Chapter 4. The Spiritual Element in Teaching
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Many factors enter into successful Sunday school teaching. A good building is desirable. No doubt good Bible study has been secured in dark basement. No doubt good teaching can be done in a barn; but all will admit that an ideal Sunday school building is of great value in the making of an ideal school.
Good scientific teaching is also desirable. It would certainly be the ideal way to have all Sunday school teachers trained as public school teachers are now trained, not only in thorough knowledge of the things which they are to teach, but also in methods of teaching, so that they could give instruction in a scientific way. The time has gone by, when piety will serve as a teacher's only qualification.
Careful and painstaking preparation is also important. It will not do to neglect the study of the lesson through the week, and then expect the Holy Spirit to help one to teach effectively, intelligently and impressively, when one comes into the presence of a class. Prayer is mighty, but prayer will not bring into the life either gifts or graces for which we have been too indolent of toil.
Then, in emphasizing the spiritual element in teaching, there must be no disparagement of the value of the Bible words and facts which make up the body of the lessons. It is not suggested that the teacher should neglect the inspired text and spend his time in pious moralizing. Nor is he to substitute in place of such Scriptural matters, stories of his own, however touching and appealing they may be, supposing that in this way he can better reach the hearts of his pupils than by opening up to their minds the words of God.
Nor will it do to despise the geography, the ethnography, the biography, the meteorology, the history, of the Bible. Some teachers think they must omit all such matters as these and dwell only upon purely spiritual things. But this is very superficial and ineffective teaching. The Bible is a book of facts. The Old Testament is chiefly a history of God's chosen people from Abraham to Malachi. The New Testament is chiefly a history of the life, work, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the beginning of the Church, with a handful of letters written by apostles to different churches and people. Nothing is too small to be noticed.
We should try as teachers to become thoroughly familiar with every statement, to know the meaning of every allusion. Then we should not regard our work with our pupils as well done if we have failed to make plain and clear to them the facts which form the framework of the lesson we are set to teach. One of the aims of every Sunday school teacher should be to know the Bible well as a book, to become conversant with its contents — its histories, its people, its incidents, its allusions. Then, teaching will be intelligent, misinterpretation will be less frequent, and the Word of God will indeed make men wise unto salvation.
Yet there is always need to emphasize the spiritual element in Sunday school teaching. Recently there was published an account of a visit of an American to the Jewish schools and synagogues in the ancient city of Baghdad. The visitor was shown to the room where convened the highest court of the Jewish community. On a dais sat, in oriental fashion, five old men who were expounding the law to any who had questions of duty to propound to them. The guide called the visitor's attention to the venerable, white bearded rabbi in the center of this group, and said, "That is the most learned scholar of the Talmud in the world." "But," said the visitor, "We think we have some very learned rabbis in our country." "So you have," replied the guide, "but they study the Talmud as a science, while we study it as a religion.
This answer suggests two ways of studying the Bible — as a science and as a religion. It may be studied only as literature; or it may be studied also as a book of religion, to learn from it its revealings of God, and its teaching concerning human duty. The first is not to be neglected, but the second is the vital thing, that without which no Sunday school teaching is complete or satisfactory.
A visitor to Westminster Abbey once heard a celebrated dean preach on the parable of the Good Samaritan. The sermon was brilliant and scholarly, and described with great vividness the scenes through which the visitor wrote to one of his friends, however, that he had learned a great deal about the way from Jerusalem to Jericho, but nothing of the way through earth to heaven.
The criticism may have been too severe, and yet it suggests a danger in all Bible teaching against which we need ever to be on our guard. We can readily imagine a teacher devoting the whole of the thirty or forty minutes of the lesson time, to the facts and incidents of the passage assigned for study, with not a minute for any spiritual instruction. Evidently this would not fulfill the true purpose of Sunday school instruction.
What is the object at which teaching should always aim? For one thing, it should be to make the pupils acquainted with the Bible as a book. But this is not the only aim. The Bible is given, primarily, to reveal us to the character and the will of God, and then to show us human need and the way of salvation. It is meant to guide us through this world to our Father's house. When we sit down before a class of children or young people, evidently our first duty is to tell them what the Word of God means for them. Failing in this, however well we may have taught the lesson, we have failed to teach the part of the lesson which we were appointed specially to make plain and clear to them. The messages of the Bible are personal and individual; if the pupil gets no word for himself, going straight to his heart, the teaching has not reached its highest mission.
One day a primary class teacher was putting on a blackboard the golden text of the lesson. It was, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."
When she had finished, one of the little ones, said, "O teacher, you have left out Jesus." She looked, — the child was right. Too often the teacher leaves out Jesus in his teaching.
This suggests the importance of the practical and personal application of the lesson. What is the bearing of this portion of God's Word on the common, everyday life of our pupils? When we stand before our classes on Sunday, we must so interpret to them the words of the Scriptures we are studying that its heavenly light shall be cast upon their path on Monday and Tuesday. We may think of their life as it must be lived for six week days. Or perhaps we look back over the past week. Some of them have had sorrow. One has been sick, and is out again for the first time. One has come from an unhappy home. They all have had their struggles and some of them have been hurt in the week's life. We must so teach our lesson in the thirty minutes that every hungry, craving heart before us shall receive something, that not one of them shall go away unfed.
We must not fail to bring out the great facts of the lesson; but we must find also for our class the word of God that lies in these facts like a grain of gold in the ore. We must get the word for the sorrowing heart, for the one who is carrying the heavy burden, for the one who is pale from illness, for the one who has been hurt in the week's struggle, for the one whose home is not happy or does not help him heavenward. We must find a message of cheer for the discouraged one, a word of hope for the one who is almost despairing, and a word of warning for the careless one. Then we must put into each heart a thought of courage which will make it braver and stronger for another stretch of life until the Sabbath comes again.
We must try to make God real to our pupils, so that they may go forth conscious of his being, of his interest in them and his love for them. We must try to help them to realize the presence of Christ and to become conscious of his friendship. Then we must make them feel a sense of their own responsibility for life — that for another week they must go out to live purely, sweetly, joyfully, unselfishly, helpfully. They must get inspiration from our lesson to help them to live with energy and hope, and with fear of God and love for men in their heart, for a whole new week of very real experience. We have our pupils for only one hour, but in that hour we should strive to put into their hearts impulses and inspirations which will make them live better, and work at their tasks more faithfully, until the Sabbath comes again.
Much of the teacher's power in spiritual work must lie in his own personality. Personality is the force at the heart of a man which gives energy, which drives the machinery of his life, which determines character. It is what a man is, which gives force and value to what he says and does. There are some people whose personality is so charming that it imparts a subtle influence to every common word they speak and the most trivial thing they do.
The teacher's personality is a most potent factor in his teaching. There are teachers, — scholarly, well trained, who teach accurately, and pour on every lesson a flood of wisdom, yet who cannot keep a class together. Pupils will not stay with them. They have no attractive power. There are other teachers who have not one tenth of the teaching ability of these, and yet they hold pupils close about them, win their affection and confidence, and teach them lessons which make good Christians of them and prepare them for noble life. The secret lies in their personality — they are spiritually minded. They have the love of Christ in them, and this love fills all their being and sweetens all their life.
Few things are sadder than the mistakes made by some good people in their endeavor to teach religion. They show at least ordinary common sense in other matters, but the moment they begin to speak of Christ and religion all their naturalness forsakes them and they assume a tone of voice they never use when speaking on any other topic. They wear a long face, as if being a Christian were the saddest thing in the world. The whole manner of their treatment of the subject is such that happy, wholesome young people are repelled. How much better it would be if in all our presentations of religion we should make it bright, sunny and attractive, so that the young may learn to think of being a Christian as the sweetest, truest, loveliest life possible to them. Spirituality does not mean moroseness. Piety is not something gloomy and forbidding. Being godly is not being long faced. The ideal teacher should be full of sunshine and his speech full of song and cheer.
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