Picture-Work

by Walter Lowrie Hervey

6. In Matthew, chapters ix. and xiii. How many separate pictures are there? Which are the most important to try to see? What objects, pictures, drawings, maps, would you use in making it real to your class?

Construction. In the previous chapter there was brought out the need of adapting the stories of the Bible to the comprehension of modern hearers. Suggestions were given both for cutting down and filling in.

Choose a story, as of the brave Hebrew boys who stood by what they thought was right even in captivity; the young king who asked God to give him wisdom and whose way of ruling showed that his request had been granted; the shepherd boy whom the Lord chose; or choose an incident, or a period of a year of the life of Christ (as the "Year of Beginnings," the "Year of Popularity," the "Year of Opposition").

Subdivide each of these into smaller stories or incidents (Daniel, for instance, had three great tests, each complete in itself, and lived under three kings), then combine into a whole, applying the principles of story-telling and of adaptation.

Test your story by telling it to a child or a group of children. Tell the same story not once but many times.

Choice. Do not pad. Avoid diffuseness. Put in only those details that are salient—that leap out at you—that are necessary to the picture and the meaning. Any one can put in everything. It is only the born story-teller, or the one who will sit down by the side of a child and patiently observe the points that the child sees and likes to hear, that can be trusted to put in and to leave out just the right points.

Try writing out the story of Jonah, without the book. Compare your work with the original. How might you have been less diffuse? What necessary points did you omit? Did you use more or fewer general terms than the original? Were your words and expressions so picturesque as those in the text?

Examples. By way of illustrating the meaning of the foregoing points, it may be interesting to note the difference in concreteness, i.e., in the picture, to be found in the following paragraphs, all of which are intended to mean practically the same thing.

(a) One bidden to obey and refusing, but afterward obeying, is a better example of obedience than one who obeys in word but not in deed.

(b) Some one who was requested to do something refused in word, but obeyed in deed; another complied, but only in word. Which was the better example of obedience?