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

by Amos R. Wells

I may seem to be suggesting books for the older scholars mainly. Let me here urge that equal care and thought be spent on the volumes for the little tots and the "intermediates." Their books are not so interesting to the mature-minded committee, and so they are more likely to be chosen at haphazard.

This is especially true of the books for the primary department. Two or three pounds of their diminutive volumes are shoveled up in a mass, read by title, and tucked in at the end of the list. This carelessness is especially injurious, because it is at their age that the reading habit is formed, and it is of the utmost importance that the tiniest books in the library shall be bright, helpful, and of real literary value. To discover these will prove one of the most difficult tasks of the conscientious committee.

Do not give up the old favorites. When Susan Coolidge's "Katy Did" series wears out, give the old books away to some poorer school and get a fresh set of the same. Remember that new scholars are all the time entering, and that there is no recommendation for a book so effective as the young people's own testimony, "I have read it, and I know you will like it."

Have an eye to the paper and type and binding. Many books intended for Sunday-school libraries are printed on stiff, pulpy paper, that refuses to remain open at any place without cracking the back, and use a cramped and formal typography more suitable to a funeral sermon than to a book intended to attract young folks.

If your funds allow, it is an admirable plan to obtain more than one copy of certain books especially likely to be needed by several classes at once, such as books on Christian evidences, on the Bible, and on the themes of the current lessons.

It is one thing to gather a library, and quite another to get it used, and well used. The first point is to introduce it to the teachers. They must consider these "teachers in 8vo" to be their assistants, and must be thoroughly acquainted with them. Every teacher should read every book in the library that is within the range of his scholars' comprehension. How otherwise can he guide their reading? Of course the most hasty perusal will be sufficient, provided it shows the teacher the heart of the book. A teacher should learn the useful art of rapid reading.

Let the teacher, as part of his preview of the quarter's lessons, make out a list of library books that teach the principal truths of the quarter ahead of him, and give this list to each scholar with the first lesson. A few minutes of each teachers' meeting might well be spent in giving suggestions regarding the use of the library to illustrate the next lesson. Let the teacher often refer to these books in the course of his teaching, learn what appropriate books each scholar has been reading, and get him to give the class some account of them.

Often it will be well for the teacher to ask some scholar to read a certain story or biography or poem during the week, and be ready to tell about it for an illustration of next Sunday's truths.

If you have no teachers' meeting, once in a while the librarian may mention at the prayer-meeting some library book of timely helpfulness, or the pastor might even speak of it from the pulpit.