Part 6 (1/2)

1 =His Qualifications= There are on the American continent not less than a ospel their free-will offering of tiineers or the raduates of schools that have given the for a special vocation In every respect they are layed for six days in secular work, and on one day finding an avocation in the Sunday school

Yet there are certain traits, partly natural and partly acquired, which they must possess, if they are to find success in their Sabbath-day service

(1) _A Sincere Disciple_ The Sunday-school teacher must be a follower of Christ, not merely in profession but in spirit He is one who has met his Lord, has heard and has obeyed the call, ”Follow rand army of which Christ is the Conment to the army corps of the Sunday school, and his fidelity to the department is inspired by his deeper loyalty to his Lord It is eminently desirable that the Sunday-school teacher should be a member of the church; but it is imperative that he should be a disciple of Christ

(2) _A Lover of Youth_ By far the largest proportion of scholars in the Sunday school, perhaps nine tenths, are under twenty-five years of age

Therefore, with few exceptions, the teachers es is not easy to understand and to e Moreover, the fact that not only the teachers, but to a large extent the scholars, are volunteers enters into the problem Pupils attend the week-day school and submit to a teacher's rule because they must, whether their teachers are acceptable or are disliked But the rule in the Sunday school is not the law of authority; it is the law of persuasion The teacher who cannot draw his scholars, but repels the sympathy, or the coordination between the interest of the teacher in the pupil and of the pupil in the teacher, is a strong factor in success; but in the Sunday school it is an absolute necessity by reason of the voluntary element in the constitution of the Sunday school That enial spirits, and fuse the hearts of teacher and scholar into one, is love Let the teacher love his scholars, let him see in each pupil some quality to inspire love, and the battle is half won

Love will quicken tact, and love and tact together in the complete victory

(3) _A Lover of the Scriptures_ Whatever the Sunday school of to-morrow may become, the Sunday school of to-day is preeminently a Bible school

There are tendencies in our tieneration render the Bible less prominent, and introduce into the Sunday school studies in church history, in social science, in ion, or in soreat text-book of the school is the Holy Scriptures The volume should be in the hand of every teacher and of every scholar during the school session; and the teacher, especially,the week If all of the Bible that he knows is contained in the paragraphs assigned for the co lesson, and the rest of the book is sealed to his eyes, he will be a very poor teacher He needs to have his mind stored with a thousand facts, and to have these facts systematized, in order to teach ten; and the nine hundred and ninety which he knoill add all their weight to the ten which he tells

(4) _A Willing Worker_ The teacher's love for Christ, for his scholars, and for his Bible is not to expend itself in emotion or even in study; it is to find expression in efficient service A task is laid upon him which will demand much of his time and his power of body, mind, and spirit He must be ready to meet his class fifty-two Sundays in the year: on days of sunshi+ne and days of storer for the work, and when he is weary in it; when his scholars are responsive, and when they are careless; when his felloorkers are congenial, and when they are anti-pathetic; when his lesson is easy to teach, and when it is hard He ular in his service, not turned aside by opportunities of enjoyive to it all his powers and all his skill Work such as this can be sustained only by an enduring enthusiasm, a devotion to the cause; and therefore the teacher must have his heart enlisted as well as his will

As a Sunday-school teacher, then, four harmonious objects will claim a share in his love: his Lord, his scholars, his Bible, and his work

2 =His Need of Training= For two generations it was supposed that any person fairly intelligent, without special equipment, was fitted to be a Sunday-school teacher There are found no records of training classes in Sunday-school work earlier than 1855, when the Rev John H Vincent began to gather young people and train theton, New Jersey The seed of his ”Palestine Class” grew into the ”Normal Class”; and by 1869 there were in a few places classes for the teaching of teachers in the Bible and Sunday-school work It is not re should be delayed so long after the organization of the first Sunday school, when it is remembered that in America the first Normal School for secular teachers was not founded until 1839 The Chautauquai; the state associations and denoanizations took up the work; and now teacher-training classes are to be found in every state and province on the Araded school includes in its syste people who are to be teachers

It is late in the day to inquire why the Sunday-school teacher needs training; but the question is often asked, and the answers are ready:

(1) _The General Principle_ All good work involves the prerequisite of training Especially is this true of teaching; and there is a reason why the principle holds with regard to the Sunday-school teacher even more directly than with the secular teacher While the subjects of teaching are vitally i to character and efficient service, the ti is short, less than an hour each week, in contrast to the twenty or twenty-five hours in the week-day school Toperiod, with such long intervals between the lessons, demands that the teacher be one who possesses exceptional fitness for his work, and this superior fitness cannot be obtained without special and thorough training

(2) _The Teacher's Responsibility_ All-i, for which the Bible is the chief text-book in the church, there is but one institution in our tihty duty, and that is the Sunday school The Bible is rarely taught in the ho it; it is only incidentally taught in the pulpit, of which the aim is not soof the Bible now devolves upon the Sunday school, and the Sunday school only If the Sunday schools of the world for one generation should fail to teach the word of life, the knowledge of that ould well-nigh cease And the one person charged with that task, the one on whom the responsibility rests, is the Sunday-school teacher He who is intrusted with so great a work, and upon whose fidelity the work depends, must have a proper equip

(3) _The Dee, unparalleled in the history of the world The boundaries of knowledge in every direction have widened, and in each realh Such wealth has been added through recent investigations to the store of Bible knowledge that most commentaries, expositions, and introductions of the past have now but slight value Another exceedingly ie is that of child study, but recently an unexplored field, now open to every reader In such a time as this the teacher ould i must have eyes and ation in the Scriptures and in the nature of those whom he teaches His pupils are under the care of trained and alert specialists through the week; they ht minds in the Sunday school

(4) _The Teacher and His Class_ The peculiar relation already referred to as existing between the Sunday-school teacher and his class presents another incentive to training His relation is not like that of the secular teacher, who speaks with authority, and can command attention and study The teacher in Sunday school cannot require his scholars to learn the lesson; the authority of the parent is rarely employed to compel home study; and as a result most of our scholars come to the Sunday school unprepared This is not the ideal or the ultimate condition, but unfortunately it is still the real condition in at least nine out of ten Sunday-school classes This condition reater Because his scholars are unprepared he must be all the better prepared He must be able to awaken and arouse his pupils; he must inspire them to an interest in the lesson; he e of the truth and a desire to seek it for theer to learn; but to teach those who come to the class unprepared and careless, to send the of the lesson, and an awakened intelligence and conscience--all this, under the conditions of the Sunday-school teacher's task, and in his peculiar relation to his scholars, requires not only ability, but also thoroughly trained ability

In view of all these considerations, it is not surprising that at the opening of the twentieth century the de, and for teachers who have theht and are able to teach others

XIV

THE TRAINING AND TASK OF THE TEACHER

1 =The Training Needed= Many faithful workers in the Sunday school realize their need of preparation; but, while conscious of unfitness, they have no clear conception of the equipe which should be traversed by one who has been called to teach in the Sunday school? They comprise four departments: (1) the Book, (2) the scholar, (3) the school, and (4) the work

(1) _The Book_ We have already noted that the Sunday school is differentiated from other systems of education in the fact that it uses mainly but one text-book, the Holy Scriptures For that reason the teacher hly as possible with the contents of that wonderful volume He should be a twentieth century Bible student; not a student or a scholar according to the light of the Middle Ages, or the seventeenth century, or even of the first half of the nineteenth century; for in all those periods the aims, the methods, and the scope of Bible study were different from those of the present time He who is to teach the Bible successfully to-dayaspects:

(a) Its Origin and Nature He must have a definite idea of how the sixty-six books of Scripture were composed, written, and preserved; and, as far as may be knoere their authors

(b) Its History The Bible is,the record of a people who received the divine revelation and preserved it The divine revelation cannot be taught nor comprehended unless the annals of that remarkable people, the Israelites, be first read and understood Therefore biblical history should be the first subject to be studied by the teacher in the Sunday school The leading facts and underlying principles of that unique history must be understood; not in an outline of eneral landscape, in which each lesson of the Bible will take its place