[Sidenote: The American Bible League]
It is assuring to discover that the American Bible League, which promises to do much to quicken Bible study among the people along lines of faith in its integrity as the revealed Word of God, has reached almost precisely the same conclusion as to method. The esteemed secretary of that league, Rev. D. S. Gregory, D.D., LL.D., a man of wide experience in educational and literary lines other than those of the promulgation of Bible truth, charges the present ignorance of the Bible, "everywhere in evidence," to the failure of the old methods of its study. To quote his words in the Bible Student and Teacher:
"The fragmentary method was tried for a generation or two. We were kept studying the comments upon verse after verse, on the tacit assumption that no verse had any connection with any other verse, until we wearied of that, and would have no more of it.
"So the lesson systems came in, and we have had series upon series of such systems, showing that men deeply felt that there was need of system in the study of the Bible. But these systems have been artificial, all of them; the latest of all the most so of all. The men who have been engaged in preparing them deserve our gratitude. They have done the best they could, doubtless; and we will look for more light and improvement for the time to come. But you hear everywhere that the people are weary of lesson systems. They are so because the systems are artificial, and because they do not take you directly to the Bible as the Word of God, but rather by means of most useful lesson leaves and other devices take you away from it.
"And it is impossible to grasp the system, however valuable it may be. You study in seven years your three hundred and fifty lessons in a so-called system; and at the end of the seven years the best memory in Christendom has been found unable to hold that system so as to tell what has been taught in that time. When you have passed on from each lesson you have lost its connection with the Bible, and lost the lesson, too."
[Sidenote: Rationalism in the Sunday School]
It is the judgment of this same observer that these "fragmentary methods" account, in part, for the assault of the rationalistic critics upon the work of the Sunday school. "There was a call for something better, a 'vacuum' in the minds of teachers and professors in charge of instruction in the Bible, and just at the psychological moment there came all this German material—interesting, ingenious, imaginative, ready to fill that vacuum. The two needs met, and so we have had our recent development of the critical system of studying and presenting the Bible, which they are seeking now to introduce into all the schools and colleges and Sunday schools.
"That critical method has taken the Bible apart into bits and scraps and scattered it to the ends of the earth, as we have heard and have reason to know. When one comes upon its results he feels that he does not know exactly where he is."
Men hate bits and scraps, as this writer says, and as Bible teachers we should bring our methods into harmony with their natural constructive sense. Like the expert mountain climber, let us take them to the highest peak first, that they may see the whole range, and then they can intelligently and enthusiastically study the features of the lower levels in their relation to the whole. The opposite plan is confusing and a weariness to the flesh. Give people to see for themselves what the Bible is in the large, and then they will have a desire to see it in detail. Put a telescope in their hands first, and a microscope afterwards. [Sidenote: Luther and the Apple Tree] Martin Luther used to say that he studied the Bible as he gathered apples. He shook the tree first, then the limbs, then the branches, and after that he reached out under the leaves for the remaining fruit. The reverse order is monotonous in either case— studying the Bible or gathering apples.