Lord's parables constantly, that they not only chain the attention 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 effective 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.

(1) 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 logically-grasping its point, and holding its details in right relation. He must possess it in feeling-putting his heart into the situation he describes. It is worse than useless to tell a story that you do not yourself 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, irrelevant 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 something 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."†

Nothing spoils a story so

(4) Maintain logical unity and movement. 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. † Hervey: " Picture-Work," p. 41.

in at its rightful place, then backing up later to supply it. No storyteller 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 him 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 telling. 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 reiterate 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 playing the parts of his stories; he is merely arousing the imagination 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.

(b) Fact value. Seeing gives more definite knowledge than hearing. "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 "How to Tell Stories to Children," p. 102.

* Bryant :

material to the imagination. The pupil's ideas become more concrete and definite, his mental pictures clearer.

(c) Ideal value. The pictures of a great artist do more than represent 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 particular 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.

(1) 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 opportunity 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.

(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 really 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 possibilities 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 whose 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

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 doubtless 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 illustration 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 danger that object teaching may degrade the interests 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 volcano 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 in Lesson III. of this book.