Chapter XLIII
From a Superintendent's Notebook
An egotist is foredoomed to failure in the Sunday-school. The worker that hopes for success must cast to the winds any foolish pride in originality, and seek far and wide for the wisest ideas and the freshest methods. A superintendent or a teacher without a notebook is only half a superintendent or teacher. Its pages should rapidly grow rich with plunder. The little white friend must be at hand when he attends conventions, when he reads, when he talks with other workers, when he thinks and prays over his sacred tasks.
The two chapters that follow are merely specimen pages of such notebooks. While I have utilized them to gather up various plans and experiences that could not fittingly find place elsewhere in the book, their chief purpose is to illustrate the wide-awake catholicity that must animate every successful worker in Sunday-schools.
It is right to say—though this is a matter of course—that a large majority of these paragraphs are condensed from that great storehouse of Sunday-school lore, the "Sunday-school Times."
Their Own Review.—Scholars are likely to answer with special zest the questions prepared by other scholars. One school asks its classes in turn to furnish three questions on each lesson, which are proposed to the entire school at the close of the lesson hour. From these questions are selected a number for the quarterly review. They are "manifolded," and written answers are expected from all present.
Out of Order.—An excellent review scheme was arranged by a superintendent who gave his school a list of twenty-six events in the life of Christ, all jumbled up, and asked them to come next Sunday prepared to arrange them in chronological order.