XIII.
OBJECT-TEACHING.
THIS is presenting an object to look at, for the purpose of getting a clearer and more perfect view of the truth taught. It is simply calling to our aid the eye. The eye is one of our two great learning senses. It has been called "the king of the senses," and it is emphatically so with children; for little children learn the most that they do learn through the eye. Bunyan quaintly says: "Come to the mind and soul through Eye-gate as well as through Ear-gate." This is the most pleasant and effective way of giving and receiving some kinds of knowledge. It cultivates, also, the important habit of close and accurate observation. Says the Rev. Dr. Hill, the President of Harvard University: "It is the thought of God in the object that stimulates the child's thought." The great object is to teach the child more than you can express in words. In illustration, he says: "I was walking yesterday with my little girl, and showing her plants, insects, and birds as we walked along. We were looking at lichens on the trees, when she suddenly, and without hint from me, said: 'The maples have different lichens from the ash. I mean to see if I can tell trees by their trunks, without looking at their leaves.' So for a long distance she kept her eyes down, saying to the trees as she passed: Elm, maple, ash, pine,' etc—never failing. The difference was easy to see, but the difference could not have been so well expressed in words."
Our schools of public instruction are largely using this mode of teaching in the early years of school-life, with great gratification to the children, and, also, with great success. The size, form, shape, color, origin, and uses of many articles are thus taught, incidentally weaving in spelling, reading, and a vast amount of useful knowledge. If this were all, however, it would hardly avail much in our Sabbath-schools above the infant class. But we apprehend that in some particular Sabbath-school lessons, but not in all, object-teaching can be used to great advantage by all classes and conditions of scholars. Never force or crowd object-teaching, however, upon any lesson.
The simple difference between object-teaching and illustrative teaching is this: If you were teaching on the words "Though your sins be red like crimson, they shall be as wool," in illustrative teaching, we should tell the children that the Turkey-red dyes are so firm that no bleacher's salts will make them white, and therefore, we make the Turkey-red rags into pink blotting-paper; in object-teaching, we hold up the Turkey-red calico, explain it, and then show the pink blotting-paper—making it, by help of the two objects and the explanation, more impressive with children. In fact, there are lessons that cannot be plainly taught without the use of objects. They need, however, to be used with discretion; and upon Bible lessons only on those that will make the truths better understood.
We have, however, the highest authority for the use of objects in teaching religious truths. Our Saviour himself practised this mode of teaching. It will be remembered that when the crafty Scribes and Pharisees sought to entangle him in his talk, and proposed the question—"Master, is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar or not?" he, perceiving their wickedness, said, "Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Show me the tribute-money. And they brought unto Him a penny." Why did the divine Redeemer, who never did a superfluous thing, or spoke a superfluous word,—why did He, who is infinite in wisdom, call for this penny? We may safely reply, Because it was divinely best and needful. He wanted to bring to bear the two great learning senses, to wit, seeing and hearing. He then directed the eyes of these scheming men to the coin, with this pointed question: "Whose is this image and superscription? They said unto him, Cæsar's." Then came the inimitable application of the lesson—without which every lesson is a failure—viz.: "Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which be Cæsar's, and unto God the things which be God's." We are told that "when they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way." The lesson was conclusive.
At another time, you remember that our Saviour "called a little child unto him and set him in the midst of them," to teach his disciples the answer to their query, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" Here the little child was the object. The lesson is obvious to all. Even in the memorial service of our Saviour's death, he called for two objects—the bread and the wine. It was divinely necessary.
We may seem almost to see the same divine Teacher bending forward and pointing his disciples to the beautiful flowers at his feet, exclaiming: "Behold the lilies of the field," or look at the "fowls of the air," or see "the fields white unto the harvest," or the falling sparrow, or the fig-tree, and a multitude of similar objects all around them, which were used by him in his wonderful teaching, and with such success that they were led to exclaim: "Never man spake like this man." The whole of the types and ceremonies in the Old Testament were but a magnificent series of this mode of object-teaching. This is the whole, in substance, of object-teaching. It is Christ's mode and the prophet's way of teaching. "It is nature's teaching," says a teacher at our side. There is no teaching, scarcely, that is not, in some sense, object-teaching. Said the Rev. Dr. Chester, when describing good teaching: "This is object-teaching, as all good teaching of the young is. You must take their measure if you would fit the garment of truth to them." Objects for teaching lie all over nature as clearly as in cubes and squares and octagons. It keeps each child pleasantly and profitably employed. It is calling the eye and senses to our aid in affecting the mind and heart. The eye is our first teacher. Hence it is indispensably necessary in an infant class to have plenty of objects. Every good mother and good juvenile class-teacher will make great use of the eye and action and motion to teach and impress the great truths of the lesson upon the little ones. Use the eye more, and make your words few and well chosen. "Present to the children things before words, or ideas before names." Even in manners and morals let the person, life and tongue of the teacher be the "object." "She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of kindness."
Here is an art that every teacher should become facile in, i. e., looking up and using objects that will serve our purpose in teaching; and for this reason, he should always wear his "Sunday-school spectacles." A sprig of evergreen, or a bit of a vine picked from the bush as we pass our garden-gate for the Sunday-school, may serve to illustrate the duty of "abiding in Christ" as the branch must abide in the vine. A little flower or grass, or a falling leaf, will illustrate, through the eye, the brevity of life, and that "we all do fade as a leaf." Even a pin may be used as an object, from whence to draw lessons as to the value, use, and importance of little things. When the pin is crooked and rendered useless, we can with it rebuke crooked tempers or crooked tongues or characters.