If the class is quite young, and this question seems too difficult, the teacher, instead of asking it, or after asking it and not getting a satisfactory answer, might say to his class, that Jesus was first tempted through the sense of hunger. He was very hungry, and the devil suggested to him an improper means of relieving himself from the inconvenience. He might then go on with some such questions as these:
T. What circumstance is mentioned as showing how very hungry he must have been?
P. He had fasted forty days and forty nights.
T. Mention any way in which you might be tempted to sin, if you were suffering from hunger?
The foregoing questions, it will be perceived, are very simple, being suited to scholars just advanced beyond the infant class. Yet no one of the questions, in its form, or terms, necessarily suggests the answer. No one of them can be answered by a mere "yes" or "no." No scholar, unacquainted with the subject, and with his book closed, can guess at the answer from the way in which the question is put. Not a question has been given, simple as they all are, which does not require some preparation, and which does not, to some extent, give exercise to the pupil's memory, his judgment, and his capacity for expression.
If the class is more advanced, the questions may be varied, so as to task and exercise these faculties more seriously. For instance, the teacher of a class somewhat older might be imagined to begin the exercise thus:
T. After the baptism of Jesus, which closes the 3d chapter of Matthew, we have an account of several temptations to which he was exposed. Now, open your books at the 4th chapter, and see if you can find out how many verses are occupied with the narrative of these temptations, and at what verse each temptation begins.
The teacher then requires all the class to search in silence, and each one to get ready to answer, but lets no answer be given until all are prepared. When all have signified their readiness, some one is designated to give the answer.
The books being closed, the questioning begins:
T. Name the different places into which Jesus was taken to be tempted, and the verse in which each place is named.
P. It is said in the 1st verse that Jesus was led up into the wilderness; in the 5th verse, that he was taken up into the holy city, and set on a pinnacle of the temple; and in the 8th verse, that he was taken up into an exceedingly high mountain.
T. What was the condition of Jesus, when the devil proposed his first temptation?
P. He had been fasting forty days and forty nights, and he was very hungry.
I need not multiply these illustrations. I have not made them entirely in vain, if I have succeeded in producing in the mind of the reader the conviction of these two things: first, that it is a most important and difficult part of the teacher's art, to know how to ask a question; and secondly, that the true measure of the teacher's ability is, not so much what he himself is able to say to the scholars, as the fulness, the accuracy, and the completeness of the answers which he gets from them.