Experience will soon teach the teacher, if his eyes are open, the need of copious illustration. Astronomers tell us that it is very difficult to see the smallest objects visible to us in the sky, if they are in the form of little dots. They may have dimensions very much smaller and still be visible easily, if they are extended into lines of light. So with the points of our lessons. They will miss attention entirely or gain it with difficulty, while they remain merely points. We must extend them, by the use of consecrated wits.
Chapter XXII
The Sunday-School and the Newspaper
On several pages of this book I have hinted at the use of the newspaper in our teaching; but the theme deserves a chapter to itself. An up-to-date teacher is respected, and it is largely the newspaper that brings one up to date. We must put our lessons into touch with life, and the newspaper is our modern compendium of life—very faulty, but all we have. The best illustration of the lesson is one your scholars find; the next best, one you find yourself; and only the third best, one found for you by the skilful writers of your lesson helps. The newspapers are mines of original illustrations.
They constitute, for example, a magazine of warnings. Hardly a number but tells of a defalcation sprung from gambling, of the ruin accomplished by the theater and dance-hall, of the mischief caused by sensational literature, and everywhere and always of the rum-fiend's devilish work. Why Saul fell, and David, and Solomon,—your scholars must know that; but their sense of the reality of sin and its fearful power will be deepened by noting the fall of men and women in this present world, and learning what brought shipwreck to their souls. A misplaced switch last week threw a train from the track and killed a man. What a warning against carelessness! Early Wednesday morning a drunken woman was found asleep on an ash-pile, her little girl sobbing by her side. What a lesson on the evil wrought by rum! Of all the sins and faults against which the Bible utters its great warnings, there is none we may not illustrate freshly and vividly from the newspaper.
But that is only half, and the lower half. By sharp search we may find in our papers many a thrilling example of heroism and noble service. Would that our reporters more frequently chronicled the good! Yet here is a fire at which a fireman risked his life to save a little child. And here is a cashier that braved death rather than open the safe for the robbers. And here is a lad whose shoulder was dislocated by stopping a runaway horse. And here is a heroic rescue of men and women from a shipwreck. We do not get from the newspaper the daily acts of devotion and faithfulness so honored in the eye of heaven; but we do get the splendid deeds, the stirring, romantic victories, that will move the girls and boys to knightly action.
Newspapers, too, give an outlook over the world. The confining walls melt away, and your lesson takes wide sweeps under a broad sky. Every session of Congress considers many matters of the highest import for the kingdom of God. Our great offices are filled with men of strong character, acting out upon a grand scale lives potent for good or evil. In the lands across the seas great events are occurring, each exhibiting some phase of godliness or sin. You will exalt the gospel mightily in the minds of your scholars if you can show them how its principles solve the problems of our government, and underlie all wise action of the nations of the world.
It has already been indicated how the temperance lesson, that quarterly bugbear of some teachers, may be illuminated by the newspaper. Thus also may the missionary lesson. So profoundly do missions affect any nation they touch, and so closely are they interwoven with its life, that whatever of importance befalls any people has its missionary bearings. The Sultan cannot massacre the Armenians, or France seize Madagascar, or Japan fight China, or Hawaii depose its queen, or a revolution occur in South America, without entanglement with the omnipresent missionaries of the cross. To make the scholars feel this through wise references to current events is immensely to broaden their conception of the church and its work.