II.—SABBATH-SCHOOL BIBLE STUDY. BY PRESIDENT D. S. GREGORY, D.D. NO. I. A FRIEND always calls the Sabbath-school the Bible-school. He thus embodies the ideal conception of the Sabbath-school as a school devoted to the study of the Word of God. That is the ideal which the majority of teachers have conscientiously sought to realize from the origin of the institution. PAST METHODS AND PROGRESS. It seems to the writer, scanning the past, that there has been a steady progress toward the end aimed at. There lies just at hand a Bible received forty years ago, from a Brooklyn Sabbath-school, as a prize for committing to memory the largest number of verses of Scripture in proof of a certain doctrine. It is a relic of a method that did not call for much intelligent study. There followed in the schools the day of the consecutive study of some of the books of Scripture, chiefly of the Gospels, with such helps. as the old question books of the American Sunday-school Union. It was a real merit of this method that it led the child to study the verses in the order and connection given them by the Divine Wisdom, rather than as scattered proof-texts; but it involved little exegetical or critical examination of the great themes of the Gospel, and comparatively little attempt at careful explanation of the essential and fundamental teachings of the Scripture. Its faults were numerous and patent. There was little or no attempt to bring out the historical and logical relations of the verses and parts of the Gospel to each other in a connected whole, and no effort to reach a harmony of the gospels. Another method soon came into vogue, the aim of which was to add the study of harmony to what had gone before, and to increase the available apparatus for study. Mimpriss and Company took the place of the former leaders and guides, and the Sabbath-school teachers followed Mr. Beecher and all the rest in constructing Lives of Christ. Maps, charts and blackboards were introduced, and illustration and machinery multiplied until there came a general surfeit. Possibly it may have occurred to some people that the Lord knew what He was about when He gave men four gospels instead of one gospel. The manifest want of real method in the various so-called methods of Bible study led, in time, to the desire for progress in this direction. Hence the many fanciful, acrostic, mnemonic and other plans for the help of teachers and pupils. These were not altogether new devices, as that prince of Sunday-school men, Dr. H. Clay Trumbull, has recently shown in his admirable book on Teaching and Teachers. Emanuel Deutsch, in his essay on the Talmud, shows that the Jewish rabbins employed the mnemonic method, in their study of the Scriptures, after the Babylonish captivity. Prof. Wilkinson suggested the plan of "The Three W's": "What? Why? What of It?" based upon ancient oratorical usage. This was expanded into "The Five W's": "When? Where? Whom? What? Why?" Dr. John H. Vincent grouped the points of departure in study under "The Four P's and the Four D's." The teacher should attend to the Parallel Passages, Persons, Places, Dates, Doings, Doctrines and Duties involved in the teachings of the lesson. Such schemes open infinite avenues of investigation, along which the average teacher is likely to branch out so widely as never to find his way back again. The zeal for irrelevant geography, botany, zoology, and the ten thousand petty things have naturally resulted where wise guidance was wanting. Ten years and more ago the conscious need for an advance led to the adoption of "The International Series of Lessons." These have their manifest advantages. A passage of Scripture is selected, embodying some great lesson which is brought out in a brief, clear statement to be put into the hands of all teachers. Time is thus given for various authors and public journals to furnish more or less elaborate explanation and illustration of each lesson. An effort has been made. -with perhaps increasing success-to introduce some connection and unity into the lessons. It was felt that the detached lessons of a given period-say a quarter or half year-had but little hold upon the memory, and that a course of seven years was beyond the reach of many. There has been a widely-expressed—and apparently growing-dissent from this method, especially on the part of teachers capable of doing their own work, and on the part of the higher Bible classes. It tends, they think, to confine all to subjects that may not be most profitable to all; to detract from the self-activity of the teacher and scholar in the study of the Scriptures; to foster new and lucrative publishing monopolies; to foist upon the Churches the loose views of illogical and incompetent so-called commentators on Scripture; and thus to stop the study of the Bible itself. Even more serious is the objection that the connection of the lessons is a man-made and mechanical one, instead of a God-made and natural one. The lessons will never be likely to appear in the same connection again, and so will be hard to hold together, and harder still to hold in the memory. They will not be like "nails fastened by the Master of assemblies" in a sure place. Many are heard expressing the wish to return to the old plan of consecutive study of the various books of the Bible. They want direct and constant contact, not with Lesson Papers, but with the Word of God. This might, of course, be to turn back the wheels of progress from a quarter to half a century, and thus to lose all the progress that has been made in method, in definiteness of lesson and in unity of lesson scheme, in that long period. The next step forward must retain all these valuable features, and add to them what is felt to be lacking in the methods of the past. In the judgment of many sound and competent thinkers the time has fully come for the introduction of such new method, especially into the higher Bible classes. At the request of the Editor of THE HOMILETIC REVIEW, the writer ventures to suggest A NEW GENERAL METHOD that seems to him to meet the present call for further progress in Bible instruction, while holding fast what is best in the results of past experiments. This general method will be sketched in brief form in the present paper, leaving the subsequent papers the work of unfolding that part of the plan having special reference to the more advanced Bible classes. It will be necessary to present certain salient features in the improvements that seem to be called for, before proposing a tentative outline of the courses of study to be pursued. The right method should assume that the immediate aim of Bible instruction is to implant in the mind and heart the truth of that Divine Word which is "quick and powerful," and which the Spirit of God uses in the conversion and edification of souls. This implanting is clearly within the sphere of the teacher. The conversion and edification of souls, always to be kept in view, but always with the recognition that it belongs to the sphere of the Holy Spirit, is the ultimate aim. The teacher's work is to teach the Word, looking continually to God to give it efficacy. While the importance of the conversion of the child cannot be overestimated, it is to be feared that the present tendency is to forget the immediate end in seeking the ultimate, and thus to fail in the ultimate. The maxim should be: Honor the Word, and in faith leave God's work to Him. The right method must assume that life is limited. Before a single comprehensive course, claiming to be such, should be allowed to sweep over several years, it should certainly possess some remarkable merits. Rather, it is claimed, that the main essential truths of the Word of God should be brought each year, at least, before the minds of those who are being instructed. This would require that the truth be presented in new phases from year to year, rather than in extended courses. The right method, in dealing with the youthful mind, must take due note of the fundamental principles of education and instruction that have been already established beyond dispute. The correct principles of education require that, as the mind is unfolding, the subjects presented to it shall be adapted to the stages of mental progress. These stages may be roughly stated as being those in which the mind grasps truth: First, as fact presented in story, or simple narrative; second, as fact in narrative, in connection with the causes and consequences of events; third, as doctrinal and practical truth in concrete form or example; fourth, as doctrinal and practical truth in more abstract form, and arranged in rational system; fifth, as truth embodied in literary form and critically studied in its organic unity and relations. One main defect of the present method is that it ignores this fundamental requirement of education. The same lessons are not adapted to all classes. As a consequence, the method fails to accomplish the full purpose of instruction, or of building up into a complete knowledge of Christian truth. It makes no provision for the work of the lowest stages, and none for that of the highest. A remedy for these defects is emphatically demanded. The following course of study is outlined as a suggestion toward what needs to be done to meet the present requirement for further progress. It aims to conform to the advance of the child in his mental development. The child should remain in each course until ready for the next. First Course. Simple narrations. This should present the great events of Bible History in the form of story, as suited to the first stage in the child's development-the story of Jesus to be made specially prominent in it. The remarkable popularity of the Bible stories. themselves, as well as of such books as "The Story of the Bible," shows the powerful hold of these stories upon the mind at the age when it is specially acquisitive of facts. Second Course. Causal narrations. This may present the great events and characters of Bible History as parts of the Story of Redemption, bringing out the main causes and consequences in connection with them. At this stage the child begins to look beyond the facts, backward and forward, becoming inquisitive concerning causes and consequences. Third Course. Doctrinal and practical truth in concrete form. This should present the great fundamental truths of redemption as embodied in concrete form in the Bible History. Man's fall and sinful estate, the covenants of law and grace, the person and work of Christ, the way of salvation from sin, the Christian's life on earth and his hope beyond, may thus be studied in connection with those prominent Scriptural events and characters that ought to be fixed in the minds of all men. The mind of the youth is now ready to take hold of these themes in this form. Fourth Course. Doctrinal and practical truth in rational system. This would present the system of redemption in its more abstract and doctrinal form, as explained and reasoned out in the Bible, and in connection with its truth as the basis and material. It should follow some systematic outline, like that remarkable book, Dr. Charles Hodge's "Way of Life." This will meet the rising demand, in the mind of the now maturing youth, for a connected view and statement of the grand truths of the common Christian faith. Along with this, each denomination could introduce its own peculiar tenets at pleasure, thereby supplementing the system according to its own views of truth. Fifth Course. The Bible and its separate books as organic wholes. This would meet the demands of the period of critical and constructive thought which comes with matured intelligence, especially in such a critical age as the present. It would tend to give a knowledge of the Word of God at once accurate, profound and comprehensive, and that would confirm, broaden and complete the views of historical, doctrinal and practical truth implanted in the mind by the previous courses. In each of these Courses, and at all stages of progress, the teacher should constantly keep in mind the ultimate aim of all his work, as already stated, while laboring with his best skill for the immediate end of filling the mind with God's truth. It is not claimed that the make-up here suggested is, in every case, essential to these various Courses, but only that the proper attention must be given to the educational principles underlying the arrangement of these Courses. The material of the Courses is suggested, in other words, not as a finality, but in order, it may be, to direct attention and discussion toward what, in the conviction of many, must be the direction taken in the future progress of instruction in our Bibleschools. Subsequent papers will outline and illustrate the method of studying separate books of the Bible as wholes, in advanced Bible Classes, as suggested under the Fifth Course above outlined. PULPIT III. SYMPOSIUM ON THE PULPIT: "IS THE NO. II. BY JOHN A. BROADUS, D.D., LOUISVILLE, KY. OUR question cannot be answered in the lump. In a matter so complex and comprehensive there must be analysis. The Pulpit is probably declining in power in some respects, and not in others. Those who broadly assert that the Pulpit has lost power are in many cases influenced in their judgment by special causes. A good many persons think that everything is degenerating. These are chiefly old men who have a romantic yearning after a glorified past. And then |