless liquid 
 turns red when another is poured into it, and becomes clear as crystal 
 again when a third is introduced — it all being supposed to illustrate 
 the effect of sin upon the heart and its purification by the love of God. 
 But such a procedure transgresses the most fundamental principle of 
 teaching. The illustration is not more familiar than the truth to be 
 illustrated. It attempts to explain the unknown by the unknown. It 
 is very apt, moreover, to convey to children a wrong implication — 
 that the operation of God's Spirit is as instantaneous and magical in 
 its character as the change in the liquid appears to them. 
 
 (3) The use of symbolic objects takes time and compels a more or 
 less definite centering of the whole lesson about them. Such an illus- 
 tration is much less economical than one that is verbal. There is 
 always the danger that the illustration may become an end in itself 
 rather than a means. 
 
 (4) There is a datiger that object teaching may degrade the inter- 
 ests of the children by holding them to a sense plane. Children who 
 have been taught too exclusively by objects become incapable of 
 appreciating anything else. They will always demand "something 
 interesting," else they will not give attention. 
 
 "It had seemed to Miss Bessie advisable that the 'children 
 should know something of the world on which they live,' and 
 for purposes of instruction she had selected a geyser and a vol- 
 cano as important— not to say interesting— features of land 
 structure. By means of a rubber ball with a hole in it, artfully 
 
 * See the address by Miss Williams, quoted in Du Bois' " Point of Contact in 
 Teaching," pp. 95-99, from which several of the examples used above are taken. 
 Note also what was said about the child's symbolism iu Wesson III. of this book. 
 
ATTENTION AND APPERCEPTION : METHODS 167 
 
 concealed in a pile of sand, she had created a geyser, and with 
 a bit of cotton soaked in alcohol and lighted she had simulated 
 a volcano. We began our work with geography in ignorance 
 of these facts After a few lessons on hills, mountains, islands, 
 capes and bays, the children informed us that they 'didn't like 
 those old things.' ■ Please, won't you give us the fireworks ? 
 asked Freddie. ' Or the squirt ? ' added Agnes eagerly. 
 7 The blackboard is a very important help, which has been much 
 misunderstood and misused. Teachers have often seemed to regard 
 it as the puzzle department of the Sunday school. The real puzzle is 
 to understand how the custom ever got started of attempting to teach 
 religious truths by a jumble of symbols, alliterative enigmas and 
 
 The 'true use of the blackboard is "free, living and personal.^ 
 A rapid descriptive sketch, an outline map or diagram, an important 
 word or principle written as well as spoken-such is true blackboard 
 illustration, done as the teacher talks, reinforcing the impression of 
 ear with that of eye. If possible, every class should have its own 
 blackboard ; for it is as a help in actual teaching that it is most needed 
 —not merely for announcement, review or ornament. 
 
 * Carter : " The Kindergarten Child-After the Kindergarten," Atlantic Monthly 
 
 March, 1899. 
 t Hervey : " Picture Work," p. 85. 
 
168 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. Why should there be continuity in teaching ? 
 
 2. Why should the teacher study the whole of a series of lessons 
 before he begins to teach them ? 
 
 3. What are the advantages of correlation of the Sunday school 
 lessons with the rest of the pupil's education ? What are the dangers 
 to be guarded against in such correlation ? 
 
 4. Discuss the principles of effective illustration — brought out in 
 this chapter. 
 
 5. What difficulty do we meet in, using the illustrations of the Bible 
 itself ? 
 
 6. When is an illustration incongruous ? When too suggestive ? 
 
 7. What is meant by the statement that the teaching value of the 
 story is indirect ? Why is this true ? 
 
 8. What are the principles of good story telling set down in this 
 chapter ? 
 
 9. What values do pictures have as illustrative material ? 
 
 10. What sorts of pictures are usable in the Sunday school ? Discuss 
 the value of each. 
 
 11. What are the advantages of object teaching? What dangers 
 must be guarded against ? 
 
 12. What is the distinction between objects whose relation to the 
 truth is symbolic and those whose relation is real ? 
 
 13. Discuss the proper use of the blackboard. 
 
LESSON XVIII 
 Questions 
 
 There is one other qualification of a teacher quite as important as 
 to be able to tell a story — to know how to ask questions. By stories 
 and other illustrative material the teacher may present the truth 
 clearly and vividly, and appeal to interest and imagination, to feeling 
 and action ; but it is by questions that he stirs his pupils to think it 
 over for themselves, to digest and assimilate it and to make it a per- 
 manent mental possession. If the story is the most effective means of 
 presentation, the question is the great instrument of association. It is 
 the means by which the teacher arouses the pupil himself to mental 
 activity. 
 
 I. Kinds of questions. Questions may best be classified accord- 
 ing to the use to which they are put. We may distinguish six kinds : 
 
 (i) Preparatioii questions — those used in the step of preparation. 
 They aim [a) to bring up within the pupil's mind such ideas as he 
 may already possess concerning the truth to be taught, or such as will 
 enable him rightly to apprehend it ; (b) to make him feel the need of 
 more knowledge, and so to arouse his interest and give a motive for 
 the work of the hour.* 
 
 (2) Recitation questions seek to test the pupil's mastery of the 
 material assigned for study and to bring out clearly its essential facts. t 
 
 (3) Development questions seek to lead the pupil to think about the 
 facts he has learned, to inquire into their relations and values, to infer 
 from them other facts and truths, and to form ideas and judgments of 
 his own. This is pre-eminently the question of the discussion method. 
 It deals with the organization of lacts.J 
 
 (4) Review questions have a twofold aim : (a) to freshen and 
 strengthen impressions already made ; {b) to organize them into a 
 larger mental whole. 
 
 (5) Examination questions should serve (a) as a test of the pupil's 
 knowledge ; (b) as a motive to its better organization. 
 
 * See the discussion of the step of preparation, Wesson XIV., Section 5. 
 fSee what was said about the recitation method in Wesson XIII., Section 2. 
 X See the treatment of the discussion method in Wesson XIII., Section 3, and of 
 the step of association in Wesson XIV., Section 4. 
 
 (169) 
 
170 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 (6) Personal questions are those that make a direct appeal to the 
 will, search the heart and arouse the conscience. Many of Jesus' 
 questions were such : " But who say ye that I am?" " Simon, son 
 of John, lovest thou me ? ' ' 
 
 2. How to ask questions. Questioning is an art, and like all arts 
 can be but imperfectly embodied in rules. Yet there are certain 
 general characteristics of good questions that may be set down.* 
 
 (i) The question should be clear and definite. It should ask 
 only one thing, and that so directly that there is no chance of mis- 
 take. 
 
 (a) Avoid technical expressions and big words ; as, What are the 
 conditions of sanctification, and how does it differ from regeneration ? 
 Does the divinity of Jesus imply His impeccability? In the Sunday 
 school at least, we need to get away from artificial and technical 
 terminology. If religion means to us what it ought, we can express 
 it in the same language that we use for common, every-day matters. 
 That is what Jesus did. " The common people heard Him gladly." 
 He always drew the materials for his teaching from the life about 
 Him. And the apostles and evangelists followed His example. In 
 late years scholars have found out that many Greek words which were 
 cnce supposed to be peculiar to the New Testament, belonged in fact 
 to the language of the common people, the colloquial Greek of the 
 day.t The Bible was written so that the ordinary man could under- 
 stand it. 
 
 (b) Avoid figures of speech, unless the question itself deal with 
 their explanation. Use the most simple and direct statement possible. 
 Do you think the penitent thief will be present at the marriage supper 
 of the Lamb? In what sort of ground did Paul sow the seed at 
 Corinth? — are examples of questions made less definite than they 
 might be, because a figure of speech is used to express what could be 
 put in literal terms. We make it worse, of course, if we mix figures ; 
 as, How does the Good Shepherd wash away sin ? 
 
 (c) Do not ask questions that are vague because they admit of many 
 answers. A teacher once asked, "What must we do before our sins 
 can be forgiven? " — and a little girl replied quite correctly, "We must 
 
 * The art of questioning has been well treated by Sir Joshua Fitch in the "Art 
 of Questioning," and by Professor De Garmo, in chapter xiv. of "Interest and 
 Education." We can do little more than attempt to apply to our specific purpose 
 the principles they have brought out. De Garmo's very concrete discussion is of 
 especial value. 
 
 t Deissmann : " I^ight from the Ancient East," pp. 54-142. See also Hastings' 
 Dictionary of the Bible, article on " language of the New Testament." 
 
QUESTIONS 171 
 
 sin first." Such a question as How did Saul treat David? needs 
 qualification. Put thus, it might be answered in many ways : Made 
 him court minstrel, appointed him armor-bearer, gave him his 
 daughter in marriage, grew jealous of him, tried to kill him, drove 
 him into outlawry, swore to a covenant with him at En-gedi. 
 
 (d) Avoid double questions. These may be of various sorts. The 
 least objectionable are those which unite two questions^ each of which 
 is in itself legitimate ; as, Of whom did Saul become jealous, and 
 why ? Ask both questions, but ask one at a time. A more serious 
 fault is the assumption as premise of that which is itself questionable ; 
 as, Why cannot a man sin who lets Christ enter his heart ? Why did 
 Paul fail at Athens ? There are prior questions here : Does faith in 
 Christ make it impossible for a man to sin ? Did Paul fail at Athens? 
 Ask these first ; then the others may rightly follow. The poorest of 
 all questions are those which ask so much that they give an inadequate 
 clue as to what is asked. Examples are : Who killed a thousand men 
 with what strange weapon ? Who, in to-day's lesson, was coming into 
 what city, and how ? These are not questions ; they are conundrums. 
 Yet interrogations of this sort are by no means uncommon. Professor 
 De Garmo quotes this from a list of examination questions, actually 
 used in a secondary school : " Who chased whom around the walls of 
 what?"* 
 
 (^) Do not confuse the pupil by a multitude of words, by auxiliary 
 clauses and parenthetical explanations. Example : Do you think that 
 in the days of the Judges, when as you know there was no king, and 
 the Bible says that " every man did that which was right in his own 
 eyes," the Levitical code was in force or any centralized worship 
 observed, such as that of the tabernacle is reported to have been in 
 the days of Moses, and that of the temple became in the later king- 
 dom, especially in view of the fact that Gideon is said to have set up 
 an image in his own house (you will remember, too, how Micah hired 
 a private priest, and the Danites stole both his image and his priest, 
 and also that Jephthah offered his own daughter as a sacrifice, though 
 the sacrifice of children is forbidden both in Leviticus and in Deuter- 
 onomy) ? Under this head may be included also the habit referred 
 to in the last chapter, of attempting to put life into the teaching by 
 superfluous remarks and playful familiarity. Nowhere is this more 
 out of place than in asking questions. 
 
 (f) A common source of vagueness is the use, zuithout qualification, 
 of general and indefinite verbs, such as have, do, be, become, happen. 
 
 * De Garmo : " Interest and Education," p. 183. 
 
172 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 Examples : What happens when you tell a lie ? What do you do when 
 you go to bed ? What did Abel have that Cain did not ? What is the 
 new name that is promised to him that overcometh ? What do we 
 become when we are baptized ? 
 
 (2) The question should be so put as to stimulate real thought. 
 The pupil should be compelled to go to his ideas for the answer. 
 
 (a) Avoid questio7is that suggest the answer in any such way that 
 it comes as the result of the merely mechanical working of the laws 
 of association. 
 
 Yes-and-no questions are usually to be avoided for this reason, 
 though they are sometimes perfectly legitimate. The test is — do they 
 make the pupil think ? 
 
 "Nineteen such questions out of twenty carry their own an- 
 swers in them ; for it is almost impossible to propose one with- 
 out revealing, by the tone and inflection of the voice, the kind 
 of answer you expect. For example : Is it right to honor our 
 parents ? Did Abraham show much faith when he offered up 
 his son ? Do you think the author of the Psalms was a good 
 man ? Were the Pharisees really lovers of truth ? Questions 
 like these elicit no thought whatever ; there are but two possi- 
 ble answers to each of them, and of these I am sure to show, 
 by my manner of putting the question, which one I expect. 
 Such questions should therefore, as a general rule, be avoided, 
 as they seldom serve any useful purpose, either in teaching or 
 examining. For every question, it must be remembered, ought 
 to require an effort to answer it ; it may be an effort of memory, 
 or an effort of imagination, or an effort of judgment, or an effort 
 of perception ; it may be a considerable effort or it may be a 
 slight one ; but it must be an effort; and a question which chal- 
 lenges no mental exertion whatever, and does not make the 
 learner think, is worth nothing."* 
 
 "Pumping" questions appeal to mere mechanical memory or to 
 guessing. Example : James and John were — ? Brothers. . And they 
 were sons of — ? Thunder. No, they were called that ; but they were 
 really the sons of Z — ? Zacchasus. No, Zeb— ? Zebedee. 
 
 When two or more words go together to form one idea, they should 
 not be broken apart, putting one in the question to suggest the other 
 in the answer. Examples : What did Samuel offer when he went to 
 Jesse's home? Sacrifice. What did Jesus cast out ? Demons. What 
 
 * Fitch: " The Art of Questioning," pp. 68, 69. 
 
QUESTIONS 173 
 
 did Jesus break with His disciples i Bread. What did He give first ? 
 Thanks. 
 
 The question should not be asked in the same words that were used 
 for the original presentation of the truth asked for ; nor should the 
 teacher ever be content to get back an answer in the same words that 
 he used to impart it. Such an exercise proves that the pupil caught 
 the words of the teaching, but it does not show that he got the idea. 
 Put the question in terms that cannot subconsciously suggest the 
 words needed to meet it ; insist that the pupil answer in language of 
 his own. One application of this principle must be made explicit. Do 
 not use the words of Scripture in your questions. Sir Joshua Fitch 
 gives so good an illustration that we must quote it at length : 
 
 (i A certain man went down front Jerusalem to Jericho, arid fell 
 among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded 
 him, and departed, leaving him half dead. Some teachers 
 would proceed to question thus : Who is this parable about ? A 
 certain man. Where did he go from ? Jerusalem. Where to? 
 Jericho. What sort of people did he fall among ? Thieves. 
 What did they do with his raiment ? Stripped him of it. What 
 did they do with the man himself ? Wounded him. In what 
 state did they leave him ? Half dead. Observe here that the 
 teacher has covered the whole area of the narrative, and pro- 
 posed a question on every fact ; so far he has done well. But it 
 is to be noticed that every question was proposed as nearly as 
 possible in the words of the book, and required for its answer 
 one (generally but one) of those words. Now it is very easy 
 for a boy or girl, while the echoes of the Bible narrative just 
 read still linger in the ear, to answer every such question by rote 
 merely, with scarcely any effort of memory, and no effort of 
 thought whatever. . . . Let us go over the same subject 
 again, first introducing it by one or two preliminary questions ; 
 for example : Who used these words ? To whom were they 
 spoken ? Why were they uttered ? Repeat the question which 
 the lawyer asked. What is the parable about? A man who 
 zvent on a journey. What do you call a man who goes on a jour- 
 ney ? A traveler. In what country was the man traveling ? 
 Judea. Let us trace his route on the map. In what direction 
 was he traveling? Eastward. Through what kind of country? 
 (Here the teacher's own information should supply a fact or 
 two about its physical features.) What should you suppose 
 
174 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING vSERIES 
 
 from the lesson was the state of the country at that time? 
 Thinly peopled ; road unfrequented y etc. How do you know 
 this? Because he fell amo)ig thieves. Give another expression 
 for ' fell among. ' Happened to meet with. Another word for 
 'thieves.' Robbers. How did the robbers treat this traveler ? 
 They stripped him of his raiment. What does the word ' rai- 
 ment' mean ? Clothes. Besides robbing him of his clothes, 
 what else did they do? Wounded him. Explain that word. 
 Injured him ; hurt him very much, etc. How do you know 
 from the text that he was much hurt ? They left him half dead. 
 They almost killed him. Now observe here that the aim has 
 been twofold. First, not to suggest the answer by the form of 
 the question. Hence another sort of language has been adopted, 
 and the children have therefore been made to interpret the Bib- 
 lical language into that of ordinary life. Secondly, not to be 
 satisfied with single words as answers, especially with the par- 
 ticular word which is contained in the narrative itself, but always 
 to translate it into one more familiar. ' ' * 
 
 (b) Be careful not to encourage guessing. Questions that suggest 
 their own answers are one extreme ; questions so vague that the 
 answer must be guessed at are the other. Either is destructive of real 
 thought. Look carefully to the form of the question. Make it perfectly 
 definite and unequivocal. It should permit of but one correct answer. 
 Yet if that answer be not forthcoming, it is idle to keep putting the 
 question in the hope that repetition may coax it out. And it is worse 
 than idle to reject an answer that is honest and partly right, just be- 
 cause it does not chance to be the one of which you are thinking. 
 Teachers exist who have been known to say, "Yes, you are right ; 
 but it is not the answer that I have in mind." " Yes, that is true ; but 
 it is not what I meant." Pupils are not mind readers. Make your 
 question express what you mean ; do not compel them to guess at it. 
 The class so treated will soon get into the habit, when a question is 
 asked, of wondering what the teacher wants them to say, instead of 
 trying to answer what he .really does ask. And when that state has 
 been reached, the teacher had better quit questioning and examine 
 himself. 
 
 We dare never forget that we ask questions, not just for sake of 
 getting correct answers, but for sake of leading the pupil to think, to 
 know and understand the truth. A wrong answer is often more useful 
 
 * Fitch : "The Art of Questioning," pp. 63-65. 
 
QUESTIONS 175 
 
 than a right one. If it reveals the pupil's real thought about the 
 matter in hand, and so shows us his misconception of the truth, it is of 
 far more value than a perfectly correct guess or veneer of memory. It 
 enables us to diagnose the case. It gives us insight into the pupil's 
 need, and we can set to work to meet it. 
 
 (c) Give the pupil a chance to think for himself . Let him answer 
 questions in his own way. 
 
 " One should refrain from tripping the pupil with disconcert- 
 ing questions. A race over obstacles may be diverting, but it 
 does not conduce to steady advance. It is even better to per- 
 mit the pupil to blunder through to the end of his recitation than 
 to interrupt him perpetually with questions calculated to obstruct 
 the current of his thought. Sometimes teachers are so impatient 
 to obtain immediate results that they find it impossible to 
 wait."* 
 
 Such over-questioning defeats its own end. It takes away the pupil's 
 self-activity. It weakens his power of thought and expression. It 
 makes him dependent upon the continual stimulus of questions. 
 
 (3) Questions should deal with essentials. For sake of per- 
 spective, do not ask for unimportant details. To ask a question 
 emphasizes the thing asked for. It becomes the center of thought for 
 the moment. It gets impressed upon the pupil's mind and acquires 
 dignity and importance in his eyes. It is one of the chief functions of 
 the question, therefore, to direct attention to the salient facts of the 
 lesson and to guide the thought of the pupil to its essential truths. 
 
 The question itself, moreover, should have apperceptive and associ- 
 ative value. The question and its answer should be worth putting 
 together. It is possible to ask about an important fact in a very unim- 
 portant way. For example : What did Jesus do next? What truth do 
 we find in the next verse? What story did Jesus tell in to-day's 
 lesson ? What miracle was performed in last Sunday's lesson ? What 
 important truth does the editor bring out in the practical suggestions 
 at the bottom of the page ? Such questions as these are formal and 
 meaningless. The facts they point toward may be of vital impor- 
 tance ; but what they actually ask about those facts is not worth men- 
 tioning, much less remembering. 
 
 The fitting together of question and answer is a golden opportunity 
 to make an association. Interest is alert, attention centered upon its 
 problem, the mind active. It is the time to put together the things we 
 
 * De Garmo : "Interest and Education," p. 203. 
 
176 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 would have stay together in the pupil's mind. But no teacher is fool- 
 ish enough to want his pupils to hold the idea of "to-day's lesson " in 
 memory together with the story of the Good Samaritan, or to preserve 
 the thought that it was on the bottom of the page that a certain truth 
 was brought out. He is wasting energy, therefore, and missing op- 
 portunities, to put such questions at all. 
 
 Question and answer should be parts of a single whole of meaning. 
 They should be worth putting together and keeping together. The 
 question should supply the one term, the answer the other, of an asso- 
 ciation that has permanent value. What did Jesus do when He saw 
 that His disciples would not wash one another's feet ? What story did 
 He tell when a lawyer asked Him whom to consider a neighbor? 
 What miracle did He perform at a wedding in Canaof Galilee? What 
 great truth does the story of the Sower bring^ out ? — are forms that 
 have associative value. 
 
 (4) Questions should be put in logical order. This is only to 
 say that each should fall into its place in the development of the les- 
 son. All that has been said concerning the necessity of a lesson plan 
 applies as well to the questions a teacher asks, as to the truths he 
 means to bring out or the illustrative material he uses. Each question 
 should grow out of what went before it, and lead up to what comes 
 after. The whole should issue in a coherent presentation of the truth. 
 It is harder to keep to the point, of course, when questions are asked 
 and the discussion of the hour is live and generally cooperative, than 
 it would be if the teacher were to do all the work and simply deliver a 
 carefully prepared lecture. But it can be done. 
 
 (5) Questions should be so put as to keep the whole class in- 
 terested and at work. Aside from their content, this depends upon 
 a few simple rules of method : 
 
 (a) Do not rely upon concert answers. It is one of the surest ways 
 not to keep the whole class at work. You must bring the questions 
 home individually. Call upon particular pupils to answer. 
 
 {b) Ask the question first, then call upon the one who is to answer. 
 Each member of the class should feel that the question is addressed to 
 him, since he may be called upon to answer it. 
 
 (c) Call upon particular pupils several times i?i the course of a single 
 recitation. Do not let a pupil feel that after he has answered his 
 question, made his report or discussed his topic, his work is over for 
 the day. 
 
 {d) Do not repeat a question if the pupil failed to understand it be- 
 cause of inattention. Go to another for the answer. Even if the 
 
QUESTIONS 177 
 
 failure is due to inability to understand its meaning, it is best to let 
 someone else answer ; then recast and explain it if necessary. 
 
 (e) Do not repeat the pupil's answer. The class should be trained 
 to pay as careful attention to one another's answers as to the teacher's 
 questions and explanations. 
 
 {/) Do not get into the habit of calling most often upon your best 
 pupils, and letting the weaker sit idle. We face a dilemma here. The 
 weaker pupils need the questions most ; yet when we call upon them 
 the class hour drags and the discussion loses its interest. We need 
 the help of the brighter pupils to keep things moving, and they de- 
 serve the chance to contribute to the development of the truth ; yet we 
 must not neglect the weaker. 
 
 (g) Do not let pupils get into the habit of failing to ansiver your 
 questions, and become content to fail. Never give one up, or let him 
 feel that his case is hopeless. Keep at him till you find a "point of 
 contact." Your work is, like that of any teacher, individual. You 
 ought never be content with only the ninety and nine. 
 
 (6) The questions should maintain the social motive of the 
 hour. We have seen that the ideal method of teaching is cooperative,* 
 and that the pupil's expression of that which is within him depends 
 upon the social situation in which he finds himself. f In the next 
 chapter we shall consider the class as a social institution. There is 
 need here only to mention the bearing of this social motive upon 
 questions. 
 
 {a) Asking and answering questions should be no formal or arti- 
 ficial exercise. It should express///*' natural give and take of social 
 cooperation in the discovery and discussion of the truth. It follows that 
 you ought to do all you can to encourage freedom of thought and ex- 
 pression. You will respect the pupil's answers, if they be sincere. 
 You will not meet with ridicule or impatient sarcasm the blunders of a 
 boy who is really trying. You will recognize, moreover, that pupils 
 too have a right to ask questions, and will do your best honestly and 
 squarely to meet their difficulties. 
 
 {b) To ask questions from a printed list in the text-book, or even to 
 read off questions that you have yourself prepared, is to fail unpardon- 
 ably. You ought to be able to look into the eyes of your pupils, and 
 to talk with them as a man with his friends. This does not mean that 
 you need not prepare questions. You ought to study carefully, not 
 simply the lesson itself, but how best to question your class about it. 
 
 * I y esson XIII., Sections 2, 3 and 4. 
 t Wesson XV., Section 1. 
 
 12 
 
178 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 And it is well to write out some of the questions, that you may get 
 them clearly in mind. But all this must be done beforehand. Leave 
 your notes behind when you come to the class. Let no paper come 
 between you and your pupils. Better to make a few mistakes in the 
 course of teaching that is live and personal than to be faultlessly 
 logical because mechanical. 
 
 (c) The social motive gives us a concrete test for the application of 
 our rules. Like all others, they have exceptions. " It is too much to 
 demand a complete sentence for every answer, for what is good form 
 in social intercourse is not bad form in the school-room."* Not all 
 yes-and-no questions are illegitimate. The test is always, are we 
 maintaining a real exchange of ideas, and giving expression to them 
 in genuine social ways ? 
 
 3. Reviews. All Sunday schools have review Sundays ; but not 
 nearly all teachers know how to use them. The common mistake is 
 to use the review simply to refresh the pupil's memory. But mere 
 repetition is not review. It is for the sake of organization and per- 
 spective that we look back over the lessons of a series. The pupil, 
 having gotten the whole, is now able to see the parts in right relation. 
 He can now understand the bearing of particular events and lessons 
 upon one another, and is prepared to unify and systematize his ideas. 
 
 Any method of review that will accomplish this work of organization 
 is legitimate. It will not be accomplished by a mere recital of the title, 
 golden text, chief events and ' ' central truth ' ' of each lesson in turn. 
 It may be by a talk by teacher or superintendent, illustrated by black- 
 board, stereopticon or pictures. It may be by assigning questions or 
 topics to pupils, and discussing their reports. It may be by getting 
 pupils to make out their own outline of the series, or to write a short 
 history of the period covered, a little drama representing some of its 
 events, or an essay upon some assigned topic that presupposes an 
 intelligent knowledge of the whole. It may be by giving them an 
 examination. The ingenuity of the teacher will devise a hundred 
 ways to engage the interest of his class in a review, if only he once 
 gets the idea that it is for organization rather than for repetition. In- 
 deed, if the teacher has rightly used the principle of continuity through- 
 out the series, there is no line to be drawn between the methods of 
 every lesson and those of review. The review simply completes the 
 work which he has been trying to do every Sunday. 
 
 4. Examinations are so much misunderstood and misused in public 
 school and college that most teachers do not even think of their use in 
 
 * De Garmo : " Interest and Education," p. 193. 
 
QUESTIONS 179 
 
 the Sunday school. Their function is conceived to be that merely of • 
 testing the pupil's knowledge. But if this were their only value, they 
 might well be dispensed with. Any teacher can tell without them 
 what progress his pupil has been making, what work he is prepared 
 to do next, and so whether he deserves promotion. If a teacher 
 cannot, there is something wrong with him. 
 
 The true function of the examination, like that of the review, is the 
 organization of the pupil's knozuledge. The examination is given, not 
 for the teacher's sake, but for the pupil's. It supplies a motive for 
 thorough work and a stimulus to final organization, that can be 
 secured in no other way. And if the examination questions be rightly 
 put, they in themselves constitute points of view which almost compel 
 a true perspective. 
 
 "The function of the examination as a test of the pupil's 
 knowledge is not of paramount importance, but its function 
 as an organizing agency of knozuledge is supreme. . . . The 
 virtue of the examination lies in its power to force strenuous 
 mental effort to the task of organizing a large body of facts and 
 principles into a coherent system. This is the standard by 
 which examination questions should be set. They should be 
 large and comprehensive, so formulated that they will bring out 
 and exercise, not the memory for details, but the capacity to 
 grasp large masses of knowledge and weld the separate facts 
 and principles into systematic unities." * 
 
 If this be the function of the written examination, it is as much 
 needed in the Sunday school as in the public school. Indeed, it is 
 more needed. "Just because the public school can use certain 
 methods which are impracticable in the Sunday school for securing 
 faithful work day by day, it could conceivably more easily than the 
 Sunday school dispense with examinations." t 
 
 We need not fear that examinations will be unpopular and drive 
 pupils from school, if we administer them with a degree of common 
 sense. 
 
 " At first, at least, the examination maybe made optional, no 
 pupil being obliged to take them, but all being encouraged to 
 do so. . . . The examination should not cover a long period, 
 probably not to exceed three months, though when the system 
 
 * Bagley ; " The Educative Process," pp. 333, 334. 
 
 t Burton and Mathews : ''Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," p. 158. 
 
180 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 is fairly under way an annual examination might be given for 
 those who are willing to take it. If the lessons call for written 
 work each week, the work thus done week by week should be 
 taken into account in the examination. The quarterly examin- 
 ation should not be a mere test of memory. Its educational 
 purpose should be distinctly kept in mind. If the questions are 
 rightly framed, so as to constitute a real review of the main 
 features of the quarter's work, they may very properly be put 
 into the hands of the pupils on one Sunday, to be returned 
 with the answers a week later, the pupils being instructed to 
 make use of the Bible and any other accessible sources of infor- 
 mation, personal help only being excluded." * 
 
 Examination papers should always be carefully corrected, graded 
 and handed back. Some sort of recognition should be given to those 
 who pass examinations creditably — a list announced or posted, pro- 
 motion to a higher class, a certificate given for each examination 
 passed, or a diploma at the completion of a course covering several 
 years of work. So conducted, examinations will be welcomed by 
 most pupils. And they will help wonderfully to rescue the educational 
 work of the Sunday school from the indefiniteness, lack of motive and 
 low level of intellectual vigor which too often characterize it. 
 
 * Burton and Mathews : " Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," pp. 159, 
 160. 
 
QUESTIONS 181 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. Classifv questions according to the use to which they are put. 
 State the aim of each class of questions. 
 
 2. What six great requirements must good questioning con- 
 form to ? 
 
 3. Why should technical expressions and big words be avoided in 
 putting questions ? 
 
 4. Why should the question contain no figures of speech ? 
 
 5. Illustrate the different forms of double questions. Show why 
 each is objectionable. 
 
 6. What are some of the ways in which a question may wrongly 
 suggest its own answer? 
 
 7. In Fitch's illustration of a lesson about the parable of the Good 
 Samaritan, point out the differences between the right and the wrong 
 way of asking questions. 
 
 8. What are some of the ways in which the teacher may encourage 
 his pupils to guess at answers to his questions ? 
 
 9. What do you understand by the requirement that a question 
 should have apperceptive and associative value ? 
 
 10. Describe some devices of method by which the teacher may 
 retain the interest and attention of the whole class as he asks ques- 
 tions. 
 
 11. Why should the pupil be permitted to ask questions ? 
 
 12. Why is it wrong to ask questions from a printed or written list? 
 
 13. What is the function of the review ? What, then, should be the 
 character of review questions ? 
 
 14. What is the function of the examination ? Discuss the utility 
 and desirability of examinations in the work of the Sunday school. 
 
LESSON XIX 
 The Class as a Social Institution 
 
 Now, as we approach the end of our course of study, it is time to 
 put to ourselves again the question with which we began : What is our 
 aim as Sunday school teachers ? What is the work we are set to do ? 
 We then answered : It is both to instruct and to train our pupils, that 
 zve may help them develop into the right sort of persons. That answer 
 remains true. But it is in itself too general. We are now ready to 
 inquire more particularly into its meaning, and to get a more definite 
 conception of just what it involves. 
 
 Three conceptions of the Sunday school have been held in 
 recent years. They can be no more concretely set forth than in the 
 "Survey of the Present Sunday School World," presented to the sec- 
 ond annual convention of the Religious Education Association : 
 
 " Three ideals seem to dominate the Sunday school world — 
 the social, the educational and the evangelistic. Schools are 
 classified as working under any one of these three, not by the 
 entire absence of the other two, but by their emphasis upon one 
 of these ideals. 
 
 " (i ) The social ideal regards the school as an aggregation of 
 persons, a field for the operation of movements of various kinds 
 that will interest the members. Success is measured by numeri- 
 cal standards. Some of the largest schools in the world belong 
 to this class, though, as a whole, it includes the fewest in num- 
 ber. There is more or less educational and evangelistic work, 
 but these schools are not organized about either of these ideals. 
 The school itself, with its own esprit de corps, is the main 
 thing. 
 
 "(2) The educational ideal claims an increasing number of 
 schools. They are organized with reference to the study of all 
 matters bearing upon the religious and moral welfare of the 
 scholar, according to the most improved modern methods. In- 
 tellectual equipment is here a prime consideration. Into such 
 schools the paid teacher has already made his advent. They 
 strive to profit religiously by the advance of general educational 
 
 (182) 
 
THE CLASS AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION 183 
 
 movements, are found chiefly in centers of intellectual activity, 
 and are officered and instructed by those whose personal inter- 
 est in the educational aspects of religion is very keen. 
 
 "(3) The evangelistic ideal is overwhelmingly ascendant. 
 Its aim is to secure a spiritual experience for the scholar con- 
 forming to the standards of the church with which the school is 
 connected, to lead 'him to the public confession of that experi- 
 ence according to the rites of the church controlling the school, 
 and to train him in the life to which he has thus been intro- 
 duced. Within this ideal there is a varying degree of emphasis 
 on the study of the Bible. In some schools (a) the educational 
 element is reduced to a minimum as an effective factor in the 
 experience sought. The teachers are rather preachers, or 
 dealers in second-hand homiletics. Other energies than the 
 scholar's personal search for Scripture truth are impressed into 
 service. In other schools (b) the strongest emphasis is laid 
 upon the honest study of the Scriptures as the most effective 
 method of bringing the instrument of the Holy Spirit into direct 
 and transforming contact with the life of the scholar. This 
 study is depended upon as the most efficient discipline in help- 
 ing the pupil to realize and enthrone the religious element of his 
 nature. Between these two extremes there are (c) schools that 
 greatly vary in their reliance upon Bible study in its relation to 
 what is commonly called conversion. 
 
 "There are indications that the social, educational and evan- 
 gelistic ideals will be combined with careful regard to their 
 proper relation and proportion in the school of the future. 
 Each asserts an aspect of the school that is real and essential. 
 But the best work can be done only when the ideal is sharply 
 defined." * 
 
 In our study thus far we have laid all emphasis upon the educational 
 ideal and the distinctly educational type of the evangelistic ideal. Our 
 fundamental conviction has been that the Sunday school is a school. t 
 It is now time to correct the seeming one-sidedness of this position. 
 The Sunday school is indeed a social institution and an evangelistic 
 agency, as well as a school. A true interpretation of its educational 
 character must include the social and evangelistic motives. But 
 
 ♦Bitting: " Survey of the Present Sunday School World," Proceedings of the 
 Religious Education Association, 1904, p. 218. 
 fSee Wesson XII., Section 1. 
 
184 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 neither the social nor the evangelistic ideal is rightly conceived in the 
 statement above quoted. Neither is there stated in terms sufficiently 
 objective* This thesis we shall seek to explain and justify in this 
 chapter and the next. In this we shall think of the Sunday school as 
 a social institution, and in the next, of its evangelistic work. 
 
 i. A new social consciousness is characteristic of the life of our 
 day. 
 
 (i) We have come to see that human nature is essentially social. 
 Aristotle said that " man is by nature a political animal" ; Paul, that 
 "none of us liveth to himself." But the conditions of modern life 
 have given to these words a depth of meaning that they could not 
 have for the men of an earlier time. Men were never so interde- 
 pendent as now. The differentiation and specialization of industry, 
 the massing of population in great cities and the ever-closer knitting of 
 interests the world over by commerce and quick communication, 
 make it impossible for one by himself to gain any fullness of life. It is 
 only in association with his fellows that man becomes man. We are 
 indeed ''every one members one of another." 
 
 (2) The conscience of the world has awakened to the duty of 
 social betterment. However true it may be that society is what indi- 
 viduals make it, it is no less true that individuals are what society 
 shapes them to be. Within our own day this thought has become a 
 conviction. It has aroused men to new duties. We are living in the 
 midst of a great ethical revival. We have come to feel moral responsi- 
 bility, not simply for the relief of the poor and sick and oppressed, but 
 for the social conditions that cause poverty and disease and permit in- 
 justice. We are not content merely to heal the consumptive ; we 
 wage war against tuberculosis, the preventable disease. We do not 
 stop with sending nurses to care for the sick babies of the tenements ; 
 we work for sanitary homes, pure milk and public playgrounds. We 
 seek, not merely to save the sinner, but to strike at the roots of the 
 sin ; not merely to reform the criminal, but to prevent his ever being 
 led into crime. These are days when life is indeed worth the living. 
 Human interests have immeasurably widened and deepened within a 
 generation. Opportunities for service to God and to humanity are 
 greater than ever before. The moral horizon has broadened. To the 
 beauty of individual goodness the vision of the Spirit has added the 
 
 * This statement must not be construed as a criticism of Dr. Bitting or his posi- 
 tion. His task, in a " Survey of the Present Sunday School World," was to picture 
 actual conditions ; and his picture is true. Our point is that both the social and 
 the evangelistic ideal ought to be more objectively conceived. 
 
THE CLASS AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION 185 
 
 sweep and perspective of social righteousness. We are beginning to 
 understand what Jesus meant by the kingdom of God. 
 
 (3) Education to-day is socially motived. The last decade has wit- 
 nessed the " socialization of the school." 
 
 {a) The ultimate aim of education is the development of socially 
 efficient men and women.* 
 
 " Education is the fundamental method of social progress and 
 reform. . . . The community's duty to education is, therefore, 
 its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social 
 agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in 
 a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through educa- 
 tion society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its 
 own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definite- 
 ness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. 
 . . . The teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of indi- 
 viduals, but in the formation of the proper social life. ... I be- 
 lieve that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the 
 true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God." t 
 
 (6) The method of education is determined by its social motive. 
 "We learn by doing." Since the school is meant to develop social 
 efficiency and the spirit of helpfulness, its methods must appeal to the 
 social instincts of the pupil. It must find things to do that will enlist 
 his cooperation, and provide social situations that will call forth his 
 latent powers. It must treat him, not as a servant, but as a son. It is 
 this change of atmosphere and method, quite as much as that of sub- 
 ject-matter taught, that differentiates the public school of to-day from 
 that of a generation ago. In place of the more formal of the old 
 studies, there are manual training and domestic science ; instead of 
 the rigid " position" which the teachers of yesterday enforced upon us 
 for sake of health and comeliness, there is the school gymnasium ; and 
 where once the birch rod ruled, there is now pupil self-government. 
 The school has indeed become " a genuine form of active community 
 life," % in which the teacher is no longer despot, but leader and in- 
 spirer. Its atmosphere is that of the home. 
 
 (4) True religion works toward a social end. The prophets were 
 preachers of social righteousness. Jesus' conception of the kingdom 
 of God was that of an ideal social order, wherein men fulfill their son- 
 
 *See Bagley : " The Educative Process," pp. 58- 6 5- 
 
 f Dewey : " My Pedagogic Creed." 
 
 % Dewey : " The School and Society," p. 27. 
 
186 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 ship to the Father, and hence are brothers. When He pictured the 
 Day of Judgment, he described the final test of life in social terms. 
 "The stern questions are not in regard to personal and family rela- 
 tions, but did ye visit the poor, the criminal, the sick, and did ye feed 
 the hungry? " * He sent forth His disciples, as He Himself had been 
 sent, not to be ministered unto, but to minister. His call is to a life 
 of service. 
 
 The new social consciousness of our day has but served to recall us 
 to Jesus' own conception of religion. The source of religious life is 
 indeed individual. It is in the heart, born again to immediate fellow- 
 ship with the Father. But its aim is social. We must be about our 
 Father's business. "The individual, instead of being called to save 
 his soul from a lost world, is called to set his soul to save the world." f 
 We are saved to serve. We are God's fellow-workers. And the 
 church is the organization that marks our partnership. It is an in- 
 strument for social service. 
 
 2. The work of the Sunday school is social, therefore, just because 
 it is religious and educational. If religion aims at the establishment 
 of an ideal social order and the church is an organization for service, 
 the church's school of religion must train for that service. And if 
 education is social both in aim and method, the Sunday school is not 
 true to its educational ideal if it lacks the social motive. 
 
 3. The practical question is : What can the Sunday school do as 
 a social institution ? 
 
 (1) // can provide social life a?id enjoyment. The social instincts 
 demand satisfaction. Young people love a good time and delight in 
 the company of one another. The Sunday school ought to meet this 
 natural human craving. It should make the church a social center. 
 It should provide a wholesome social environment. The means will 
 vary, of course, with circumstances and resources — from the "festival " 
 and "sociable" of the rural church to the elaborate system of clubs 
 and guilds, sewing-classes and athletic teams of an institutional church 
 in a great city. In any case a threefold good is attained : (a) Young 
 people are kept from undesirable social pleasures and from places of 
 amusement that are unworthy. J (b) They are attracted to the Sunday 
 
 * Addams : "Democracy and Social Ethics," p. 3. 
 
 t Peabody : "The Approach to the Social Question," p. 197. 
 
 X Not nearly all amusements, of course, are unworthy. But it is the vice of our 
 generation to seek social pleasure too exclusively in amusement as opposed to play. 
 We sit idle while we are entertained by someone else, instead of entering into the 
 sport ourselves. The evil is greatly increased by the fact that our amusements 
 have become commercialised. They are in the hands of men who seek to make 
 
THE CLASS AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION 187 
 
 school, which thus gains a "point of contact" with their lives and an 
 opening to their minds and hearts, (c) The young people away from 
 home, of which all larger communities are full, are welcomed to the 
 friendship which they most need, and gain new social ties for those 
 that have been broken.* 
 
 {2) It can main fain a social motive and atmosphere in its work of 
 instruction. We have already discussed this. We have said that the 
 true recitation is social, and that the ideal method of teaching is co- 
 operative. We have seen that the way to get the pupil to express the 
 truth, and by expression learn, is to furnish motives and material and 
 to provide social situations such as naturally call expression forth. 
 We have noted how the social motive underlies the work that we may 
 expect the pupil to do, from the play of the beginners and the story- 
 reproduction of primary pupils, to the hand-work of the juniors and the 
 study and research of older pupils. 
 
 " Ideally, the Sunday school for children is not a school at all. 
 In an Edenic condition it is an extension of the home. It is a 
 place where a wise and good man or woman gathers a group 
 of young people to whom he is in the truest sense a god-parent, 
 in order to help and supplement the home in teaching the way 
 of life and encouraging the children to walk in it. There are, 
 of course, pedagogic laws to be applied in Sunday school in- 
 struction, but the aim should be not to imitate the public school. 
 The model of the Sunday school should be rather the social 
 settlement classes and clubs, where the teacher and scholars 
 are simply friends, who meet because of interest in the same 
 subject." f 
 
 Positively, this is an excellent statement of what the spirit of the 
 Sunday school should be. But we must reject its implication that such 
 a spirit and atmosphere is not to be had in the public school. As a 
 matter of fact, in the few years since these words were first written, 
 the whole development of our public schools has been in the direction 
 indicated ; and they are to-day better socialized in spirit and method 
 
 money out of them, and who are thus constantly tempted to pander to low tastes 
 rather than to seek to elevate them. It may well be added that the social life of 
 the church and .Sunday school ought never to be commercialized. The money- 
 making church "sociable" is anything but social. The "festivals," "suppers" 
 and "bazaars" that were common not so long ago, were unjustifiable from the 
 standpoint either of enjoyment, business or benevolence. 
 
 * See what was said concerning this need in L,esson VII., Section 5. 
 
 f Forbush : " The Boy Problem," p. 106. 
 
188 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 than most Sunday schools. The word school is acquiring a new 
 meaning. 
 
 We shall not take up the problems of attendance and discipline in 
 this book. They will be treated in the book to follow in the present 
 series, which will deal with the organization of the Sunday school. We 
 all know that haphazard attendance and loose discipline are chief 
 among the things that detract at present from its efficiency. But the 
 remedy is not to be found in compulsion or greater rigidity of method. 
 It is rather in the more whole-hearted working out of the social motive 
 in class work and organization. We must make our pupils want to 
 come to Sunday school and zvork when they do come, just because 
 we give them something to do that they feel is worth banding together 
 to do. 
 
 (3) It can give its pupils a concrete understanding of social facts, 
 and develop within them high social ideals. The truths of God's 
 Word are not isolated ; they dwell in human life. The Bible is the 
 chief, but not the sole text-book of the Sunday school. Jesus spoke 
 of Himself as " the way, the truth and the life." So must we teach, 
 weaving truth and life together, that the gospel may be to our pupils 
 what it was to the early disciples — a Way of life.* 
 
 We must do more than teach abstract doctrine, or even touch the 
 heart. We must develop practical wisdom. We must help our pupils 
 to imderstand life, its forces, its great interests and issues. Professor 
 James once said that the aim of a college education really is "to make 
 you able to know a good man when you see one." The aim of the 
 Sunday school might be stated in much the same terms. We fail un- 
 less we make our pupil able to size up life's practical situations — 
 rightly to know the good when he sees it and to choose it for himself. 
 
 The material for this teaching is as wide as life itself. Among the 
 more important materials are : 
 
 (a) The biographies of the great religious and ethical leaders of 
 Christendom ; such as Augustine, St. Francis, Savonarola, Luther, 
 Melanchthon, Gustavus Adolphus, Knox, Bunyan, Whitefield, Wesley. 
 
 (6) History from a moral and religious point of view, tracing out 
 the great political, social and ethical changes which have made the 
 world what it is. This will include such topics as the growth of 
 democracy, the development of religious liberty, the abolition of 
 slavery, the establishment of universal education, the recognition of 
 the rights of labor, the development of world unity through commerce 
 
 * The early Christians called their religion " The Way." See Acts 9 : 2 ; 19 : 9, 23 ; 
 22 : 4 ; 24 : 14, 22. 
 
THE CLASS AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION 189 
 
 and quick communication, the progress toward international arbitra- 
 tion and universal peace, and the like — none treated abstractly, or 
 with any attempt at a too general philosophy of history, but in con- 
 crete pictures of events and conditions. 
 
 (c) The history of the Church and its part in the uplift of humanity 
 and the development of civilization. We believe that this develop- 
 ment has been Christian, and that the world is what it is to-day only 
 because Jesus lived and taught and worked among men. 
 
 (d) Missions, studied historically, and, most of all, practically. 
 Ours is preeminently a missionary age. " The evangelization of the 
 world in this generation ' ' bids fair to become a fact. Opportunities 
 are infinitely greater than ever before ; and the Church is going about 
 the task with a new energy and practical business methods. Every 
 Sunday school ought to be a missionary Sunday school, if merely for 
 the educative value of the missionary interest. Pupils should be made 
 to understand the actual social and religious conditions in non-Chris- 
 tian lands, and intelligently to appreciate the methods, social and edu- 
 cational as well as evangelistic, now employed to reach their people. 
 
 (e) Social conditions and duties in our own land and time. What 
 has been done and is yet to be done in social amelioration ; methods 
 of dealing with poverty, disease, crime and dirt ; the education of the 
 mentally and physically defective and those retarded in development; 
 how to cope with intemperance, impurity, gambling, political graft ; 
 the problems of child-labor and divorce ; the race-question ; civic 
 reform and city betterment ; socialism and the public ownership of 
 utilities. Such topics must, of course, be carefully graded. Most of 
 them are for the elective courses of the senior and adult departments. 
 But some aspects may be introduced earlier. Even in the junior age, 
 children will be interested in child-labor, in ways of helping less 
 fortunate children, and in the methods used to teach the blind and 
 deaf. 
 
 (/) Problems of personal morality. With older pupils these merge 
 into the larger problems of social service. But what we are too apt to 
 deem the smaller moral problems of child-life should be explicitly con- 
 sidered, and right ideals presented. 
 
 " Unless we make a list of them and grade each of our main 
 divisions, many of the most vexed moral issues of a child's life 
 will not be discussed with him in Sunday school. Gambling, 
 for instance, assumes a prevailing form of its own for every 
 period of childhood, and in each form presents to some children, 
 
190 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 at least, a separate question in morals. No other department of 
 the curriculum demands a more intimate knowledge of child- 
 hood and the actual surroundings and temptations of the par- 
 ticular children who form a given class of the school. Among 
 other topics to be considered in a Sunday school course may be 
 mentioned : fair play in games, games of chance, temper, per- 
 sonal purity, temperance, swearing, foul talk, practical jokes, 
 predatory mischief, boys' fights, jealousy, gossip, superstitions, 
 honesty, veracity, intellectual integrity, philanthropy." * 
 
 (4) It can give its pupils something to do, and organize them in 
 actual social service. Religion is a life. We learn by doing. Both 
 because it is religious and because it is educational, therefore, the 
 Sunday school must organize its pupils for action. It must provide 
 for the expression of the truths it seeks to teach, and for the carrying 
 out in life of the ideals it presents. 
 
 We have already laid great stress upon the principle, ' ' No impres- 
 sion without expression." We must now give to it a deeper meaning. 
 In the moral and spiritual realm, there is no genuine expression save that 
 of deeds. Life's real values are those of character and action. Not 
 what a man knows, or even what he can say, but the way he lives, 
 measures his final value to society. Not what your pupil can tell of 
 Bible stories or the glibness with which he can recite texts, not the 
 neatness of his written work, the precision of his maps, or the beauty 
 of the models he has constructed, measure the success of your teach- 
 ing ; but rather the life he leads. The only true preparation for 
 life is life itself; the only effective training for service is to serve. 
 Every Sunday school class should organize for service. It should 
 
 * Hodge :" The Content of a Sunday School Curriculum," Religious Education, 
 December, 1909, p. 433. Mention should be made in this connection of the Moral 
 Education Board, with headquarters at Baltimore. Their aim is " to teach higher 
 standards of morality through incidents of actual life as presented by photo- 
 graphs. Instantaneous photographs are taken of the incidents exactly as they 
 happen in real life. These are made into lantern slides and thrown on the screen 
 life-size. While the children are studying them they are taught what is right and 
 wrong. ' Instantaneous photography takes sin in the act, and even a careless 
 person will remember what kind of thing this is — when he has seen it done with 
 the base details and evil face of the sinner ! ' " Wessons are prepared upon such 
 topics as "The Gentleman," " Personal and National Thrift," " The True Sports- 
 man," "What I am Going to Do when I am Grown Up," "What Men Think 
 About Boys' Fights," each with from fifty to a hundred slides. These slides, with 
 the text of the lesson, are sent for use to any school upon the payment of a small 
 rental fee. See Mr. Baker's brief account in Religious Education for June, 1910, 
 from which the above is quoted. 
 
THE CLASS AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION 191 
 
 get something to do that is of real social value. It should hold its 
 pupils by their common interest in this concrete piece of work. It 
 should express its ideals in real endeavor. 
 
 4. This social conception of the Sunday school recognizes the class 
 as a natural unit of social and religious life. It makes of the school 
 in no unreal sense a federation of classes. 
 
 (1) The teaching, work and organization should be carefully graded. 
 Life's changes are nowhere more evident than in the varying social 
 attitudes of later childhood and adolescence. The content of the 
 teaching, the type of class organization, and the character of the 
 social service which it may seek to accomplish, must be determined 
 with full regard to the natural interests of the pupils, the stage of 
 moral development reached, and the opportunities and temptations of 
 their social environment. In the junior department there may be a 
 class of Boy Scouts, and one of girls who are interested in getting a 
 Christmas tree ready for a children's hospital ; in the intermediate 
 and senior departments you may find one band making a study of 
 missions in India and supporting a native preacher, while another, of 
 older pupils, is interested in problems of philanthropy and the work of 
 social settlements. Each has its particular work to do, and each an 
 organization of its own. 
 
 (2) This conception of the Sunday school makes practicable the co- 
 ordination of all the Church's educational agencies. We have mul- 
 tiplied organizations as new needs have been recognized, until the 
 very strenuousness of our effort defeats itself. Besides the Sunday 
 school there are boys' clubs and girls' clubs, gymnasium classes and 
 athletic teams, mission bands for all ages from the tiny tots up, junior, 
 intermediate and senior young people's societies, aid societies, the 
 King's Daughters and the men's brotherhoods. There is overlapping 
 of function, incoordination of effort, and a tremendous waste of energy. 
 There would be a great increase of efficiency if each church were to 
 bring all its educational agencies under one organization. Methods 
 may, of course, vary. There may simply be a committee of the church 
 council, to mark out the fields of the respective organizations and 
 bring about the needed unity of effort. A federation of societies may 
 be organized as a "church school" of which each would be a part. 
 The societies, as a school of practice, may be correlated with the vari- 
 ous grades of the Sunday school, as a school of instruction. The 
 simplest plan would seem to be their incorporation within the Sunday 
 school itself. Our conception of the class as a unit of social and re- 
 ligious life makes this quite possible. Each might even keep its 
 
192 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 own name and distinctive organization — as a class name and organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 (3) This conception of the Sunday school makes possible a definite 
 cooperation with home and public school. If we ask parents and 
 school teachers to help us teach religious truths to our pupils, we get 
 little response. But if we organize to do something of social value, 
 they can and will cooperate. The Boy Scout plan works as well in 
 the public school as in the Sunday school. The sewing-circle of girls 
 who are making doll clothes for less fortunate children, may enlist the 
 members of a sewing-class in school. The class that is interested in 
 the problems of good citizenship and social betterment, deals with 
 these same problems in the high school, and finds the same ideals pre- 
 sented. The class organization of the Sunday school is paralleled by 
 the pupil self-government of the public school. As for fathers and 
 mothers, they usually want to help all they can ; but when we ask 
 them to help us teach, they do not know what or how. Ask them to 
 help the children do some concrete thing, and there is no hesitation or 
 difficulty. Upon the social side of our work we can easily enough 
 enlist the other social agencies of the child's life ; the work of instruc- 
 tion we must do ourselves. 
 
 5. The organized adult class stands naturally at the head of such a 
 federation of classes into a school of social service. Once the social 
 conception of the Sunday school is fully realized, the specific problem 
 of the adult class will disappear. If the Sunday school is an organi- 
 zation for work in the kingdom, those who have worked in it from 
 childhood up will remain in its service. The adult class will differ 
 from others only in that its interests are mature, its grasp of social 
 problems and opportunities more broad, its temper more truly prac- 
 tical, its standards of efficiency more exacting, and democracy more 
 essential in its work and organization. Let the particular form of 
 organization be what it will — the men's brotherhood, the women's 
 missionary society, the mothers' club, the young men's league — each 
 should itself become part of the Sunday school, or maintain an adult 
 class in the Sunday school. None need surrender its independence of 
 organization ; it should be required simply to register its distinctive 
 educational work as one of the elective courses of the advanced de- 
 partment. 
 
 The advantages of such a plan are manifold. We name only a few : 
 (a) coordination of educational work and unity of practical effort 
 within the church ; (b) the practical service of the adult organizations 
 will be more enlightened, since the educational motive remains ; {c) 
 
THE CLASS AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION 193 
 
 the children's practical service will acquire dignity in their eyes, be- 
 cause adults, too, are seen to share the same social motive and to 
 work through the same institution; (d) there will be no evident 
 time of graduation from the Sunday school. 
 
 6, The socialization of the Sunday school and the coordina- 
 tion of the Church's educational agencies are among the most im- 
 portant problems that we face to-day. This chapter has sought to in- 
 terpret a movement that has only begun, and to indicate the direction 
 in which the Sunday school will develop in the immediate future. 
 Time may show that its interpretation is in certain details untrue, and 
 some of its suggestions mistaken. There is need of experiment and 
 wider perspective. But the principle will abide. The Sunday school 
 of to-morrow will be social in aim and method.* 
 
 Two possible misconceptions must be guarded against: (i) The 
 educational conception of the Sunday school, maintained throughout 
 this book, remains true. Organization for service makes no less im- 
 perative the impartation of ideas and ideals. The Sunday school will 
 remain a school, with the Bible its chief text-book. Rightly viewed, 
 the social and educational co)iceptions are one. This we may learn from 
 the public schools of to-day, with their new methods of instruction and 
 discipline, their social atmosphere and aims. The essential character- 
 istic of a school is not its rigidity of discipline or its imposition of 
 tasks, but rather that it leads its pupils to learn. (2) The social con- 
 ception of the Sunday school here set forth is far from the subjective 
 and self-centered "social ideal" quoted at the beginning of this 
 chapter. "The school itself, with its own esprit de corps,''' is not 
 " the main thing." It does not exist simply to maintain itself, or to 
 furnish a field for activities that will interest its members. On the con- 
 trary, its fundamental note is that of service. It seeks to foster within 
 its pupils the objective mood. It strives to lead their thoughts beyond 
 self or school to life's real social values and to the good they can do. 
 
 * The best literature on this subject is to be found in the issues of Religious 
 Education for the past few years. This is the journal of the Religious Education 
 Association, and should be in the library of every Sunday school. 
 
 13 
 
194 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. What evidences are there in our day of a new social conscious- 
 ness ? 
 
 2. Discuss the social aim of education and show how the public 
 school is becoming socialized in atmosphere and method. 
 
 3. What is the social aim of religion ? 
 
 4. Why should the work of the Sunday school be social in aim and 
 method ? 
 
 5. Why should the Sunday school provide for the social life and en- 
 joyment of its pupils ? 
 
 6. How can the Sunday school maintain the social motive in its 
 work of instruction ? 
 
 7. What can the Sunday school do to develop high social ideas 
 within its pupils ? 
 
 8. What can the Sunday school do in the way of practical social 
 service ? 
 
 9. In what sense is the class the natural unit of social and religious 
 life in the Sunday school ? 
 
 10. How does this conception of the Sunday school provide for the 
 coordination of the Church's educational agencies? 
 
 11. How does this conception of the Sunday school make possible 
 definite cooperation with the home and the public school ? 
 
 12. Discuss the place of the organized adult class in a socially or- 
 ganized Sunday school. 
 
 13. Does the social conception of the Sunday school make it any 
 less a school ? Give reasons for your answer. 
 
 14. How does the social conception of the Sunday school set forth 
 in this chapter differ from the social ideal quoted at its beginning ? 
 
LESSON XX 
 The Spiritual Goal 
 
 The final goal of our work is spiritual. No mere accretion of knowl- 
 edge or outward molding of action can save the world or bring a 
 single soul to fullness of life. "This is life eternal, that they should 
 know Thee the only true God, and Him whom Thou didst send, even 
 Jesus Christ." The true teacher is an evangelist. He is not content 
 merely to teach about God. He strives to reach the "hidden man 
 of the heart." He seeks to help his pupils to know God in personal 
 relation and so to love and serve Him. He will not rest until in heart 
 and will they have consecrated themselves to their Father. 
 
 i. The work of the teacher thus centers about the pupil's personal 
 decision to accept the love of God as revealed in Jesus and to live as 
 God's child. Before this decision, we seek to prepare the pupil in 
 due time to make it ; after the decision, we try to help him the more 
 fully to carry it out. 
 
 (i) The natural time for decision is in adolescence. We have seen 
 that most conversions take place between the ages of thirteen and 
 twenty-one. And it is not strange that this should be so. The awak- 
 ening of interest in religion and the decision to love and serve God 
 are natural aspects of that general expansion of selfhood and subse- 
 quent concentration of life that are the outstanding characteristics of 
 adolescence. We should not attempt to force decision before this 
 natural awakening ; but w r e should bend every energy to see that 
 decision is made before it is past and life has begun to acquire its set. 
 
 (2) Not all decisions are of the same type. They vary with age, 
 temperament and experience. If we limit the term " conversion " to 
 those decisions which involve a real turning about from a life that is 
 now felt to be one of sin and failure, not nearly all adolescent deci- 
 sions are conversions. Many children, brought up in godly homes 
 and baptized in infancy, have never felt alienation from God and 
 naturally choose to serve Him and to make public profession of their 
 faith when they reach adolescence. Decisions at twelve and thirteen 
 are usually of this type — the natural result of a normal religious nur- 
 ture and of social suggestion. Those that come later, at sixteen or 
 twenty, usually involve something of inward conflict. The character 
 of this conflict varies with temperament and with the experiences that 
 
 (195) 
 
L96 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING vSERIES 
 
 have touched the life. Some are naturally more emotional than 
 others. We make a great mistake if we attempt to force all decisions 
 to conform to a single type, or to make a definite sort of spiritual "ex- 
 perience" a condition of church membership. The worth of a 
 decision is to be measured, not by what lies behind it, but by what 
 comes after ; not by its own suddenness or emotional intensity, but 
 by its practical results in the life. " By their fruits ye shall know 
 them. ' ' 
 
 (3) Decision is in any case an act of will. It consists in the 
 assumption of an attitude towards God and the choice of a way of 
 living. It is to the willing side of the pupil's nature, therefore, that 
 we must appeal. And it is his willingness to be and do that we must 
 make the test of his fitness to make a public confession of faith and 
 become a communicant member of the church. To this all doctrinal 
 and experiential tests must be subordinate. 
 
 Experience follows action ; and dogma follows experience. His- 
 torically, creeds and confessions are the expression rather than the 
 cause of spiritual life among men. It is so with the individual. The 
 comprehension of doctrines, the precise formulation of beliefs, the 
 realizing sense of God's presence and love, cannot come first in the 
 developing life. "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know 
 of the teaching." It is only by living with God that we come to know 
 Him and to understand His truth. The important thing is to get your 
 pupil started on the life. 
 
 (4) Decision of some sort is bound to be made in adolescence. The 
 expanding life comes face to face with the issue. It will get set in one 
 way or the other. It will include religion or let it alone. But to neg- 
 lect God or to postpone the decision to serve Him is to reject Him. 
 To refuse to decide is itself a decision — a decision against God. 
 
 2. Making ready for the decision. We cannot begin too soon to 
 prepare the pupil to decide rightly when the issue presents itself. It 
 is in early, middle and later childhood that the foundations of morality 
 and religion are laid. We have already thought of the work of the 
 teacher in these years.* By instruction, training and -influence we 
 will earnestly seek to implant true ideas about God and life, and to 
 develop right habits and worthy attitudes. We will make ready for 
 future decision, not by talking about it or by seeking to force it before 
 the time, but by meeting wisely the particular interests and needs of 
 each stage in the developing life. There are four great agencies of 
 
 * See what was said on this subject in Wesson XI., Sections 4, 6, 7 and 8, and in 
 Wesson XII., Section 6. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL GOAL 197 
 
 spiritual nurture which we shall use — teaching, atmosphere, influence, 
 and life itself. 
 
 (i) The teaching of the Sunday school should have a spiritual mo- 
 tive. This does not mean that the same truths are to be taught in 
 every grade, or that every lesson should end with a spiritual application. 
 It does mean that the teaching should be the expression of the teach- 
 er's own life with God and his steadfast purpose to guide his pupils to 
 such a life ; and that it should be grounded in his sympathetic discern- 
 ment of the truth as revealed in God's word and his endeavor to give 
 that truth to his pupils. 
 
 There must be moral and spiritual applications, therefore. The 
 teaching fails that does not lead to definite, practical conclusions. 
 The great question is : Should the teacher state the practical conclu- 
 sion and make the application for his pupils, or should he let them do 
 this jor themselves? Should his appeal to heart a?id cotiscience and 
 will be direct or indirect? It is hard to lay down general rules. 
 Here, if anywhere, the teacher's work must be personal and individ- 
 ual. There are two reasons why the indirect method is usually better : 
 
 (a) If the teacher makes the application for his pupils, there is dan- 
 ger lest in their minds his authority be substituted for that of the truth 
 itself. They may feel that it is but his conclusion, and a mere matter 
 of opinion. Even so, they may accept it for a time. But the spiritual 
 life can finally rest upon no authority other than the inward appeal of 
 the truth itself. Life's ultimate convictions are grounded, not in what 
 teachers say or churches formulate, or even in the Bible as an external 
 authority forced upon us from above, but in the soul's natural response 
 to the truth of God. He has made us for Himself. We know Him 
 when He appears to us, and our hearts leap within us when His truth 
 is seen. If we will but get the real meaning of His Word to men and 
 present it clearly and concretely to our pupils, we need add no applica- 
 tion of our own. They, too, will feel its truth and power. It will beget 
 within them convictions which are abiding because the expression of 
 their own deepest impulses and aspirations. 
 
 " The object to be sought is to put the pupil in possession of the 
 pure gold of truth ; to beget in him personal convictions as near 
 to the real truth as possible ; to lead him to see and feel for 
 himself the intrinsic and permanent authority of the teachings of 
 the Bible, and to build them into his life. To do this let the 
 teacher himself set the example of assuming towards the Script- 
 ure the humble attitude of the interpreter, and towards the 
 
198 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 truth when found the humble attitude of obedience, and let him 
 train his pupils to do the same. Let him seek not so much by 
 the weight of authority to drive home the interpretation and ap- 
 plication of the Scripture which he has discovered or accepted 
 as to bring the pupil face to face in a receptive attitude of mind 
 with the truth, that it may make its own powerful appeal. In 
 short, let the teacher in the Sunday school understand that his 
 duty is not to enforce his own views upon the pupil, but to lead 
 that pupil to study the Bible honestly and to recognize and obey 
 truth."* 
 
 (6) Indirect suggestion is usually more potent than direct sugges- 
 tion. The strength of a suggested idea depends upon its ability to 
 keep itself before the mind, and so to issue in action. And this ability- 
 depends in great part, it is clear, upon the absence of conflicting ideas 
 which might claim the attention and inhibit action. A hypnotized 
 subject will act upon any idea you suggest to him, simply because the 
 hypnotic sleep prevents any conflicting ideas from coming to mind. t 
 A little child will believe and act upon anything you tell him, just be- 
 cause he lacks the critical ideas which experience alone can bring. % 
 
 As we grow up and experiences accumulate and judgment matures, 
 we become less open to direct suggestion. The presentation of any 
 idea arouses within us a host of images, memories and other ideas, any 
 one of which may be more attractive than that presented and may 
 take possession of the mind to its exclusion. And if we are conscious 
 that an effort is being made to influence our thinking or conduct, that 
 very fact marshals conflicting ideas within us. We naturally put 
 ourselves into an attitude of defence ; we resist the intrusion of the 
 foreign thought. If, on the other hand, the idea be introduced easily 
 and indirectly, without shock or palpable effort to influence ; if we 
 are given, instead of a ready-made conclusion, the material from which 
 to draw one of our own — it then seems a natural part of ourselves, 
 holds our interest and influences action. 
 
 The Bible is full of illustrations of the power of indirect suggestion. 
 We have already seen how Nathan took this method to bring home to 
 David a sense of his sin.§ Jesus used it constantly. It is one reason 
 why He taught so much by stories. When the lawyer, "desiring to 
 justify himself," asked " Who is my neighbor ? " Jesus gave no direct 
 
 * Burton and Mathews : " Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," pp. 38, 39. 
 f See I^esson X., Section 1. 
 X See Wesson III., Section 5. 
 § See Wesson XVII., Section 4. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL GOAL 199 
 
 answer, but began to tell a story. He told how a man was beset by 
 robbers in a lonely road, and left naked and half dead ; how in turn 
 a priest and a Levite came that way and saw him lying, but " passed 
 by on the other side"; how finally a Samaritan was "moved with 
 compassion" and cared for him. The story ended with a question : 
 "Which of these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor unto him that 
 fell among the robbers ? " " He that showed mercy on him," came 
 the answer. Only then, when the lawyer had gotten the idea for him- 
 self, did Jesus drive home the obligation: "Go, and do thou like- 
 wise." Take, again, Jesus' answer to Peter's question after the young 
 ruler had gone away "sorrowful," preferring his riches to the kingdom 
 of God. While Jesus was yet speaking about how hard it is for one 
 who cares for wealth to enter into the kingdom, Peter broke forth 
 with : "Lo, we have left all, and followed thee ; what then shall we 
 have?" That must have been a hard question for Jesus to hear. It 
 revealed in His own disciple the very mercenary temper which had just 
 caused the young ruler to turn away. Yet he manifested no sorrow or 
 impatience ; he uttered not a word of reproach. There was marvelous 
 tact in the answer he gave Peter that day. There was gentle irony — 
 "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or 
 mother, or father, or children, or lands, for my sake, and for the 
 gospel's sake, but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, 
 houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and 
 lands " — and bitter fact — "with persecutions " — then the eternal truth 
 — "and in the world to come eternal life "—finally a story, comparing 
 the kingdom to a householder who paid his laborers as he pleased, to 
 everyone the same wage, no matter how long or hard he had 
 worked. Thus ifidirectly and concretely Jesus led Peter to the thought 
 that the kingdom of God is not built upon the principle of cash pay- 
 ment, and that service is its own reward. 
 
 In general, then, the indirect method of getting moral and spiritual 
 conclusions is the better. It is indeed but an application of the 
 principles of self-activity and apperception. Better to get the pupil to 
 think for himself than to think for him. It is harder, of course. It 
 means that you must present the material so concretely and vividly 
 that your pupils will be sure to get the right conclusion. 
 
 Two qualifications must be made : (a ) With little children the direct 
 method may and must be used— because they are as yet unable to reason 
 clearly for themselves, because they have implicit faith in the authority 
 of those they love, because their minds are peculiarly open to direct 
 suggestion. Only gradually is direct to be replaced with indirect 
 
200 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 suggestion, (b) There are times when, in every grade and for every 
 pupil, the teacher should directly, clearly and forcibly state the 
 practical application of the truth. That teacher will fail of his highest 
 efficiency who is afraid ever to appeal directly to the conscience and 
 will of his pupil. The indirect method is often not in itself enough. 
 Nathan followed his story with ' ' Thou art the man ' ' ; Jesus turned 
 the lawyer's conclusion into an obligation — "Go, and do thou like- 
 wise." Direct suggestion is at times needed, not as a substitute for 
 indirect suggestion, but as its culmination. Do first all that you can to 
 make the pupil see the truth for himself, then do not be afraid to apply 
 it frankly, if you feel that such directness is needed to crystallize his 
 convictions. 
 
 (2) The atmosphere of the Sunday school should be spiritually 
 uplifting. The architecture and furnishings of the Sunday school 
 chapel and classrooms, the pictures on the walls and windows of 
 stained glass, contribute much to the total impression made upon the 
 sensitive soul of the child, and mean more to the adolescent than we 
 sometimes think. The chapel should be churchly,' the classrooms 
 attractive and usable ; and the whole in good taste. Only true art is 
 worthy of the God we serve ; and only true art can help to bring 
 our pupils to a sense of His presence. 
 
 The principle applies especially to the ritual of the Sunday school. 
 We are too apt to think of it as a mere "order of exercises " for open- 
 ing and closing the school. But there should be at some time in the 
 session a brief service of real worship. It should be a time of genuine 
 devotion, when pupils and teachers together join in praise to the 
 Father whose Word they are studying, and in prayer that He may en- 
 lighten their minds and guide their lives. It should help the pupils to 
 feel the reality of spiritual things, and train them in reverent worship. 
 It should educate them, moreover, to understand and love the services 
 of the church. 
 
 The worship of the Sunday school is as real a factor in the religions 
 education of its pupils as the lesson itself. It should be carefully 
 planned with this in view, (a) It should be clearly marked off as 
 worship from the business, the instruction, and the social interests of 
 the school. The period of ten or fifteen minutes spent in prayer and 
 praise should be sacred. No announcements or reports, talks about 
 the lesson or " remarks " by visitors, exhortations to benevolence or 
 discussion of plans for securing better attendance, should be allowed 
 to interrupt its spirit of devotion. Least of all should it be invaded by 
 the blatant precentor with his waving baton and his incitement to sing 
 
THE SPIRITUAL GOAL 201 
 
 louder — " now the boys ! " "now the girls!" "now all together!" 
 All these may have their place, and some of them certainly do ; but 
 they are as much out of place in the devotional period of the Sunday 
 school as they would be in the more formal worship of the church. 
 (d) There is much room for improvement in the music of the Sunday 
 school. Many of the songs in the so-called modern books and 
 "services" for festival occasions are utterly unworthy, from the stand- 
 point either of religion, literature or music, (c) If the worship of the 
 Sunday school is to mean all that it should to the pupils, there must 
 be grading here as well as in the teaching. Each of the larger divisions 
 of the school should have its own service. There should be at least 
 two such divisions, with one service for children under eight or nine, 
 and another for pupils older than this. It is better to have three — one 
 for beginners and primary children, one for the juniors, and another 
 for adolescents and adults. 
 
 ' The principle of adaptation to the age of pupils applies here 
 only less strictly than in the matter of instruction. It is as 
 absurd to ask children of ten years to sing hymns reflecting the 
 experiences of mature men and women as to ask their fathers 
 and grandfathers to join in distinctively children's songs. Some 
 hymns of praise are, perhaps, adapted to old and young alike. 
 But the musical service of the school can be what it ought to be 
 only when there is some separation of the school into divisions 
 for the service as well as for the teaching. Each division needs 
 its own hymns, and these, while always real hymns, should be 
 adapted to the relative maturity of the members of that 
 division."* 
 
 (3) The influence of older persons should be such as to lead the 
 pupil toward the spiritual life. "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man 
 sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Among the forces that 
 shape the characters of men, there is none more potent than the con- 
 tact of person with person, life upon life. And it begins early. The 
 power of personal influence and association is rooted in the child's 
 imitativeness and his sensitivity to the attitudes of others ; it shapes 
 the hero-worship of later childhood, and culminates in the suscepti- 
 bility of the adolescent to social suggestion. The attitude of the youth 
 toward religion will be in great part determined by the attitude toward 
 it of the older persons with whom he is most thrown in contact and 
 whom he most honors. For the sake of the children, therefore, the 
 
 * Burton and Mathews : ''Principles and Ideals for the Sunday School," p. 191. 
 
202 LUTHERAN TEACHKR-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 Sunday school should do all it can to enlist the hearty cooperation of 
 parents, and to help them maintain an active interest in the church 
 and its work. Above all, the teacher should see to it that he himself 
 is what he would lead his pupils to be. He must be their friend, but 
 more. He must in life and character command their respect and stand 
 before them as an ideal. He must show forth the spirit of the Master. 
 And his consecration must be open ; he must be a member of the 
 church. 
 
 (4) The life of the pupil in active Christian service may lead him 
 naturally to wish to continue in that service, and to assume the larger 
 responsibilities of spiritual maturity. This was made plain in the last 
 chapter. We saw then that the Sunday school must organize its 
 pupils in actual social service, if it is to accomplish either its educa- 
 tional or its religious work. We need only add now that this social 
 service will fail of its highest end if the religious motive be not made 
 perfectly clear. Without cant or sentimentality, but with simple and 
 natural frankness, the children should be led to realize that what they 
 are doing is God's work and what Jesus would have them do. 
 
 3. Getting the decision. When the time comes for decision, how 
 shall we get the pupil to make it ? We shall, of course, make a more 
 personal appeal through all those agencies of spiritual nurture which 
 we have used to make ready for decision. The material we teach will be 
 such as to stir the will and arouse the conscience. In worship we shall 
 strive to enlist the new feelings and aspirations of the heart of youth. 
 We shall give ourselves in friendship and guard our influence, now of 
 all times. We shall find for the expanding life something to do that 
 may strengthen its dawning ideals and lead to new visions of service. 
 And so the decision may come, quietly and naturally, as the result of 
 some one of these influences or as the fruition of the whole long 
 process of nurture that has gently brought the soul to spiritual ma- 
 turity. In such a life, indeed, " the kingdom of God cometh not with 
 observation." 
 
 But often there is needed some external occasion, some gentle 
 shock or stimulus, to bring to a head the impressions which have 
 been accumulating and to crystallize the convictions. There are many 
 ways in which this stimulus may be applied. We shall consider only 
 three of the more important : the confirmation class, decision day, and 
 the personal talk. 
 
 (1) The confirniation class. Of all organized ways, this is the best. 
 It is the traditional method of liturgical churches, such as the Lutheran 
 and Episcopal. All denominations are coming in these days to use it. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL GOAL 203 
 
 Dr. Forbush, himself a Congregationalism gives an excellent summary 
 of it as used in the Episcopal Church : 
 
 " In the Episcopal Church, where the catechetical method is 
 not a recent experiment or a thing by itself, most of the objec- 
 tions to the use of the catechism are met because of its place 
 in a larger system. It is but one wheel of an ecclesiastical ma- 
 chine. The baptized child is accepted as a member of the 
 ecclesiastical family, potentially regenerate ; the catechism is 
 not a matter of special class instruction, but it is taught in the 
 Sunday school ; it is the tradition, and so the expectation, that 
 the child will come forward in adolescence to prove his knowl- 
 edge of the catechism in the confirmation class ; instead of wait- 
 ing for a cataclysmal conversion and a Christian experience 
 before admitting the child into full communion, the child is ad- 
 mitted upon attaining a fitting age and reasonable knowledge of 
 the catechism, and it is believed that in the solemn interim 
 between the confirmation and the first communion, in the activi- 
 ties that follow or in the fold of the church with maturing char- 
 acter, spiritual life will actually appear. As far as the influence 
 of this plan can be thrown about children, what could be more 
 admirably planned to secure a quiet, normal Christian develop- 
 ment and a minimum of loss of children in their growth from 
 one period to another of life ? 
 
 " In the non-liturgical churches there must be some theory 
 and scheme of the relation of children to the church which shall 
 make it natural and expected that children should enter full 
 communion. At present the theory, if there be one, sometimes 
 seems to be that it is not natural but is rather surprising if this 
 takes place." * 
 
 Essentially the same could be said of its use in the Lutheran Church. 
 The baptized child is accepted as a member of the church, and looked 
 upon as already the subject of divine regeneration — "received," as the 
 Augsburg Confession so finely puts it, " into the grace of God." f He 
 is taught the simpler truths of the catechism from his earliest years, 
 and is made to look forward to the day when he can take upon his own 
 shoulders the promises made for him by his parents, and so become 
 
 * Forbush : " The Boy Problem," p. 119. For sake of clearness without the eon- 
 text, a few words are inserted in the first sentence of this quotation. 
 
 t Article IX.: " recipiantur in gratiam Dei." The translation "are received 
 into His favor " is a poor one. 
 
204 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 a communicant member of the church. No sudden conversion or 
 emotional experience is made a condition of confirmation ; the simple 
 act of will is accepted, if examination shows that he understands the 
 step he is taking. And Christian nurture does not cease then ; but the 
 youth is helped to ' ' grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ." 
 
 The virtues of the method are : (a) its systematic leading up to de- 
 cision ; (5) its use of social suggestion to secure decision ; (c) its lack 
 of hard conditions. It is clear that to realize these virtues in the 
 highest degree, catechetical instruction should be a part of the Sunday 
 school's work. The confirmation class should be, indeed, elective, 
 but a part of the Sunday school organization in the intermediate de- 
 partment, so that pupils may feel it to be but natural to enter it. It 
 should be taught by the pastor, and pupils should be allowed to sub- 
 stitute its work for the usual lessons. Unbaptized children should, of 
 course, be given the same opportunity to receive catechetical instruc- 
 tion and to enter the confirmation class, as those who have been bap- 
 tized. 
 
 The objections that have been urged against the method are : (a) 
 that it is too dogmatic, teaching a creed before the natural time for 
 creed formulation in later adolescence ; (b) that it degenerates into a 
 mere memory exercise, the child committing set answers to questions 
 and dogmatic forms which he cannot understand ; (c) that it is not 
 fair to the child, entrapping him in a system of religious organization 
 and instruction without his consent, and forcing decision too early by 
 an undue use of social suggestion ; (d) that it provides in practice as 
 real a means of graduation from the Sunday school as of entrance into 
 full church membership. All these are real dangers. The first two 
 may well be urged against much catechetical instruction. But they 
 are not inherent weaknesses ; they depend upon the instructor, his con- 
 ception of religion, and his ability to teach. The work of the con- 
 firmation class need not be, and ought not to be, a mere memorizing 
 of dogmas ; the test of fitness for church membership ought not be the 
 pupil's mastery of a doctrinal system, but his willingness to accept the 
 love of the Father and his decision to live in Jesus' Way. The third 
 objection is much the weakest. It may be urged against any system 
 of education, secular as well as religious. We cannot wait to teach 
 our children until they have grown able to choose for themselves what 
 education they will have. They are " entrapped " without their con- 
 sent in a social order, just-because they are born at all ; and society 
 must perforce imprint upon their tender minds its own customs and 
 
THE SPIRITUAL GOAL 205 
 
 ideals. To deny to a child any particular type of education is to edu- 
 cate him away from it, without his consent. To refuse to give religious 
 instruction until the child can choose for himself whether he wants it, 
 is to train him to be irreligious, without his consent. The real ques- 
 tion in the early education of a child is not, Does the child want re- 
 ligion ? but Do we want it ? How seriously do we take it ? Do we 
 feel it to be one of humanity's vital interests ? If we are ourselves in 
 earnest about religion, we shall not hesitate to begin as early as we can 
 to teach it to our children. The fourth objection brings out the greatest 
 danger. It is quite possible that the pupil may look upon his con- 
 firmation as a graduation from set religious instruction, and may fail 
 rightly to use his new freedom. He may feel that, having passed 
 through all the forms needed to make him a member of the church, he 
 is spiritually complete. And so what should be the beginning of a 
 mature spiritual life becomes the end of all growth. Let us not as 
 teachers deceive ourselves. We face, indeed, a different problem after 
 decision, but a problem as real as that of getting the decision. 
 
 (2) Decision Day. A plan tried in many quarters is to set aside a 
 day for spiritual ingathering, when all pupils who have not conse- 
 crated themselves to God are urged to make the decision. Usually 
 cards are passed r around to be signed, stating the desire to lead a 
 Christian life. The best form of card, perhaps, is one that may be 
 signed by every pupil, with four spaces in which the name may be en- 
 tered as "Professing Christian and church member," "Professing 
 Christian but not a church member," " Not a professing Christian," 
 ", God helping me, I choose henceforth to lead a Christian life." * A 
 religious census of the school is thus taken, and embarrassment is 
 avoided, as everyone signs a card. 
 
 (a) It is evident that in any case the method does not do away with 
 the pastor's class for instruction preparatory to the assumption of the 
 vows of full church membership. It is, in general, but one way of 
 getting pupils to decide to enroll themselves in that class. And if the 
 system of catechetical instruction be properly organized, there will be 
 no need of such a method. 
 
 (5) The value of this form of social suggestion is questionable. To 
 sign papers is contagious. It is common to have nearly a whole class 
 sign or refuse to sign. Where the real stimulus is simply to "be with 
 the rest of the fellows" on a day of this sort, the results are apt to be 
 ephemeral. This form of social suggestion must be carefully distin- 
 guished from that of the long course of instruction, with confirmation 
 as its natural issue, of which we have just been thinking. 
 
 * Mead : " Modern Methods in Sunday School Work," p. 249. 
 
206 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 (e) The appeal to make the decision should be individual, rather 
 than collective. It is a question whether we have a right to make 
 young people just entering their teens face the great alternative in a 
 bunch. They need personal, face-to-face friendship and help. 
 
 " In one warmly evangelistic church, two years ago, one hun- 
 dred and fifteen cards were signed. Of these, twenty have since 
 joined the church. . . . Then there is the leakage, the waste, 
 the possible alienation. When one hundred and fifteen signed, 
 over three hundred refused to sign. Is it not possible that these 
 three hundred believe that they have thus disowned Christ ? It 
 seemed a daring act, but the heavens did not fall nor the light- 
 ning strike ; next year it becomes easier to refrain. Is it whole- 
 some thus to lead young souls up to the great alternative and 
 let the will fail, and do it year after year ? " * 
 
 (3) The Personal talk. Whether or not there is systematic cate- 
 chetical instruction, the actual getting the pupil to decide depends al- 
 most always upon a personal word. The decision is individual, and 
 the alternative must be presented to each pupil for himself. And it 
 must be in private. 
 
 " It is a cowardly thing to say personal things and ask search- 
 ing questions of a boy in the midst of his fellows which you 
 would not dare to ask that boy privately in ordinary conversa- 
 tion. It is to protect these reserves thus rudely assaulted that a 
 boy puts on with his Sunday suit a disguise which he carries to 
 the hand-to-hand encounters of the Sunday school and junior 
 society. The teaching which merely touches that artificial boy- 
 hood will be easily slipped off when the disguise is removed 
 Sunday evening and the boy goes forth to the sport and freedom 
 of Monday." f 
 It is undoubtedly harder to talk to one boy about religion than to 
 
 * Forbush : " The Boy Problem," p. 124. Dr. Forbush's whole discussion of this 
 matter is eminently sensible. " The appointing of a State Decision Day and tab- 
 ulating the totals from the day smacks of loving children statistically. ... As the 
 years go by I confess a growing distaste for the noise, the rush and the tremor of 
 great machine^, and a deeper desire in any natural way possible to know my 
 boys and girls so well that I may help keep them safe until the time when that 
 finest of all spiritual fruitages comes, as the one hundred and tenth Psalm so 
 beautifully describes it : 
 
 " ' On holy mountains out of the lap of the dawn 
 
 The dew of Thy young soldiery offers itself to Thee.' " 
 
 f Forbush : " The Boy Problem," p. 180. 
 
THE SPIRITUAL GOAL 207 
 
 talk to ten ; it takes more courage to ask personal questions in a pri- 
 vate conversation than in a class discussion. But that is because they 
 mean infinitely more. If you are really earnest about your work, you 
 will at some time or other ask each of your pupils to decide this great- 
 est of life's issues. It is a holy task, and you may well tremble before 
 it. But to win a soul is the greatest thing that life can bring you. Did 
 you ever notice the marginal reading of the great promise with which 
 the book of Daniel ends? " The teachers"' it says, "shall shine as 
 the brightness of the firmament ; and they that turn many to right- 
 eousness as the stars for ever and ever." 
 
 Do not overdo. Do not ask your pupil too often, or too many per- 
 sonal questions. Life's deepest issues are too sacred to be talked of 
 glibly. You may easily enough make yourself a bore and alienate the 
 boy you would win, if you say too much about his soul. Be natural. 
 Do not use " pious" phraseology. Talk to him directly, as friend to 
 friend, and in the speech of common life. Pick your time carefully. 
 Watch your opportunities. Do not fail unless you must. Every time 
 that you put the alternative to a pupil and fail to win him, you make it 
 easier for him to refuse again. "HI had not come and spoken unto 
 them, they had not had sin ; but now they have no excuse for their 
 sin." 
 
 4. After the decision we shall help the youth to carry it out in 
 actual life and service, and so to come to the full maturity of spiritual 
 manhood. Our special problem in these years is to meet the intel- 
 lectual and practical needs of later adolescence. After expansion, con- 
 centration. Life's dream-time is past ; now it faces reality. Shall re- 
 ligion be lost through disuse or doubt? Shall the decision of early 
 adolescence melt away with other aspirations of those days of vision ? 
 Or shall it remain the very center of life as it concentrates its energies 
 and acquires individuality ? 
 
 We have already thought of the characteristics of later adolescence, 
 and of its needs.* We need add little now. We then spoke of three 
 great reconstructive forces— education, love and social service. These 
 same three we must use as we seek to meet the religious needs of youth. 
 We now understand them better, however. Let us reverse their order 
 and enlarge their scope. Work, friendship and knoivledge are the three 
 great agencies of spiritual nurture in that critical period between deci- 
 sion and full maturity— work, because the youth is intensely practical ; 
 friendship, because he is just taking his place in the great wide world ; 
 knowledge, because, a doubter and a creed-maker, he is forming those 
 
 * See L,esson VII. 
 
208 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 ideas of life and the world about him that he will likely keep to the 
 end of his days. 
 
 In all three the demand of the youth is for reality. The work you 
 set for him must be real— something that the world needs, that some- 
 one must do or it will suffer lack. The friendship you give him must 
 be genuine and whole-hearted, with no condescension or uneasy sense 
 of an ulterior motive. The knowledge with which you seek to meet 
 his doubts must be adequate and true, with no shifting of issues or 
 falling back upon mere authority. Yet often enough the church and 
 Sunday school have failed to meet this demand for reality. In place 
 of knowledge, they have been heard to offer but the wearisome 
 reiteration of texts. For friendship, there have sometimes been 
 "calls" and "sociables"; for work, a self-centered ecclesiastical 
 pottering about. 
 
 "Of the dozens of young women who have begged me to 
 make a connection for them between their dreams of social use- 
 fulness and their actual living I recall one of the many whom I 
 had sent back to her clergyman, returning with this remark : 
 ' His only suggestion was that I should be responsible every 
 Sunday for fresh flowers upon the altar. I did that when I was 
 fifteen, and liked it then ; but when you have come back from 
 college and are twenty-two years old, it doesn't quite fit in with 
 the vigorous efforts you have been told are necessary in order to 
 make our social relations more Christian.' " * 
 
 Happily, pastors of this sort are coming to be few. The church 
 and Sunday school of our day are meeting the demand for reality. 
 Intellectually, socially, practically — in knowledge, friendship and work 
 — the Church of Jesus Christ is to-day stronger and more virile than 
 ever before. Its mood is objective. It sees in itself an organization 
 for work. It will be content with nothing less than social regenera- 
 tion ; and it means business. Every teacher should catch the vision 
 of twentieth century Christianity, and make his own its intellectual 
 vigor, its business methods and its concrete devotion to social ends. 
 Teaching in this spirit, he will keep his pupils and lead them "from 
 strength to strength," till "every one of them appeareth before God 
 in Zion." 
 
 * Addams : " The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," p. 160. 
 
THE SPI RITUAL GOAL 209 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 i. What is the natural time for spiritual decision ? Why ? 
 
 2. Why should the act of will rather than an emotional experience 
 or the intellectual possession of dogmas be made the condition of en- 
 trance upon full church membership? 
 
 3. How early in life may we begin to make ready for the decision ? 
 What are the chief agencies of spiritual nurture which we may employ ? 
 
 4. Should the teacher make a practice of stating the moral and 
 spiritual application of the lessons to the lives of his pupils, or should 
 he let them make the application? Give reasons for your answer. 
 
 5. What authority should the teacher have for his teaching ? What 
 authority should he impress upon his pupils ? Give reasons for this. 
 
 6. Compare direct with indirect suggestion as a means of applying 
 the truth to the lives of pupils. Show how methods must differ in the 
 various grades. 
 
 7. What factors contribute to the spiritual atmosphere of the Sun- 
 day school ? Show how it may be made spiritually uplifting. 
 
 9. What should be the aim and character of worship in the Sun- 
 day school ? 
 
 9. What can we do to use most effectively toward spiritual ends 
 the power of personal influence ? 
 
 10. How can the life of children in social service be made an agency 
 of spiritual nurture ? 
 
 11. What are the positive values of the confirmation class as a meth- 
 od of getting the young to accept God's love and enter His Church? 
 
 12. Discuss the objections to the catechetical method and the con- 
 firmation class. 
 
 13. Discuss the value of Decision Day as a method of securing spir- 
 itual decision. 
 
 14. Why is a personal talk or question nearly always nteded to 
 secure the pupil's decision to serve God? What cautions should the 
 teacher bear in mind in undertaking this personal work ? 
 
 15. Discuss the teacher's problem after his pupils have made the 
 decision and entered into full church membership. 
 
 14 
 
LESSON XXI 
 • The Ideal Teacher : Jesus 
 
 There remains to be said about our work the one thing that, more 
 than all others, expresses its dignity and worth. // teas Jesus' work. 
 He, too, was a teacher. We stand, therefore, in a unique relation to 
 Him. Other men, indeed, may do His will as completely as do we. On 
 the farm and in the shop, behind the counter and at the office desk, men 
 can and do follow Him. The life may be His, whatever its outward 
 form. Its Way may be His, through whatever thickets of circum- 
 stance the path of duty may lie. But we, who have chosen to teach,' 
 follow directly in His footsteps. We make His own business ours. 
 And so He is our Ideal, not only in the general sense in which we 
 share His example with all humanity, but in the very particular form 
 of His words and deeds. He is not only the Ideal Man ; He is our 
 Ideal Teacher. 
 
 We remember how, time and again throughout our study, when we 
 sought a concrete example to illustrate the principle of teaching of 
 which we were thinking at the moment, we went to Jesus' life. He 
 was the Master Teacher of all time. No other could have taken a 
 dozen unlearned countrymen, and in less than three years have so 
 taught them that he could leave his own work in their hands. No 
 other's teaching has been so naturally and immediately adapted to the 
 particular situations he faced, and yet so universal in its truth and 
 eternal in its appeal, unbound by time and place. Yes, it may be said, 
 but that was because He was the Son of God. That is true. But it is 
 just as true that Jesus' teaching had the wonderful power it had be- 
 cause He knew how to teach. 
 
 There is no space, in this brief lesson, to discuss Jesus' methods of 
 teaching with even an approach to adequacy of treatment. And it is 
 perhaps as well. Ideals are to be seen and followed, rather than talked 
 about. What we need is not so much a description of Jesus' methods 
 as a concrete acquaintance with them. We must study them for our- 
 selves as they are recorded in the gospels, grasping not only the out- 
 ward form but the inner spirit. There is no better training for a Sun- 
 day school teacher than a careful study of the life of Christ, from the 
 point of view of His character as a teacher. This chapter aims only 
 to present an outline for such a-study. 
 
 (210) 
 
THE IDEAL TEACHER: JESUS 211 
 
 i. Jesus taught, as any true teacher will, both by wurd and deed. 
 We find, first of all, that His sayings reveal the methods of an 
 
 Ideal Teacher. He taught by illustration, story and question. His 
 lessons had preparation, presentation and conclusion. He began 
 always by finding a point of contact; He presented essentials only; 
 and He reached a definite conclusion. 
 
 (i ) What most immediately impresses one who reads the sayings of 
 Jesus is His remarkably effective use of illustrations/ His teaching 
 was never abstract. He aimed, as Wendt says, at popular intelligi- 
 bility ; and He succeeded as no other teacher 'ever has. He always 
 accompanied the statement of a general principle with a particular and 
 concrete example. He was ever ready with a comparison or an apt 
 analogy. With figures of speech and stories he made the truth plain 
 to the common man. 
 
 (2) He was a wonderful story-teller. His stories were short, simple 
 and full of action. They had point. He knew when to tell one ; and 
 He always told it well. Even as we read them now, they make us 
 see the things they tell. 
 
 (3) He was a good questioner. He taught, not so much by lecture, 
 as by conversation. He tried to make His hearers think for them- 
 selves. He understood the value of cooperation between teacher and 
 pupil in discovering the truth. The man who came to Him with a 
 question was usually asked one in return, and from His answer the 
 truth was developed. " What shall I do to inherit eternal life ? " asked 
 a lawyer. ' ' What is written in the Law ? how readest thou ? ' ' was 
 the answer. When Simon worried over the presence of a sinful 
 woman, Jesus told the story of a creditor who forgave two debtors, 
 the one a large sum and the other a small one. "Tell me, therefore, 
 which of them will love him most?" " He, I suppose, to whom he 
 forgave the most." " Thou hast rightly judged." Then He went on 
 to make clear, not only the right attitude in this particular case, but 
 the great principle of love and tolerance which is involved. 
 
 Jesus was not afraid, when the occasion demanded it, to use the 
 question in His own defence. When the priests asked concerning His 
 authority as a teacher, He put them on the horns of a dilemma. "The 
 baptism of John, whence was it, from heaven or from men? " They 
 dared not answer. " Neither tell I you by what authority I do these 
 things." Then He asked another question and told a story: "But 
 what think ye? A man had two sons ; and he came to the first, and 
 said, Son, go work today in the vineyard. And he answered and said, 
 I will not : but afterward he repented himself, and went. And he 
 
212 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I 
 go, sir : and went not. Which of the two did the will of his father?" 
 They said, "The first." " Verily I say unto you," answered Jesus, 
 "that the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before 
 you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye 
 believed him not ; but the publicans and the harlots believed him : and 
 ye, when ye saw it, did not even repent yourselves afterward, that ye 
 might believe him." 
 
 (4) Jesus always found a point of contact. His teaching moved 
 upon the plane of His hearers' own experience. His illustrations 
 were drawn from nature about Him and from the common life of the 
 people ; His stories were of events such as happened every day. 
 Moreover, in every case where we have record of the particular cir- 
 cumstances, we find that His teaching grew out of the immediate 
 situation. It was in answer to the spoken question or to the unspoken 
 interests and needs of those whom He addressed. He called the 
 fishermen of Galilee to be " fishers of men " ; He bound Nathaniel to 
 Him by showing that He understood the inward longings of his heart ; 
 to the woman He chanced to meet at Jacob's well, He spoke of the 
 " water of life" ; to the multitude who would make Him king because 
 He had fed them, He preached about the "bread of life." He often 
 asked, as He did the lawyer, some question that would bring out what 
 His hearer already knew or thought of the matter in hand ; and He 
 used these old ideas then as a basis for the new. 
 
 (5) Jesus' teaching dealt with essentials. With all His concrete- 
 ness, He never moved upon the surface of things. His illustrations 
 never tied Him down to mere particulars ; His popularity of exposi- 
 tion never begat shallowness of insight. He always grasped the great 
 principle that underlay any issue that presented itself to Him ; and He 
 always succeeded in making that principle clear. He seems, indeed, 
 to have deliberately aimed at " the greatest clearness in the briefest 
 compass.'"* In selecting examples and illustrations, He always chose 
 such as brought out in the boldest possible relief the principle He was 
 seeking to impress. Even if our brother is in the wrong, it is our 
 duty to seek him that we may be reconciled ; even if one wantonly 
 smites us, the obligation holds to return evil with good. If an unjust 
 j udge ' ' who feared not God and regarded not man ' ' will grant the prayer 
 of a poor widow, just because he gets tired of her continual coming, 
 shall not the good God hear the prayers of His children ? To make 
 
 *Wendt : " The Teaching of Jesus," Vol. I., p. 130. Wendt's treatment of this 
 point is illuminating. 
 
THE IDEAL TEACHER: JESUS 213 
 
 clear how completely service in God's kingdom must be free from the 
 ulterior motive of reward, He told the story of a householder who 
 paid for one hour's labor the same wage as for twelve — "so the last 
 shall be first and the first last." It is an exaggeration; but an ex- 
 aggeration that brings out with unmistakable clearness the point that 
 1 [e wished to make. 
 
 (6) Jesus ahuays brought out of His lessons a definite eouetusion. 
 Most often, moreover, He succeeded in making His pupils reach that 
 cc lclusion for themselves. We recall the examples of His use of in- 
 direct suggestion cited in the last chapter, and those of His power as 
 a questioner in this. 
 
 Wendt sums up as follows the impression to be gained from a care- 
 ful study of Jesus' methods as revealed in His sayings : 
 
 " A review of the characteristic features of Jesus' method of 
 teaching proves what a wonderful art and power of popular elo- 
 quence he possessed. He avoided pedantic modes of teaching 
 and the petty arts of the scholastic learning. The particular 
 methods He employed by preference were not indeed new, but 
 were rather the customary and natural means of popular dis- 
 course ; yet He handled them with greater ease and precision, 
 and with higher originality in details, than other teachers. A 
 rich fancy and an acute judgment were His equipment — a fancy 
 which provided Him with ever fresh material for His examples, 
 pictures and similitudes ; acuteness of judgment, which enabled 
 Him to grasp the essential point in the instance on hand, and to 
 find the fittest phraseology and forms of presentation whereby 
 the weightiest thoughts should be most forcibly expressed. We 
 can well understand how the discourses of Jesus, even apart 
 from the significance of their contents, would fill the hearers 
 with admiration by their natural, lucid and pithy style, and force 
 the declaration from their lips : ' He speaks as one that hath 
 authority, and not as the scribes ; ' that is, not from a limited 
 .stock of traditional apparatus laboriously applied, but in sov- 
 ereign disposal of an abundance of power, like a true orator ' by 
 the grace of God.' . . . 
 
 " What, however, is above all wonderful here is, that the man 
 who had such rich material of popular eloquence at command, has 
 used it ever in strict subservience to the purposes of the religious 
 thoughts to whose announcement He devoted His life. Through- 
 out His recorded discourses wc never find that He has given 
 free play to His fancy in order merely to please Himself and 
 
214 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 others, or for the sake of showy embellishment. Never has He 
 employed His sharpness of judgment for the mere purpose of 
 exercising His dialectic skill upon His own thoughts or those of 
 others, or beyond what was called for in order to the illustration 
 or exposition, the establishment or confutation, of those thoughts, 
 The artistic form of speech was never with Him an end in itself, 
 so as to turn attention upon itself and away from the matter of 
 discourse. The one aim of Jesus in regard to style and method 
 was to make His meaning plain, and show the importance of 
 His ideas. Therefore, He never used the arts of speech in 
 order to beguile His hearers by too lightly carrying them over 
 the difficulties of His teaching, or smoothing over its offensive 
 strictness. On the contrary, He has everywhere spoken with 
 perfect plainness, and has uttered, with the utmost strictness, 
 unpalatable declarations and hard commands, which practically 
 followed from His teaching, without ever palliating them or 
 making concessions. He employed, indeed, all his skill and 
 power of speech in order to convince His hearers of the truth of 
 His statements and the rightful authority of His precepts. It 
 was no object of His to present His teaching as something 
 specially novel and peculiar, and, because of its higher and 
 supernatural theme, as something strangely contrasted with 
 natural and earthly knowledge. He has, indeed, intentionally 
 emphasized the relationship of what He taught and commanded 
 to the ordinary earthly phenomena and the common modes of 
 human conduct. No facts of nature or of human life appeared 
 too small to be unable to aid Him in bringing His teaching of 
 the kingdom of God home to the human understanding." ¥ 
 
 2. Jesus taught as well by what He did as by what He said. His 
 actions, too, were those of an Ideal Teacher. 
 
 ( i ) He frequently taught by object-lessons. When the disciples asked 
 who should be greatest in the kingdom of heaven, he set a little 
 child before them. At their last supper together, He girded Himself as 
 a servant and washed their feet. Many of His miracles were lessons 
 as well. The curse of the barren fig-tree, for example, can be under- 
 stood in no other light. It was an acted parable. 
 
 * Wendt : " The Teaching of Jesus," Vol. I., pp. 14S-151. The chapter from which 
 this is taken, on " The External Form of the Teaching of Jesus," is the best treat- 
 ment of the subject for the teacher to read. Stevens' little book on " The Teach- 
 ing of Jesus" is excellent, as is also the brief treatment in Sanday's article on 
 "Jesus Christ " in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. 
 
THE IDEAL TEACHER : JESUS 215 
 
 (2) Both His words and His actions were socially motived. Jesus 
 lived among men, and entered naturally and wholesomely into their 
 social relations. His teaching has been called unsystematic. It was 
 so in a sense. He taught no formal system of dogmas ; He took no 
 pains to begin one lesson where the last had left off. He did not keep 
 
 . set school, and seems to have cared little for the precise theoretical 
 organization of the truth within the minds of His disciples. But His 
 teaching was thus unsystematic simply because it was so vital. He 
 taught, not subjects or creeds, but men. What He said and did always 
 bore an immediate relation to the situation He was in, and to the needs 
 and aspirations of those before Him. 
 
 (3) His training of the twelve was by life with them and for them. 
 He has given us in this a perfect example of education through social 
 association in a common task. Not content merely to teach them by 
 word of mouth, He bade them follow Him. He gave Himself to them, 
 and gave them work to do for Him. They went with Him in His 
 journeys ; they dwelt constantly in His presence. They helped Him 
 preach His kingdom ; they too worked miracles. He even sent them 
 out for themselves, to travel throughout the land teaching and healing. 
 He was preparing them to take His place and to carry on His work ; 
 and He prepared them thoroughly. They learned by doing. They 
 caught His spirit by association with Him. Through knowledge, 
 friendship and work He brought them to spiritual maturity. 
 
 (4) fesus was Himself the embodiment of all that He taught. Here 
 was the secret of His power, both with those He met in ordinary social 
 ways and with the chosen band of twelve. His was the example and 
 influence of a Perfect Life. He was Himself the Ideal that He sought 
 to teach. 
 
 3. In knowledge Jesus was an Ideal Teacher. He knew the 
 truth ; and He knew men. There was never doubt or question in 
 His mind as to what to teach. His vision penetrated beneath every 
 husk of circumstance to the great essential truth of God. No more did 
 He hesitate over the right way to approach particular men. He under- 
 stood human nature. He was quick to discern the needs of the sinful, 
 the doubting, the self-righteous, the perverse and the slow to compre- 
 hend. And He knew how to meet them, each in his own way. He 
 recognized fundamental differences of temperament and habitual atti- 
 tude. There was deep insight and shrewd practical wisdom as well as 
 patient love in the way that, day after day, he handled the impulsive 
 Peter. Very different, yet just as wise and loving, was His treatment 
 of Thomas, honest and slow to comprehend. 
 
210 LUTHERAN TEACHER-TRAINING SERIES 
 
 4. The source of Jesus' knowledge and authority made of 
 Him an Ideal Teacher. It was in His perfect sonship to God. And 
 by sonship we here mean not His unique position as the eternal Son of 
 God, but rather His maintenance throughout His earthly life of the 
 filial relation to God. He lived always in His Father's presence. He 
 let nothing cloud His vision of the Father's Will. He kept the way 
 always open between His mind and that of God ; and His heart re- 
 turned the love that the Father's heart bestowed upon Him. It was 
 from this source — this perfect filial relation — that He drew the strength 
 that kept Him sinless, and the truth that He taught with the freedom 
 and authority of perfect inward conviction. And this source of life and 
 truth, let it never be forgotten, is the deepest need of every man that 
 would teach another. 
 
 5. Jesus' supreme faith made Him an Ideal Teacher. He had 
 supreme faith in God, the Father who had sent Him. He had su- 
 preme faith in men — in the goodness of their fundamental instincts 
 and aspirations, in the possibility of their redemption from sin, in 
 their sonship to God and their eternal worth. He had a supreme 
 faith in His work — the redemption of men and the establishment of 
 the kingdom of God. He never doubted its worth or its ultimate 
 success. 
 
 Jesus manifested His faith, not only in all that He said, but even 
 more in what He did. He gave His life for men. And He did it 
 gladly, because of His faith in men. A less great teacher would have 
 wanted to live longer, to teach a little more, to make more sure that 
 his pupils could carry on his work after him. One of less faith 
 would have feared to entrust the spreading of the gospel to a group of 
 disciples whom he had taught but three years, and who had been so 
 slow to learn. But Jesus ceased His earthly teaching and left this 
 mortal life willingly, with supreme faith in the men whom He had 
 trained to take up His work as well as in the Father whose work it 
 was and is. 
 
 Let us draw from this our parting lesson. The teacher needs to be a 
 mati of faith. There are many times when our work seems empty 
 and success far away : and we may easily enough wonder whether it 
 is really worth while. May God help us then to hold fast to our 
 faith. And we need, above all else, the kind of faith that can give up 
 when the time comes, and let another go on with the work that we 
 have been able to do only that far. The teacher's work is by its very 
 nature vicarious. We teach that another may know. We serve that 
 our pupils may become able to dispense with our service. We begin 
 
THE IDEAL TEACHER : JESUS 217 
 
 a work within them that they must finish for themselves. We all need 
 to pray for the love that will move us to lay down our life for our 
 pupils, and for the faith that will gladly entrust to them the work that 
 we can never finish. 
 
 QUESTIONS 
 
 Will you read through one of the gospels, considering Jesus' life 
 from the standpoint taken in this chapter ? Make an outline of the 
 points brought out in the chapter, and find illustrations from the gos- 
 pel for each of them. Take several of Jesus' parables, and show in 
 detail how they meet the requirements of good story-telling and of 
 effective illustration, and how they show Jesus' ability to bring out 
 essential points clearly and vividly. Make a list of questions that 
 Jesus asked, and see how He made them serve the purposes of His 
 teaching. Find instances of His perfect knowledge of human nature, 
 and His ability to adapt His teaching to the needs of the individual. 
 Find some of the sayings and acts that prove His supreme faith in 
 God, in men, and in His work. 
 
Lutheran Teacher-Training 
 
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