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words and actions, and attribute to them thoughts and feelings which only an adult could have. Our grown-up point of view almost inevitably 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 Martin 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 observed 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 religion; but none has a separate mental faculty for it. It is your business, 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 citizenship. 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 completely fitted for life, for citizenship, or for social service. No education 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 educational 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

sure: The Sunday school must feel its responsibility as an educational institution. It must realize that it shares with the public school a common task. It must do its part of the work of education with as much definiteness of aim, soundness of method and efficiency of organization, 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 education. 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 now as never before that it is in the school that society best shapes itself and perpetuates its interests and ideals. We have come to see that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.† Schools and colleges are multiplying, and are being brought ever closer to the concrete interests 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.

+ Dewey: "My Pedagogic Creed."

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 emphasized. 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 maturity 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 responsibility. Paul said of himself and Apollos, "We are God's fellowworkers." 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 o His service the highest energy, the best equipment and the most ficient methods that you can.

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 children?

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 advantages 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 Sunday 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

1. Everyone recognizes that there are certain periods of develop. ment through which we all pass in the growth from babyhood to maturity, 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 boundary lines may be drawn.

As a matter of fact, there are no hard and fast periods, and no exact boundary lines. Growth is gradual 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 children, 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 corresponding departments of the Sunday school are:

(1) 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: Intermediate.

(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 piay, and his hands are always busy at something. He is seldom content 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.

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