THEORY VERSUS PRACTICE.
R. DENNIS sat regarding his caller with a thoughtful air, while she sat back in the rocker and fanned herself, trying to cool off her eagerness somewhat, and feeling that she was exhibiting herself as a very eager person indeed, and this calm man probably thought her impetuous. She resolved that the next remark he called forth should be made very quietly, and in as indifferent a manner as possible.
"Why should not the primary room be classified as well as the main department?" he asked, at last.
To Marion there was so much that was absurd involved in the question that it put her indifference to flight at once.
"Why should there be a separate room at all if they are to be so classified? Why not keep them in the regular department, under the superintendent's eye, and where they can have the benefit of the pastor's remarks?"
"Because while they are so young they need more freedom than can be given them in the main room. They need to be allowed to talk aloud, and to sing frequently, and to repeat in concert."
"Precisely; and they do not need to be set down in corners, to be whispered at for a few minutes. Besides, Dr. Dennis, don't you think that if in the school proper, the scholars were all of nearly the same age and the same mental abilities—I mean if they averaged in that way—it would be wiser to have very large classes and very few teachers?"
"There are reasons in favor of that, and reasons against it," he said, thoughtfully. "I am inclined, however, to think that the arguments in favor overbalance the objections; still, the serious objection is, that a faithful teacher wants little personal talks with her pupils, and will contrive to be personal in a way that she cannot do so well in a large class."
"That is true," Marion said, as one yields a point that is new to her, and that strikes her as being sensible. "But the same objection cannot be made in the primary classes, because little children are innocent and full of faith and frankness. There is no need of special privacy when you talk with them on religious topics; they would just as soon have all the world know that they want to love and serve Jesus as not; they are not a bit ashamed of it; it is not until they grow older, and the influences of silent tongues on that subject all around them have had their effect, that they need to be approached with such caution."
"How is it that you are so much at home in these matters, Miss Wilbur? For one who has been a Christian but a few weeks you amaze me."
Marion laughed and flushed, and felt the first tinge of embarrassment that had troubled her since the talk began.
"Why," she said, hesitatingly, "I suppose, perhaps, I have common sense, and see no reason why it should be smothered when one is talking about such matters. People's brains are not made over when they are converted. The same class of rules apply to them, I suppose, that applied before."
"I shouldn't wonder if a majority of people thought that common sense had nothing to do with religion," he said, laughing; "and that is what makes us silly and sentimental when we try to talk about it. In our effort to be solemn, and suit our words to the theme, we are unnatural. But your statement with regard to the little children is true; I have often observed it."
"That other point, about visiting, was the one that troubled me," Marion said. "It doesn't annihilate it to say that teachers don't visit; they don't, to be sure, with here and there a delightful exception. My experience on this matter, as well as on several other matters connected with the subject, reaches beyond these few weeks of personal experience. I have had my eyes very wide open; I was alive to inconsistencies wherever I found them; the world and the church, and especially the Sunday-school, seemed to me to be full of professions without any practice. I rather enjoyed finding such flaws. Why I thought the thin spots in other people's garments would keep me any warmer, I am sure I don't know; but I was fond of bringing them to the surface.
"Still, because a duty isn't done is no sign that it cannot be. Of course a teacher with six pupils could visit them frequently, while one with a hundred could do it but rarely; and yet, systematic effort would accomplish a great deal in that direction, it seems to me. I don't know why we should have more than fifty people in our churches; certainly the pastor could visit them much more frequently, and keep a better oversight, than when he had eight hundred, as you have; yet we don't think it the best way after all. We recognize the enthusiasm of numbers and the necessity for economizing good workers so long as the field for work is so large.
"But I know a way in which a strong personal influence could be kept over even a hundred children; by keeping watch for the sick and sorrowing in their homes, and establishing an intimacy there, and by making a gathering of some sort, say twice a year, or oftener, if a person could, and giving the day to them; and, well, in a hundred different ways that I will not take your time to speak of; only we teachers of day-schools know that we can make our influence far reaching, even when our numbers are large; and we know that there is such an influence in numbers and in disciplined action, that, other things being equal, we can teach mathematics to a class of fifty better than we can to a class of five; and if mathematics, why not the Lord's Prayer?
"Now I have relieved my mind on this subject," she added, laughing, as she arose, "and I feel a good deal better. Mind, I haven't said at all that the present system cannot be carried out successfully; I only say that I can't do it. I have tried it and failed; it is not according to my way of working."
"But the remedy, my dear friend; in our class, for instance. Suppose we wanted to reorganize, what would we do with the teachers in rule at present?"
Marion dropped back again into her chair with a dismayed little laugh and an expressive shrug of her shapely shoulders.
"Now you have touched a vital difficulty," she said. "I don't pretend to be able to help people out of a scrape like that. Having gotten themselves in, they must get out the best way they can, if there is any way."
"I am surprised that you do not suggest that they be unceremoniously informed that their services are not needed, and advise them to join a Bible class," Dr. Dennis said, dryly. "That is the practical and helpful way that the subject is often disposed of in our conventions. I often wonder if those who so suggest would like to be the pastor of the church where such advice was adopted, and undertake to heal all the sores that would be the result."
"So long as human nature is made of the queer stuff that it is, I offer no such remedy," Marion said, decidedly. "It is very odd that the people who do the least work in this world are the most sensitive as to position, etc. No, I see the trouble in the way. It could be partly disposed of in time, by sending all these sub-classes out into the other school, and organizing a new primary class out of the babies who have not yet come in."
"But there would be an injustice there. It would send out many babies who ought to have the privileges of the primary-room for some time yet."
"And there is another difficulty; it would send out those young girls as teachers of the children, and they are not fit to teach; they should be studying."
"After all," he said, going back to his own thoughts, instead of answering her last remark, "wouldn't the style of teaching that you suggest for this one woman and her assistant involve an unusual degree of talent, and consecration, and abnegation?"
"Yes," Marion said, quickly and earnestly, "I think it would; and I believe that there is no teaching done in our Sabbath-school that is worthy of the name that does not involve all of these requirements; especially is it the case in teaching little children divine truths; one might teach them the alphabet without positive mental injury if they were not fully in sympathy, yet I doubt that; but one cannot teach the Sermon on the Mount in a way to reach the child-heart unless one is thoroughly and solemnly in earnest, and loves the souls of the little children so much that she can give up her very self for them.
"This is my theory; I want to work toward it. That is one of the strong reasons why I think two or three teachers are better for a primary class than twenty; because a church can generally furnish that number of really consecrated workers that she can spare for the primary class, while to find twenty who can be spared for that room one would need to go to paradise I am afraid. Now I know, Dr. Dennis, that such talk sounds as if I were insufferably conceited; but I don't believe I am; I simply know what I am willing to try to do; and, to a certain extent, I know what I can do. Why should I not? I have tried it a long time."
"If you are conceited," Dr. Dennis said, smiling, "it is a real refreshing form for it to appear in. I am almost a convert to your theory; at least so far as I need converting. If I should tell you that something like your idea has always been mine, you would not consider me a hypocrite, would you?"
"If you think so, why have we the present system in our school?"
"My dear friend, I did not manufacture the school; it is as I found it; and there are those young ladies, who, however unfaithful they are—and a few of them are just that—do not reach the only point where they could give positive help, that of resigning, and giving us a chance to do better. Besides, they are, as you say, sensitive; they do not like to be called to account for occasional absences; in fact, they do not like being controlled in any way."
"That is one of the marked difficulties," Marion said, eagerly. "Now I have heard people talk, who led you to infer that it was the easiest thing in life to mold these young teachers into the required shape and form; that you had only to sweetly suggest and advise and direct, and they sweetly succumbed. Now, don't their mothers know that young ladies naturally do no such thing? It is very difficult for them to yield their opinions to one whose authority they do not recognize; and they are not fond of admitting authority even where family life sanctions it. Oh, the whole subject is just teeming with difficulties; put it in any form you will, it seems to me to be a mistake.
"Where you give these young ladies the lesson to teach, the diverse minds that are brought to bear on it make it almost impossible for the leader to give an intelligent summing up. How is she to discover what special point has been taken up by each teacher? As a bit of private experience, I think she will be a fortunate woman if she finds that any point at all has been reached in many of the classes.
"There is only now and then a teacher who believes that little children are capable of understanding the application of a story. I can't understand why, if that is the best method of managing a primary class, people take the trouble to have a separate room and another superintendent. Why don't they stay in the main department? I always thought that one of the special values of a separate room was that the lesson may be given in a distinct and natural tone of voice, and with illustrations and accompaniments that cannot be used, where many classes are together, without disturbing some of them.
"If, on the other hand, the sub-teachers are not expected to give the lesson, but only to teach certain opening recitations, then you have the spectacle of employing a dozen or twenty persons to do the work of one. Then there's another thing; our room is not suited to the plan of subdivision, and there is only occasionally a room that has been built to order, which is—"
"On the whole, you do not at all believe in the plan of subdivision," Dr. Dennis said, laughing.
And then callers came, and Marion took her leave.
"I am not quite sure whether I like him or dislike him, or whether I am afraid of him just a trifle." This she said to the girls as they went home from prayer-meeting. "He has a queer way of branching off from the subject entirely, just when you suppose that you have interested him. Sometimes he interrupts with a sentence that sounds wonderfully as if he might be quizzing you. He is a trifle queer anyway. I don't believe I love him with all the zeal that a person should bestow on a pastor. I am loyal on that subject theoretically, but practically I stand in awe."
"I don't see how you can think him sarcastic," Flossy said. "There is not the least tinge of that element in his nature, I think; at least I have never seen it. I don't feel afraid of him, either; once I thought I should; but he is so gentle and pleasant, and meets one half way, and understands what one wants to tell better than they understand themselves. Oh, I like him ever so much. He is not sarcastic to me."
Marion looked down upon the fair little girl at her side with a smile that had a sort of almost motherly tenderness in it, as she said, gently:
"One would be a very bear to think of quizzing a humming-bird, you know. It would be very silly in him to be sarcastic to you."
Eurie interrupted the talk:
"What is the matter with the prayer-meetings?" she asked. "Do any of you know? I do wish we could do something to make them less forlorn. I am almost homesick every time I go. If there were more people there the room wouldn't look so desolate. Why on earth don't the people come?"
"Constitutionally opposed to prayer-meetings; or it is too warm, or too damp, or too something, for most of them to go out," Marion said.
And Ruth added:
"It is not wonderful that you find sarcastic people in the world, Marion. The habit grows on you."
"Does it," Marion asked, speaking with sadness. "I am sorry to hear that. I really thought I was improving."
"The question is, can we do anything to improve matters?" Eurie said. "Can't we manage to smuggle some more people into that chapel on Wednesday evenings?"
"Invite them to go, do you mean?" Flossy said, and her eyes brightened. "I never thought of that. We might get our friends to go. Who knows what good might be done in that way? What if we try it?"
Ruth looked gloomy. This way of working was wonderfully distasteful to her. She specially disliked what she called thrusting unpopular subjects on people's attention. But she reflected that she had never yet found a way to work which she did like; so she was silent.
Flossy, according to her usual custom, persistently followed up the new idea.
"Let us try it," she said. "Suppose we pledge ourselves each to bring another to the meeting next week."
"If we can," Marion said, significantly.
"Well, of course, some of us can," Eurie answered. "You ought to be able to, anyway. There you are in a school-room, surrounded by hundreds of people who ought to go; and in a boarding-house, coming in contact with dozens of another stamp, who are in equal need. I should think you had opportunities enough."
"I know it," Marion said, promptly. "If I were only situated as you are, with nobody but a father and mother, and a brother and a couple of sisters to ask—people who are of no special consequence to you, and about whom it will make no personal difference to you whether they go to church or not—it would be some excuse for not bringing anybody; but a boarding-house full of men and women, and a room full of school girls!—consider your privileges, Marion Wilbur."
Eurie laughed.
"Oh, I can get Nell to go," she said. "He nearly always does what I want him to. But I was thinking how many you have to work among."
"Six people are as good to work among as sixty, until you get them all," Marion answered, quickly.
As for Ruth, it was only the darkness that hid her curling lip. She someway could not help disliking people who, like Nellis Mitchell, always did what they were asked to do, just to oblige. Also, she dreaded this new plan. She had no one to ask, no one to influence. So she said to herself, gloomily, although (knowing that it was untrue) she did not venture to say it aloud. She gave consent, of course, to the proposition to try by personal effort to increase the number at prayer-meeting. It would be absurd to object to it. She did not care to own that she shrunk from personal effort of this sort; it was a grief to her very soul that she did so shrink.
"Remember, we stand pledged to try for one new face at the prayer-meeting," Eurie said, as she bade them good night. "Pledged to try, you understand, Marion, we can at least do that, even if we don't succeed."
"In the meantime, remember that we have our Bible evening to-morrow," Marion returned. "You are to come bristling with texts from your standpoint; it will not do to forget that."
