8. Make full notes, write out your facts and references, etc.: (a) Of your best thoughts. (b) Of your best plan of teaching. (c) The aim and object of the lesson illustrations. (d) Of the commencement and closing of the teaching lesson.
9. Think it all over so carefully and repeatedly that you will need scarcely to look at the notes to the end. Select just what to teach, and do not stuff the children. Memorize the lesson and you will have special unction in teaching.
10. Prepare more, far more, than you will want to use, that you may have ample material for selections; for no teacher can impart all that he is prepared to teach, and the teacher should be careful NEVER TO EXHAUST HIMSELF.
Finally. Do not be tied down to any one plan or method of preparing a Sabbath lesson, but invent new and fresh modes. Never suffer any part of your preparation or teaching to relapse into a dull routine. Be fresh, warm, and earnest in manner and matter, and raise yourself above leaning upon any question-books or notes of lessons; use them if you please, but do not lean upon them. The weekly teachers'-meeting is an indispensable assistant to every faithful teacher. Never forget that the only sort of knowledge which can answer a Sabbath-school teacher's purpose "must be at once thorough, detailed, abundant, and exact."
It is of the first importance that the teacher of children should study well child-nature, child-language, and all the child's characteristics—such as activity, curiosity, inquisitiveness, etc.; what are its wants and cares; its dangers and its duties; its hopes and fears; its sympathies and feelings, likes and dislikes. All these must be candidly considered if we would prepare for the position of Christian counsellor and guide to the child. We must gain its confidence, draw out its sympathies, and win its heart, and all this will require the most diligent, earnest, prayerful study. In this process the teacher must needs often recall his own childhood, and live that over again—become as a little child again—if he would become a child's teacher. Do not ever fall into the error of supposing that your children are ever too young or too ignorant to appreciate a well-prepared lesson.
After these very full directions for the teacher, I am here permitted by Mr. Ralph Wells to give the notes of his actual superintendent's preparation in the regular service of Grace Mission-school, only one week before the previous part of this article was written. The following are his exact notes:
"The Superintendent's Preparation."
Subject—Hypocrisy.
Time, 8 hours' intense study.
Commenced Sabbath evening previous.
1. Prayer for light. Do you?
2. Go to the Bible to see what it says.