Who Should Teach in the Sunday-School?
The Master, who loves little children, stood in the Sunday-school door
and cried to all that came up, "Who will teach my children about me?"
And they all with one consent began to make excuse.
The preacher passing by said with conviction, "I have my sermons to
preach, and Sunday-school work distracts my thought from them." Then
answered the Master: "Crucify your pride in words, and seek the glory
of deeds. This is your true sermon, to bring me close to human hearts.
Thus did I most gladly preach, when on earth, to small classes and not
to throngs. Thus should my ministers most gladly preach, face to face,
one to half a dozen. You have many pulpits more effective than the
elegantly furnished one to which you mount by three steps. They are
the bedside, the wayside, the prayer-meeting table, the Sunday-school
chair. Lovest thou me? Feed my lambs."
The teacher, when invited, shook his head with a sigh. "I teach all
the week, and I am so tired! Why should I not rest on Sunday?" Then
answered the Master: "The truest rest is a little change in work. Your
Sunday-school and day-school will invigorate each other. It is I who
have given you the sweet power of leading young lives. Should you not
use it in leading them to me? Have you not seen how teaching your
scholars in holy things the first day of the week draws them closer to
you in your secular teaching of the other days? Do you not rejoice in
the opportunity this work gives you to get an insight into your
scholars' characters and mold them more directly than by the
roundabout route of grammar and geography? Indeed, if I excuse any
from my Sunday-school, you, to whom I have intrusted in especial
measure the teaching gift, must not be the one."
The business man rejected the proposal with emphasis, saying: "As a
matter of course, Sunday-school teaching is quite out of my line. My
days are kept in close contact with dull matter, with cloth and coal
and wood and iron. I have no time for books, except day-books and
ledgers. My mechanical, routine business quite unfits me for religious
teaching." To that the Master replied, smiling kindly: "I was a
carpenter, my son, but holy thoughts kept pace with my plane, and firm
conclusions were clinched with my hammer. And at evening, work done, I
found time for prayer and meditation and calling young children about
me to talk with them. Your contact with men and things makes you one
of the most valuable of Sunday-school teachers. What parables are
acted all around you, in nature, in your work, in the lives of your
helpers! What illustrations lie heaped up in your business experience,
ready to your hand! Most of these young people in my Sunday-school
will choose some business like yours. How happy for them, then, if
they could have you to tell them beforehand of its perils, strengthen
them for its difficulties, point them the road to success and true
happiness! No; I can better miss preacher and teacher from my
Sunday-school than you men of affairs."
Then came the care-worn housewife. "Master," said she, "I am perplexed
and troubled about many things. My days, and often my nights, are
crowded with a woman's myriad unheralded tasks. The children are ever
with me. Why need I go to Sunday-school to teach them? Why not each
home the mother's Sunday-school?" "Why not each home the
prayer-meeting?" the Master asked her. "There come from numbers an
interest, a help and inspiration, which you cannot get in the holiest
family circle, and which you dare not miss. And what of the little
ones whose mothers are less faithful than you? Have you no love to
spare for them? I have implanted in the very nature of you mothers my
most earnest call to Sunday-school teaching. What is it? The greatest
love of little children."
And then came up two young people, a youth and a maiden, and said to
the Master: "We are too young. We have had as yet no wonderful
experience. We know nothing of death, of disease, of great sorrows, of
heavy responsibilities. We are not wise in these high matters. We do
not understand theology. We cannot teach." "Why," answered the Master,
"neither do my little ones in the Sunday-school want to know about
death or disease or heavy responsibilities. I would not have them
taught what you think of as theology. But you are wiser than they. You
see beyond their little worries and mysteries. Help them to your own
measure of grace and strength, and as you teach and they grow, will
not you grow, too, for further teaching ever? No, my young man and
maid, with your ardent and fresh-hearted zeal; you can come very close
to my little children, and I cannot spare you from my Sunday-school."
Long stood the Master there by the door of the Sunday-school, and many
were those whom he called to the work, and many excuses were made. One
pleaded ignorance. "But," gently questioned the Master, "have you a
mind, to learn?" One urged timidity. "But I will be with you," said
the Master. "There are others who can do it better," insisted one.
"Will you not get them to do it, then?" begged the Master. "And if
they will not do it, then you will be the best, and cannot refuse."
It was not long before a strong little group stood by the Master's
side, ready for service, and as the regular teachers of the school
came up, the Lord of whom they taught received them lovingly, or
sadly turned them back. As hard-faced, unsympathetic Mr. Grim would
enter--he whom all the children fear and elders do not love; he to
whom a boy is only the necessary inconvenient early stage of a man, of
promise only as he can commit to memory Bible verses--when he would
enter the Master turned him back. "You must not teach my children,"
said the blessed One, "until you become as a little child."
He barred out also Mr. Brainy, whose ideal recitation is an argument,
and whose scholars are far more familiar with points of skeptical
controversy than with the Bible. He would not admit Miss Tangent,
whose sole preparation for the lesson is the culling from her book of
extracts of choice sentiments, pretty fables, and striking bits of
verse of mysterious relevancy, which she recites for her scholars'
admiration, and makes them learn. He turned back also Mrs. Scold, with
her sharp tongue and cold eyes. He rejected Mrs. Job, who taught only
from a sense of duty, and only with a long face.
But ah, the warm smile, the eager greeting, with which the Master
welcomed the school's workers! There was Jack Manly, who had not
waited for the desire to begin teaching, but had seen the need and
filled it, not knowing how soon and largely the love for the work
would come and grow. There was Lucy Gentle, who did not feel able to
teach, yet considered, not her ability, but the need, knowing that
duty is measured rather by the seeing eye than by the feeble hand.
There was Mrs. Patient, who had hesitated to begin the work because of
her ignorance of the Bible, but who by quiet and faithful study for
her class had become a wise and thorough scholar of the Word. There
was old Squire Greatheart, who taught a group of full-grown men and
women whom he had gathered into a class when they were boys and girls,
and had led ever since in hard study of God's Book.
There were many others whom the Master received, of many varied
talents, for the Sunday-school can use a wide range of powers; but all
were alike in consciousness of their weakness compared with the
greatness of their task, in willingness to resign their work to any
better able who could be got to take it, in gladness to go on with it
if their betters would not assume it, relying for success on the God
of it. Their credentials were that they saw the need of the work, that
they saw their own unfitness to do it, that they knew their fitness
and power were assured when God assigned the task.
Thus the Master chose his teachers and blessed them; and though there
was no genius there, no mighty mind, no trained skill, but only humble
readiness to serve, he poured out on them the fullness of his love and
power, and they left the Sunday-school room ever bearing precious
sheaves.
That is the end of my parable. Oh that all might know, as we, dear
fellow-teachers, know it, the joy of our Sunday-school ministry! Then
superintendents would have no search to find teachers, no trouble to
keep them. Then to the enlarging band of teachers would come a
constantly enlarging band of scholars, and all together would soon
bring the multitudes of the world into the host of the redeemed.