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.

1. 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:

(1) 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 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

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 development 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.

(1) He should choose a single aim for each lesson. Have one purpose, one central thought; and stick to it. Some teachers go at a lesson 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 application 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 collection 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 conception 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.

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 passage 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 perspective 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 teacher'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 #piritual truth, just because his point in writing was not always such.

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 sermon, 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 lesHe 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 development of the theme.

son.

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 whatever he may already know about it or related matters, that he may feel a need of further knowledge, and that those ideas may be uppermost 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 abstraction. It is a working over of the lesson material. The facts presented 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 and consequence, that bind them together into a coherent whole. If the previous step is one of perception, this is one of reasoning. Presentation seeks to make the pupil see facts; association, to understand their relations.

(4) Generalization. The new truth embodied in the facts is for

*The 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

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 would 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, studying 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.