Introducing Thoughts
A little child once declared that she liked a certain sermon because
there were so many "likes" in it. For the same reason, that same child
would have liked Christ as a Sunday-school teacher. And we teachers
will gain Christ's success in the same measure as we gain his power of
putting the whole universe back of our thought.
For a thought comes forcibly from our minds in proportion as we see
its relatedness. If we have put it into connection with a score of
things, that score get behind it and push. An unrelated thought comes
as tamely from the mind as a Jack from its box when the spring is
broken. And so when a Sunday-school teacher would present a truth
energetically, he must look all around the truth, crowd his mind with
applications of the truth, fall in love with its beauty from many
points of view; in brief, become thoroughly acquainted with the truth,
and its enthusiastic friend.
How, now, shall we introduce the truth to the child? It is the manner
of some to take the truth and the child, and bump heads together,--a
process which very naturally develops a mutual shyness.
The true teacher, on the contrary, is a skilled master of ceremonies.
From the crowd of likenesses, illustrations, and applications which
have made him and the truth acquainted, he chooses one to go with it
and act as mutual friend, to introduce the stranger thought to the
child's mind, and put the two on easy terms together.
He does not make the common mistake of sending along the entire crowd,
so that the introduced is lost in the throng of masters of ceremonies,
so that the truth is confused, and acquaintanceship embarrassed by the
parade of illustration. He knows that where one parable makes, two
mar, and three ruin.
Nor will the shrewd teacher ever attempt introduction by something
other than a mutual friend of both parties,--the truth and the child's
mind. The myth of Alcestis may be connected with your own thought of
the resurrection, but it is itself a stranger to the child's mind. The
true mutual friend would be the metamorphosis of the butterfly.
Is that comparison stale? In seeking for fresh and brilliant
illustrations, we are apt to forget that the longer the mutual friend
has known both parties, the more apt will he be at furthering their
acquaintance. The butterfly is truly to us a trite illustration of the
resurrection, but not to the child.
Do not push forward the thought first, and after a ten minutes' awkward,
floundering parley between it and the child's mind, proceed to introduce
them by your illustration. After two people have talked together for ten
minutes, they either need no introduction by that time, or have
destroyed the possibility of acquaintanceship. Illustration first.
And after the introduction two mistakes may be made. The introducing
illustration may keep on chattering, not allowing the truth and the
mind of the child to say a word to each other. A master of ceremonies,
who knows his business, knows when to draw quietly back, and leave the
new acquaintanceship room to grow. The illustration is not the end,
but the means.
The other mistake is in allowing the mutual friend to withdraw
abruptly, before the two, the stranger thought and the child's mind,
have broken the ice. Let him stay and put in a clever word now and
then, until the acquaintanceship can stand by itself.
Nor is there any reason why, with every fresh truth, a fresh
illustration should strut forward. Those social assemblies are best
managed which are planned by one wise woman, and permeated throughout
by her thoughtfulness, words of tact, and shrewd bits of engineering.
One mistress to a party, as one cook to the broth. And so if you can
find one illustration which is on good terms with all the truths in
the lesson, and familiar also to the child's mind, by all means let
that one illustration hold sway, as a genial host, throughout the
entire half-hour, and associate the whole together.
But when the illustration ceases to illustrate, part with it,
regretfully but promptly; as I, following my own advice, must here
part with the illustration which has done duty hitherto.
In this whole matter, as in all others, only painstaking deserves or
gains success. A genius for parable is rare. Gift here means the
poet's power, his breadth of vision, his depth of sympathy, his tact
and sense of fitness. But though it is a poet's gift, it need not be
born in one. How may we gain skill in illustration?
In the first place, by gaining knowledge. How can we expect Jewish
history to seem real, isolated, as it so often is, from all other
history? We, too, have a Father Abraham. Caesar crossed a river once,
as, and yet not as, did Joshua. Compare Washington's farewell address
with Samuel's. And, too, without science, such sciences as geology and
astronomy, a Sunday-school teacher is but half armed. How wonderfully
and inspiringly God's two books supplement each other, no one can
guess who has not put the two together. In brief, for the theme is
infinite, almost any fact, once learned, has constant surprises of
usefulness, and in no ways more frequently than this of illustration.
In the next place, by gaining sympathy. No one can well use
illustrations who is out of touch with his fellows. The best possible
illumination of life questions is the story of the lives around
you,--their trials and triumphs. Do you know a child who has done a
heroic deed, though quietly, for the Master? Have you a friend who has
conquered some sore temptation? Have you met a good man struggling
against some inherited evil tendency? Have you knowledge of the
disastrous results of some single life? Life comes closest to life,
and experience furnishes the best similes.
And then we may study books, and learn how effective writers have used
illustrations. A note-book collection of these will be helpful, even
though the making of it is the end of it; for this study will help us
toward the teacher's chief goal,--the power of putting things in the
best way.
The newspapers should be one of the most fruitful fields for the
gleaning of illustrations; and so they will be, when they learn to
chronicle the good as thoroughly and brilliantly as they now chronicle
the bad.
Of course,--though an "of course" seldom practically accepted,--a
Bible character is the very best illustration of a Bible character,
the Old Testament of the New, the last lesson of this, Moses of Paul,
and Sinai of Hermon.
And of course, too,--though again a belied "of course,"--the less the
illustration given by the teacher, and the more given by the scholar in
answer to questions, the more vivid the impression. Too often we
teachers smack our lips at the coming of the similes, and launch out
into harangue.
Let us see in all this much more than a scheme of indirections. It is
no easy task to find the best way into a child's mind, nor quite
without pains and difficulty is the imitation of the Teacher who spoke
many things in parables.