Bible Study
The Bible becomes a new book to boys when studied under such an environment. As one boy wrote home to his father after a Sunday spent in a camp where Sunday was observed in this manner, "Dad, it is so different here, from a Sunday at home; I understood the talk and the Bible study was great; it was a bully day!"
The following Bible course was worked out by the author and has been used in scores of boys' camps. These lessons were taught to groups of boys at eventide when nature seemed to quiet down and the boys were most responsive to good, sensible suggestion. The camp was divided into tent groups, each group being taught by their leader or an exchange leader, one group occupying a big rock, another the "Crow's Nest," or "Tree House," another getting together under a big tree, another in their tent. No leader was permitted to take more than twenty minutes for the lesson. It is unwise to take twenty minutes for what could be said in ten minutes. The boys all had a chance to take part in the discussion. Each lesson was opened and closed with prayer, many of the boys participating in volunteer prayer. In teaching a lesson don't spend too much time in description unless you have the rare gift of being able to make your scene live before your hearers. Talk plainly and to the point. Naturalness should characterize each lesson. Boys hate cant[1] and apologies and lack of definiteness. Your best illustrations will be drawn from the life of the camp and from nature.
[Transcriber's Footnote 1: Monotonous talk filled with platitudes.
Hypocritically pious language.]
In some camps these lessons were taught in the morning directly after breakfast, while the boys were seated at the tables.
There are "Sermons in stones, and good in every thing," therefore the purpose of these lessons should be to help boys hear these sermons and learn nature's lessons of purity, strength and character.
A COURSE IN BIBLE STUDY
LESSON 1. THE HILLS-PRAYER
Psalm 121.
Christ going into the mountains to pray.
Matt. 14:23; Mark 6:46; Luke 6:12; Mark 1:35; Matt. 6:6-15.