THEORY VERSUS PRACTICE.
DR. DENNIS sat regarding his caller with a thoughtful air, while she sat
back in the rocker and fanned herself, trying to cool off her eagerness
somewhat, and feeling that she was exhibiting herself as a very eager
person indeed, and this calm man probably thought her impetuous. She
resolved that the next remark he called forth should be made very
quietly, and in as indifferent a manner as possible.
"Why should not the primary room be classified as well as the main
department?" he asked, at last.
To Marion there was so much that was absurd involved in the question
that it put her indifference to flight at once.
"Why should there be a separate room at all if they are to be so
classified? Why not keep them in the regular department, under the
superintendent's eye, and where they can have the benefit of the
pastor's remarks?"
"Because while they are so young they need more freedom than can be
given them in the main room. They need to be allowed to talk aloud, and
to sing frequently, and to repeat in concert."
"Precisely; and they do not need to be set down in corners, to be
whispered at for a few minutes. Besides, Dr. Dennis, don't you think
that if in the school proper, the scholars were all of nearly the same
age and the same mental abilities--I mean if they averaged in that
way--it would be wiser to have very large classes and very few
teachers?"
"There are reasons in favor of that, and reasons against it," he said,
thoughtfully. "I am inclined, however, to think that the arguments in
favor overbalance the objections; still, the serious objection is, that
a faithful teacher wants little personal talks with her pupils, and will
contrive to be personal in a way that she cannot do so well in a large
class."
"That is true," Marion said, as one yields a point that is new to her,
and that strikes her as being sensible. "But the same objection cannot
be made in the primary classes, because little children are innocent and
full of faith and frankness. There is no need of special privacy when
you talk with them on religious topics; they would just as soon have all
the world know that they want to love and serve Jesus as not; they are
not a bit ashamed of it; it is not until they grow older, and the
influences of silent tongues on that subject all around them have had
their effect, that they need to be approached with such caution."
"How is it that you are so much at home in these matters, Miss Wilbur?
For one who has been a Christian but a few weeks you amaze me."
Marion laughed and flushed, and felt the first tinge of embarrassment
that had troubled her since the talk began.
"Why," she said, hesitatingly, "I suppose, perhaps, I have common sense,
and see no reason why it should be smothered when one is talking about
such matters. People's brains are not made over when they are converted.
The same class of rules apply to them, I suppose, that applied before."
"I shouldn't wonder if a majority of people thought that common sense
had nothing to do with religion," he said, laughing; "and that is what
makes us silly and sentimental when we try to talk about it. In our
effort to be solemn, and suit our words to the theme, we are unnatural.
But your statement with regard to the little children is true; I have
often observed it."
"That other point, about visiting, was the one that troubled me," Marion
said. "It doesn't annihilate it to say that teachers don't visit; they
don't, to be sure, with here and there a delightful exception. My
experience on this matter, as well as on several other matters connected
with the subject, reaches beyond these few weeks of personal experience.
I have had my eyes very wide open; I was alive to inconsistencies
wherever I found them; the world and the church, and especially the
Sunday-school, seemed to me to be full of professions without any
practice. I rather enjoyed finding such flaws. Why I thought the thin
spots in other people's garments would keep me any warmer, I am sure I
don't know; but I was fond of bringing them to the surface.
"Still, because a duty isn't done is no sign that it cannot be. Of
course a teacher with six pupils could visit them frequently, while one
with a hundred could do it but rarely; and yet, systematic effort would
accomplish a great deal in that direction, it seems to me. I don't know
why we should have more than fifty people in our churches; certainly the
pastor could visit them much more frequently, and keep a better
oversight, than when he had eight hundred, as you have; yet we don't
think it the best way after all. We recognize the enthusiasm of numbers
and the necessity for economizing good workers so long as the field for
work is so large.
"But I know a way in which a strong personal influence could be kept
over even a hundred children; by keeping watch for the sick and
sorrowing in their homes, and establishing an intimacy there, and by
making a gathering of some sort, say twice a year, or oftener, if a
person could, and giving the day to them; and, well, in a hundred
different ways that I will not take your time to speak of; only we
teachers of day-schools know that we can make our influence far
reaching, even when our numbers are large; and we know that there is
such an influence in numbers and in disciplined action, that, other
things being equal, we can teach mathematics to a class of fifty better
than we can to a class of five; and if mathematics, why not the Lord's
Prayer?
"Now I have relieved my mind on this subject," she added, laughing, as
she arose, "and I feel a good deal better. Mind, I haven't said at all
that the present system cannot be carried out successfully; I only say
that I can't do it. I have tried it and failed; it is not according to
my way of working."
"But the remedy, my dear friend; in our class, for instance. Suppose we
wanted to reorganize, what would we do with the teachers in rule at
present?"
Marion dropped back again into her chair with a dismayed little laugh
and an expressive shrug of her shapely shoulders.
"Now you have touched a vital difficulty," she said. "I don't pretend to
be able to help people out of a scrape like that. Having gotten
themselves in, they must get out the best way they can, if there _is_
any way."
"I am surprised that you do not suggest that they be unceremoniously
informed that their services are not needed, and advise them to join a
Bible class," Dr. Dennis said, dryly. "That is the practical and helpful
way that the subject is often disposed of in our conventions. I often
wonder if those who so suggest would like to be the pastor of the church
where such advice was adopted, and undertake to heal all the sores that
would be the result."
"So long as human nature is made of the queer stuff that it is, I offer
no such remedy," Marion said, decidedly. "It is very odd that the people
who do the least work in this world are the most sensitive as to
position, etc. No, I see the trouble in the way. It could be partly
disposed of in time, by sending all these sub-classes out into the other
school, and organizing a new primary class out of the babies who have
not yet come in."
"But there would be an injustice there. It would send out many babies
who ought to have the privileges of the primary-room for some time yet."
"And there is another difficulty; it would send out those young girls as
teachers of the children, and they are not fit to teach; they should be
studying."
"After all," he said, going back to his own thoughts, instead of
answering her last remark, "wouldn't the style of teaching that you
suggest for this one woman and her assistant involve an unusual degree
of talent, and consecration, and abnegation?"
"Yes," Marion said, quickly and earnestly, "I think it would; and I
believe that there is no teaching done in our Sabbath-school that is
worthy of the name that does not involve all of these requirements;
especially is it the case in teaching little children divine truths; one
might teach them the alphabet without positive mental injury if they
were not fully in sympathy, yet I doubt that; but one cannot teach the
Sermon on the Mount in a way to reach the child-heart unless one is
thoroughly and solemnly in earnest, and loves the souls of the little
children so much that she can give up her very self for them.
"This is my theory; I want to work toward it. That is one of the strong
reasons why I think two or three teachers are better for a primary class
than twenty; because a church can generally furnish that number of
really consecrated workers that she can spare for the primary class,
while to find twenty who can be spared for that room one would need to
go to paradise I am afraid. Now I know, Dr. Dennis, that such talk
sounds as if I were insufferably conceited; but I don't believe I am; I
simply know what I am willing to try to do; and, to a certain extent, I
know what I _can_ do. Why should I not? I have tried it a long time."
"If you are conceited," Dr. Dennis said, smiling, "it is a real
refreshing form for it to appear in. I am almost a convert to your
theory; at least so far as I need converting. If I should tell you that
something like your idea has always been mine, you would not consider me
a hypocrite, would you?"
"If you think so, why have we the present system in our school?"
"My dear friend, I did not manufacture the school; it is as I found it;
and there are those young ladies, who, however unfaithful they are--and
a few of them are just that--do not reach the only point where they
could give positive help, that of resigning, and giving us a chance to
do better. Besides, they are, as you say, sensitive; they do not like to
be called to account for occasional absences; in fact, they do not like
being controlled in any way."
"That is one of the marked difficulties," Marion said, eagerly. "Now I
have heard people talk, who led you to infer that it was the easiest
thing in life to mold these young teachers into the required shape and
form; that you had only to sweetly suggest and advise and direct, and
they sweetly succumbed. Now, don't their mothers know that young ladies
naturally do no such thing? It is very difficult for them to yield their
opinions to one whose authority they do not recognize; and they are not
fond of admitting authority even where family life sanctions it. Oh, the
whole subject is just teeming with difficulties; put it in any form you
will, it seems to me to be a mistake.
"Where you give these young ladies the lesson to teach, the diverse
minds that are brought to bear on it make it almost impossible for the
leader to give an intelligent summing up. How is she to discover what
special point has been taken up by each teacher? As a bit of private
experience, I think she will be a fortunate woman if she finds that
_any_ point at all has been reached in many of the classes.
"There is only now and then a teacher who believes that little children
are capable of understanding the application of a story. I can't
understand why, if that is the best method of managing a primary class,
people take the trouble to have a separate room and another
superintendent. Why don't they stay in the main department? I always
thought that one of the special values of a separate room was that the
lesson may be given in a distinct and natural tone of voice, and with
illustrations and accompaniments that cannot be used, where many classes
are together, without disturbing some of them.
"If, on the other hand, the sub-teachers are not expected to give the
lesson, but only to teach certain opening recitations, then you have the
spectacle of employing a dozen or twenty persons to do the work of one.
Then there's another thing; our room is not suited to the plan of
subdivision, and there is only occasionally a room that has been built
to order, which is--"
"On the whole, you do not at all believe in the plan of subdivision,"
Dr. Dennis said, laughing.
And then callers came, and Marion took her leave.
"I am not quite sure whether I like him or dislike him, or whether I am
afraid of him just a trifle." This she said to the girls as they went
home from prayer-meeting. "He has a queer way of branching off from the
subject entirely, just when you suppose that you have interested him.
Sometimes he interrupts with a sentence that sounds wonderfully as if he
might be quizzing you. He is a trifle queer anyway. I don't believe I
love him with all the zeal that a person should bestow on a pastor. I am
loyal on that subject theoretically, but practically I stand in awe."
"I don't see how you can think him sarcastic," Flossy said. "There is
not the least tinge of that element in his nature, I think; at least I
have never seen it. I don't feel afraid of him, either; once I thought I
should; but he is so gentle and pleasant, and meets one half way, and
understands what one wants to tell better than they understand
themselves. Oh, I like him ever so much. He is not sarcastic to me."
Marion looked down upon the fair little girl at her side with a smile
that had a sort of almost motherly tenderness in it, as she said,
gently:
"One would be a very bear to think of quizzing a humming-bird, you know.
It would be very silly in him to be sarcastic to you."
Eurie interrupted the talk:
"What is the matter with the prayer-meetings?" she asked. "Do any of you
know? I do wish we could do something to make them less forlorn. I am
almost homesick every time I go. If there were more people there the
room wouldn't look so desolate. Why on earth don't the people come?"
"Constitutionally opposed to prayer-meetings; or it is too warm, or too
damp, or too something, for most of them to go out," Marion said.
And Ruth added:
"It is not wonderful that you find sarcastic people in the world,
Marion. The habit grows on you."
"Does it," Marion asked, speaking with sadness. "I am sorry to hear
that. I really thought I was improving."
"The question is, can we do anything to improve matters?" Eurie said.
"Can't we manage to smuggle some more people into that chapel on
Wednesday evenings?"
"Invite them to go, do you mean?" Flossy said, and her eyes brightened.
"I never thought of that. We might get our friends to go. Who knows what
good might be done in that way? What if we try it?"
Ruth looked gloomy. This way of working was wonderfully distasteful to
her. She specially disliked what she called thrusting unpopular
subjects on people's attention. But she reflected that she had never yet
found a way to work which she did like; so she was silent.
Flossy, according to her usual custom, persistently followed up the new
idea.
"Let us try it," she said. "Suppose we pledge ourselves each to bring
another to the meeting next week."
"If we can," Marion said, significantly.
"Well, of course, some of us can," Eurie answered. "You ought to be able
to, anyway. There you are in a school-room, surrounded by hundreds of
people who ought to go; and in a boarding-house, coming in contact with
dozens of another stamp, who are in equal need. I should think you had
opportunities enough."
"I know it," Marion said, promptly. "If I were only situated as you are,
with nobody but a father and mother, and a brother and a couple of
sisters to ask--people who are of no special consequence to you, and
about whom it will make no personal difference to you whether they go to
church or not--it would be some excuse for not bringing anybody; but a
boarding-house full of men and women, and a room full of school
girls!--consider your privileges, Marion Wilbur."
Eurie laughed.
"Oh, I can get Nell to go," she said. "He nearly always does what I want
him to. But I was thinking how many you have to work among."
"Six people are as good to work among as sixty, until you get them all,"
Marion answered, quickly.
As for Ruth, it was only the darkness that hid her curling lip. She
someway could not help disliking people who, like Nellis Mitchell,
always did what they were asked to do, just to oblige. Also, she dreaded
this new plan. She had no one to ask, no one to influence. So she said
to herself, gloomily, although (knowing that it was untrue) she did not
venture to say it aloud. She gave consent, of course, to the proposition
to try by personal effort to increase the number at prayer-meeting. It
would be absurd to object to it. She did not care to own that she shrunk
from personal effort of this sort; it was a grief to her very soul that
she did so shrink.
"Remember, we stand pledged to try for one new face at the
prayer-meeting," Eurie said, as she bade them good night. "Pledged to
_try_, you understand, Marion, we can at least do that, even if we don't
succeed."
"In the meantime, remember that we have our Bible evening to-morrow,"
Marion returned. "You are to come bristling with texts from your
standpoint; it will not do to forget that."
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