Sunday-School Success / A Book of Practical Methods for Sunday-School Teachers and Officers

by Amos R. Wells

But though many questions are too hard to ask, no question is too easy, and no point is so simple that in these first days you may safely take it for granted. Laugh if you please, but I do not think that even these days of sand-maps and pricked cards have produced a method much more helpful for the primary teacher than the old questioning of my boyhood, over and over repeated: "Who was the first man?" "Who was the strongest man?" "Who was the oldest man?" and the like.

The primary teacher's right-hand man is named Drill,—Ernest Drill. No mnemonic help—that is a help—is to be despised. Rhymes giving in order the books of the Bible, the Commandments, Beatitudes, list of the twelve apostles, may wisely be used. No memory verse or golden text, once learned, should be allowed to lapse into that easy pit, a child's quick forgetfulness. Better one thing remembered than a hundred things forgotten. Foundation-stones are few and simple, but they must be firm.

Now the first essential, if one would do this foundation work successfully, is to get a room to work in. A room that lets in floods of sunshine and fresh air. A room with pretty pictures and bright mottoes on the wall, with canary songs and blooming plants. A room with little chairs, graded to the scholars' little heights. A room with a visitors' gallery for the mothers. Or, if your church was not blessed with a Sunday-school architect, then such a room in a house next door or across the street, to which your class may withdraw after the opening exercises. Or, if your work must be done in the church, as so much primary work must be, then a temporary room, shut off by drawn curtains, or even by a blackboard and a screen, is far better than the distractions of the open school.

The blackboard just mentioned, at any rate, the room should contain; the shrewd use of it will create an intense interest that will almost cause oblivion of the most distracting surroundings. A padded board gives the best effects,—such a board as you yourself may easily and cheaply make with a pine backing, a few layers of cheap soft cloth, and a covering of blackboard cloth nailed firmly over all. In the chapter on blackboard work I have tried to show how easily possible, and at the same time how valuable, is the use of the blackboard. If the children are too small to read, they may at least know their letters, and recognize S for Saul and P for Peter, and a cross for Christ, while the immense resources of simple drawings are always open to you.

The primary teacher is fortunate, nowadays, in being able to buy, at slight cost, series of pictures illustrating each quarter's lessons. These pictures are either colored brightly or simple black and white, and vary in size from four or five square feet to the little engravings in the Sunday-school paper. Whatever picture is used should be hidden until it is time to exhibit it, and produced with a pretty show of mystery and triumph. Some teachers hang these pictures, after use, in a "picture-gallery," where the children may become familiar with them, and to this gallery they may be sent for frequent reference against the coming review day.

After all, the primary teacher's chief reliance for purposes of illustration must be natural objects. In this reliance we merely imitate the example of the great Teacher. The objects to be used will most often be suggested by the lesson text itself. A lily, a vine, seed, leaven, a door, a sickle, a cake, a cup, grass,—are not each of these objects at once associated in your mind with passages of Scripture? Hunt out the suggested objects, and simply hold them before the children as you talk about the lesson, and you will find them a wonderful assistance.

A more difficult process is to discover illustrative objects when none are directly suggested in the text. In a temperance lesson, for instance, there may be no mention of the wine-cup, yet you will bring a glass, fill it with wine-colored water, and place in it slips of paper cut to resemble snakes. On each is written some fearful result of drinking alcoholic liquors; and after the children have drawn forth, with pincers, one after the other, and read what is written upon it, they will not soon forget how many evils come out of the wine-cup.

You may be talking about the imprisonment of John the Baptist. Produce a pasteboard chain, painted black on one side. Each link tells in red letters one of the horrors of his imprisonment,—loneliness, fear, despair, and the like. Turn over the chain and show the underside gilded, the links reading, "More faith," "Near to God," "God's favor," "Courage," "Eternal reward." There was a bright side, after all.

You are on the stumbling-block lesson, and you bring in some awkward, rough wooden blocks, on which you tack labels as the lesson proceeds: "A spiteful temper," "A gossiping tongue," "Envy," "Suspicion," "Swearing," "Treating to strong drink," "Playing marbles for 'keeps.'"

You are teaching about the paralytic let down through the roof. It has not required many minutes, with pasteboard, scissors, and glue, to construct a dainty little model of an old-time Jewish house, outside stairs, inner court, overhanging court roof, and all. And how the little model illuminates the story! The jail in which Peter was imprisoned, the table around which the Last Supper was celebrated, the Tabernacle, the Temple,—from the many excellent pictures and descriptions obtainable, even quite ambitious models are possible of manufacture. And once made, they are aids and joys forever.