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PICTURE=WORK
by
WALTER L. HERVEY, Ph.D.
New York Chicago Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh
Copyright, 1896, by
W. L. Hervey
Copyright, 1908, by
Fleming H. Revell Company
CONTENTS.
Page
I. The Problem and One of Its Solutions 5
II. Types of Picture-Work 9
III. A Picture-Book, and How to Use It 22
IV. Side-Lights 26
V. Stories and Story-Telling 31
VI. Some First Principles: Unity, Reality, Order 44
VII. How to Learn How 56
VIII. Books, Pictures, and Illustrative Material 71
IX. False Picture-Work 82
X. A Coöperative Study 87
Picture=Work.
I.
THE PROBLEM AND ONE OF ITS SOLUTIONS.
A friend of the writer, who has since attained to the dignity of a
teacher of teachers, relates to the honor of his wise mother that when
he was a boy she did not make him promise not to smoke or chew or play
cards--probably compassing these ends in other ways--but she did exert
her influence to lead him not to read Sunday-school books. For this
warning, he says, he has never ceased to be thankful. In these days of
supervising committees and selected lists, when standard literature,
undiluted, has found its way into the Sunday-school library, such a
course would not be warranted. But there are still thoughtful persons
who do not feel that in the matter of Sunday-schools they are out of
the woods yet.
"Do you know anything about Sunday-schools?" was asked of one of these,
a representative woman.
"I'm sorry to say that I do," was the reply.
And there are other signs that the number is increasing of those who
believe that in the choice of a Sunday-school the greatest care must be
exercised. Some there are, who, it may be through over-conscientiousness,
are fain to give up the search in despair, preferring to teach their
children at home.
There is probably no other Sunday-school that, in point of order, quiet
seclusion of classes, professional preparation of (paid) teachers, can
compare with the "Religious School" of Temple Emanuel in New York City.
But there is no intrinsic reason why the mechanical and pedagogical
difficulties might not one day be as successfully removed everywhere as
in this model school; and why they may not be removed in every grade.
In the infant classes, through the beneficent influence of the
kindergarten, there are already signs of promise. In the senior
departments the problem is less complicated. But in the classes where
is found "the restless, wide-awake, active, intense, ingenious,
irrepressible boy," or "the girl who is just beyond girlhood and yet
can scarcely be regarded as a woman," and her awkward, self-conscious,
misunderstood brother--here the problem remains, and no one denies that
it is a hard one. Who cannot at this moment see with his mind's eye a
picture of such a class--on the one side a vision of inattention,
insubordination, irreverence, on the other, incompetence, blindly,
consecratedly, painfully doing his--or her--best?
In all things relating to the common schools there is a quickening of
popular interest and of professional spirit. The time is at hand when
none but trained experts will be allowed to teach. Is the instruction
and guidance of young minds in matters pertaining to the Heavenly
Father and the things of the unseen world a task less difficult,
delicate, important, than the teaching of arithmetic and geography? The
question answers itself. It follows that the religious and moral
instruction of our children will one day be put on a firmer and more
scientific basis.
In this reform there are three steps: the securing of proper external
conditions for thought and feeling--in blunter words, the banishment of
hubbub; the systematic training of the teacher; the enrichment of the
lesson by giving to it reality, meaning, and life. The last of these
ends is the only one here under consideration. To this end there are
doubtless several ways. "Picture-work" is one of these, and, it is
believed, one of high importance. That it is neglected is beyond
question. To point out its value and set forth its method are the aims
of this little book.
II.
TYPES OF PICTURE-WORK.
In the Dresden Gallery, the writer once saw two children, brother and
sister, one ten and the other twelve, looking at the Sistine Madonna.
They entered the room, and without heeding the crowd there gathered,
almost instantly fixed their gaze upon the picture. For many minutes
they seemed to be under a spell. They were drinking in something. The
great picture was speaking to them--to their very souls. And they
understood something of its message. At all events they felt its
influence--which is much better than merely to understand.
More striking, because more unexpected, was the influence of a large
copy of the same picture upon a little boy not two years and a half
old. Although this child was passionately fond of pictures, no other
picture ever seemed to appeal to him as this one did. As soon as it was
brought into the house he instantly began to examine it, and pass
judgment upon it. He at once found the center of interest, the young
child and his mother, then pointed to the angels, the "grandfather,"
and lastly to the "lady," but returned always to the "dear little baby
Jesus." From this time the story of the birth of Jesus was the one
story most loved by the child. And a collection of thirty or more
madonnas ("mother-pictures," the child called them) by other great
masters was a never-failing source of delight to him.
Even very young children appreciate the best pictures and the best
stories. In fact the younger they are the better sometimes seems to be
their taste. Are we doing all that we may to gratify, and at the same
time to form, this taste?
But our term, "picture-work," includes more than pictures painted with
the brush. Literature is full of pictures no less beautiful in theme
and in execution, and even more important in meaning, than Raphael's
masterpiece. The story of the good bishop, Monseigneur Bienvenu, as it
is told for us in "Les Miserables," is a picture, and so are all such
stories. Literature is full of them. The Bible is a treasure-house of
masterpieces. More wonderful, too, are these story pictures, just as
they are, if told so that they can be seen and felt, than they could
ever be made with brush or pencil.
How may we gain the power to paint these pictures, helping when help is
needed, standing aside when our bungling efforts would only destroy the
interest and the charm--rub off, as it were, the delicate bloom?
To give help in finding the answer to these questions is the object of
the chapters that follow. Meanwhile we return to our present theme.
What is picture-work?
There is the main story and the telling of it--a work of art as we
shall see--and there are also the side-lights, without which no
story-teller can capture and hold his audience.
The story to be told, let us say, is the healing of the paralytic. But
before the story begins, the ground must be cleared. The oriental house
and bed must be pictured. Get a real specimen of each, if you can, of
course.[1] Provide yourself with pictures in any case, but first of
all, make an eastern house and bed yourself. A square paper box--a hat
box will do--with a hole cut in the top, ready to be torn up when the
time comes; a stairway made of paper, leading up the outside of the
house to the roof; a small piece of felt--an old bed-quilt will serve
equally well--with strings tied in each end, for the bed, to show how a
bed could be let down, rolled, and "taken up"; with these accessories
the teacher is ready to begin the work of sketching the real picture,
the story of the miracle.
[1] See Chapter VIII., last heading.
Not merely for children, but for grown folk too is this kind of
picture-work a means of teaching. In a densely populated quarter of New
York City there is to-day a minister who is not content with mere
word-pictures. He brings into the pulpit the objects themselves--it may
be a candle, a plumb line, a live frog, an air pump. With him the
method is a success, as it has been with others. Does this seem crude?
So are the mental processes of every forty-nine out of fifty the world
over.
Dr. Parkhurst in the second of those memorable sermons with which he
opened the public campaign against Tammany, carried into the pulpit and
showed his congregation the very bundle of indictments with which he
was to strike the first blow for civic purity.
Ezekiel went still further, and not only used objects but actions to
enforce and illustrate his terrible sermon:
"To the amazement of the people, setting them all awondering what he
could mean, he appears one day before them with fire, a pair of scales,
a knife, and a barber's razor. These were the heads, and doom was the
burden of his sermon. Sweeping off, what an easterner considers it a
shame to lose, his beard, and the hair also from his head, this bald
and beardless man divides them into three parts; weighing them in the
balance. One third he burns in the fire; one third he smites with the
knife; and the remaining third he tosses in the air, scattering it on
the winds of heaven." Thus the prophet under divine direction foretells
the disgrace, division, destruction, dispersion of his people.
Not less striking is the story of Jeremiah's dramatic sermon as
graphically told by Dr. Guthrie, from whom the preceding account has
been quoted:
"The preacher appears--nor book, nor speech in hand, but an earthen
vessel. He addresses his hearers. Pointing across the valley to
Jerusalem, with busy thousands in its streets, its massive towers and
noble temple glorious and beautiful beneath a southern sky, he says,
speaking as an ambassador of God, 'I will make this city desolate and
an hissing' ... pauses--raises his arm--holds up the potter's vessel,
dashes it on the ground; and planting his foot on its shivered
fragments, he adds, 'Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, even so will I break
this people, and this city as one breaketh a potter's vessel.'"
It may have been the inspiration of such examples as these that moved
Beecher when, in the stirring days before the war upon the platform of
Plymouth Church, after taking up one argument after another against
abolition and answering it, he carried each one to the side of the
platform and threw it over into the pile with its predecessors, saying,
"That disposes of you." And in his famous Liverpool address, did he
not, when speaking of the freeing of the slaves, throw down and trample
upon actual chains?
At the heart of even the boldest of such instances of picture-work,
there lies a true and universal principle. And we may be sure that we
are more likely to err on the side of stiffness and conventionality
(which is often sheer laziness and ignorance), than on the side of
reality and life.
The unaided imagination--the power of the eyes to "see pictures while
they're shut"--will, however, often serve us more safely, and not less
surely. That was a vivid and memorable action-picture, drawn for us by
Bishop Vincent, at a vesper service at the close of a Chautauqua
Sabbath, in the "Hall in the Grove." "What if the Master himself were
again on the earth at this hour, here at Chautauqua, and should come up
the hill, through the trees yonder, and should stand between these
pillars and speak to us now...." The picture was complete and
irresistible. We all saw and realized all that we needed to see and
feel, in order to receive the lesson that followed.
But the imagination must be strengthened and fed by plenty of sense
material. It can be trusted to respond with its pictures, provided it
has been given material enough and provided these materials are
skilfully brought to mind. In the following extract from the wonderful
"Story of Jesus,"[2] which should be in the hands of every parent and
teacher, we find a type of picture-work which illustrates this point,
for it quickens and makes many calls upon the imagination: "Imagine
traveling through a state no larger than Vermont, and finding not only
apples and pears, quinces and plums, waving corn-fields, maples and
cedars, but orange-trees fragrant with snowy blossoms, and heavy with
golden fruit in January; figs and dates, pomegranates and bananas--all
within a day's journey! The fields over which you pass glow like
gorgeous Persian carpets...." This is a part of the author's picture of
Palestine.
[2] See Chapter VIII.
And here is a bit of Archdeacon Farrar's graphic word-picture of
Nazareth, where Jesus spent nearly thirty years of his life on the
earth:
"Gradually the valley opens into a little, natural-looking
amphitheater of hills, supposed by some to be the crater of an
extinct volcano; and then, clinging to hollows of a hill, which
rises to the height of some five hundred feet above it, lie, like
'a handful of pearls in a goblet of emerald,' the flat roofs and
narrow streets of a little eastern town. There is ... a clear,
abundant fountain, houses built of white stone, and gardens
scattered among them, umbrageous with figs and olives, and rich
with the white and scarlet blossoms of orange and pomegranates. In
spring, at least, everything about the place looks indescribably
bright and soft; doves murmur in the trees; the hoopoe flits about
in ceaseless activity; the bright blue roller-bird, the commonest
and loveliest bird in Palestine, flashes like a living sapphire
over fields which are enameled with innumerable flowers."
Who having once read, seen, and felt this picture can ever forget it or
fail to feel the atmosphere of this place? It is thus we come to
realize that Jesus Christ was really once a boy, a young man, a human
being, on the earth. Even here, however, all possible helps in the form
of pictures, maps, etc., must be called in as aids to the picturing
power of the mind.
The number of "likes" in the two foregoing selections (there are at
least eight of them expressed or implied) suggests the remark of a
humble woman regarding the parables, "I like best the likes of
Scripture." This word lies at the root of all picture-work. Whether in
the parables of Jesus, who was the prince of teachers, or in the
discourses of great preachers whose sermons teem with "likes," or in
the story-teller's skilful comparison of place with place, people with
people--Palestine with Vermont as to size, with England, Scotland, and
Wales as to its divisions--Galilee, Samaria, and Judæa being "united
because they had one government, one ruler; separate because of their
peculiar characteristics, their definite boundaries, and jealous claims
to special privileges"--in all the notion of likeness is the central
point of the thought.
We never can know anything without having something to know it with. A
"like" is the key that enables us to unlock and to enter the door of
the unknown.
It is through picture-work also--to go a step further--that we come to
have revealed to us our own characters. This type of picture-work is at
once the most difficult and the most important of all. An example of
such picture-making is chosen from an account written by Miss Wiltse,
setting forth her method of making stories in order to suit the needs
of specific cases among her pupils. Not every one has the love or the
genius of Miss Wiltse, and no one can hope to win such success as hers
at once; but it may be that by catching some of her spirit, studying
her plan, and patiently practicing, we may learn this royal way of
reaching the hearts of our children.
"There was in my kindergarten," she writes, "a little boy whose deceit
and cruelty were quite abnormal; he would smile in my face with
seraphic sweetness while his heavy shoe would be crushing his
neighbor's toes.... He seemed incorrigible. At last I wrote a story
entitled 'The Fairy True Child,' into which I put my strongest effort
to reach this untruthful child. I told it to the class, and before it
was concluded this boy's head was low upon his breast, his cheeks
aflame with conscious guilt. No direct reference was made to him; no
other child thought of him in connection with the story. The next day
he asked to have it repeated, and his conduct was noticeably better;
the story became his moral tonic, and one glad day he threw his arms
about me, saying he wanted to keep his Fairy True Child always.
"Another child who was feeble-minded was helped to be free from his
mental inertia and day-dreaming by a story written expressly for him,
in which 'I AM THAT WHICH WILLS' was pictured as a fairy, coming softly
to the little boy whose power to try was lost, kissing his eyes,
breathing softly upon his lips, putting her finger softly upon his
ears--making each more ready and attentive--and finally enthroning the
little boy's own fairy in its place in his brain, where the fairy grows
more and more princely, and the little boy more and more manly, trying
hard, so very hard, to keep the dear little fairy on his throne."
Here, then, we have some of the types of picture-work: the picture and
the story, the parable in its various forms, and the word-picture--whether
of things or actions; illustrations or side-lights, the "likes" with
which a skilful teacher illumines his teaching, and the objects, models,
maps, and sketches on pad or blackboard, with which he re-enforces the
lagging imaginations of his hearers.
What, then, is a picture? A picture is anything that helps us to see
more clearly, feel more heartily, and act upon more faithfully the
truth which is not or cannot be immediately present to our senses. The
truth to be pictured may be the truth of people, places, and
actions--external things; it may be the truth of character and of inner
life--the things that are unseen, which we could never see at all
except by the aid of real things or pictures of real things; just as,
for example, our idea of God is built out of our experience of
mountains, flowers, thunder-storms, our mother's tenderness, and our
father's strength. These pictures may be drawn or painted; they may be
expressed in words or in deeds, with pen or brush, with actions, with
things.
Where to find our materials and how to use these tools with economy and
effectiveness are the questions that next claim our attention.
III.
A PICTURE-BOOK, AND HOW TO USE IT.
The Bible is a picture-book. It is history, literature, logic,
philosophy; but, more than all these, for children and all who have the
heart of childhood, it is a store-house of pictures.
The first thing needful for a teacher, if he would touch his pupils, is
to see these pictures himself. This, we must admit, is seldom done. For
it is one of the sad things about the human mind that it possesses the
power to read the words that set the picture forth without seeing the
picture, and without being touched by the emotion which only the
picture can arouse. We can seem to pray the Lord's Prayer, for example,
while in reality we are merely making articulate--sometimes
inarticulate--sounds.
"I believe it would startle and move any one," said Robert Louis
Stevenson, referring to the gospel of St. Matthew, "if he could make a
certain effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not
droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible."
Who of us has not been thus startled and moved? It may have been on
hearing a story read by one who read as though he had seen the men and
the events face to face. It may have been by being helped to realize
and see by pictures or by being ourselves on the ground made sacred by
the story, or, perchance, by being in the same case as those described.
It may have been on reading the old stories "freshly, like a book,"
perhaps after many years, when the old-time droning and the dulness are
forgotten, and the simple beauty and power of the old stories come home
to us. At such times we say, This is the very Word of God. Were ever
pictures painted like these?
Thomas Hardy says of one of his characters that, like every healthy
youth, he had an aversion to the reading of the Bible. Some of us know
what that means, though we did not know it was _healthy_. Better, we
might almost say, that the child spent his time in some other way than
to read the Bible or be taught it, only to conceive a dislike for its
stories. Better a child never went to Sunday-school than that he should
go to have interest deadened. He may wait many a year before the
freshness returns.
"Two grand qualifications are equally necessary in the education of
children," said Horace Mann, "love and knowledge." The teacher of the
Bible must indeed _know_--not know about, merely, but be personally
acquainted with--the old patriarchs, their dress, occupation, country,
way of life, and character; the judges, likewise, the prophets and
kings, the children of Israel as a people, the apostles and their
friends, and, above all, Christ himself. Does it make little difference
whether we think of Christ as an oriental or as an Italian; whether as
clad in the turban and flowing white robes of the East or in more
conventionalized attire; whether as he is pictured for us in the vivid
and startling colors of the artist Tissot, or in the cold conventional
steel of our grandmother's best parlor; or the base wood-cuts of some
modern lesson leaves?
To us as well as to our Lord himself it makes a vital difference
whether his youth was spent amid arid wastes--as many of us picture
Palestine--or in the peaceful beauty of such a retreat as that
described for us in Archdeacon Farrar's picture.
We must indeed have knowledge, as full, as exact, as personal as it can
be made for us or as we can make it for ourselves. And from this will
come _love_. The more full, exact, and personal our vision, the more
deep-seated will be our love. We should therefore seek our knowledge at
first hand. We should look upon "helps" as we regard crutches--good
until we can walk alone; bad the instant they keep us from using our
own powers, seeing with our own eyes.
In picture-work, as in everything else, love is the principal thing. A
teacher of little children, whose privilege it is to help them to enter
into loving appreciation of buds and leaves, soil and roots, winter and
how everything prepares for it, spring and how it wakes everything to
new life, must herself love nature. No "science" falsely so called will
suffice. "_Do you really love nature?_" as President G. Stanley Hall
has said with an indescribable emphasis on every word, is the question
of questions to ask such a teacher. "_Do you really love the pictures
of the Bible?_" is likewise the question of questions for the parent
and teacher whose high privilege it is to lead children from the first
of their acquaintance to love the great Picture-Book.
IV.
SIDE-LIGHTS.
"Can you apply a parable?" says one of Robert Louis Stevenson's
characters. "It is not the same thing as a reason, but usually vastly
more convincing."
The spiritual truth which we would have enter the child's mind--how is
it to gain admittance? Not by a surgical operation; much less by the
use of a foreign language or--what is quite the same thing--of abstract
language. Not by any direct means, but indirectly, by objects,
scaffolding, types, the story, and the illustration.
"Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact, and no
spiritual fact can be understood except by first knowing the natural
fact, which is, as it were, its double." It is so with the child, it is
no less true of grown folk. If it were not for the world of nature--of
boundless horizon, ceaselessly flowing rivers, of deaths and
resurrections, of parasites--we should be powerless to grasp the truths
of the world of spirit. The circle in the water, for example, the
apples on the plate, one specked, then all rotten, these all are but
letters of the alphabet by which we spell out _Influence_.
There must first be in the thing-world--to give one more example--the
"rolling-stone," "the last straw," "the bird in the hand," "the
leaven," the ore, worth seventy-five cents as ore, worth four dollars
as bar-iron, worth $400,000 when worked up into hair-spring, before we
can understand, or explain, or talk about the corresponding things in
the realm of the unseen. Which is only another way of saying that he
whose mind is not filled with the truths of nature is but ill furnished
for understanding the truth of God.
How may we gain this power to enrich our teaching with side-lights?
1. By studying the great masters of the art of illustration. Beecher,
Spurgeon, Dr. Parkhurst, are all worthy of emulation. Beecher testifies
that in his early preaching the power to illustrate was only latent. He
found that he was not reaching his hearers and he began to search for
"likes." He went about his farm, upon the streets, among mechanics, in
fact everywhere, with the thought of the next Sunday's sermon in his
mind, saying, "What is this like? what will that illustrate?" A glance
at his sermons shows them full of side-lights from business, life at
sea, from the farm and the home, from mechanical processes, as the
cutting and polishing of precious stones, and very often from nature.
In a recent sermon Dr. Parkhurst illustrated his single point from
botany, physics, physiology, a ship, and from the actual experience of
two men engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the same appetite.
But the power of these great preachers is only the reflex of the method
of Christ himself. No man had greater power in picture-work. In range,
fertility, aptness, and result, the word-pictures of Jesus stand alone
in the history of teaching, just as in respect of beauty and power they
stand alone in literature.
2. The power of picturesque speech is acquired through earnestness and
love of truth, as well as through rich experience of nature and of
common life. This is hinted at by Emerson: "A man's power to think and
to speak depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his
love of truth.... Picturesque language means that he who employs it is
a man in alliance with truth and God. A man conversing in earnest, if
he watch his intellectual processes, will find that a picture arises in
his mind, contemporaneous with every thought, which furnishes the
vestment of the thought. Hence good writings and brilliant discourse
are perpetual allegories. This imagery is spontaneous, provided one
have lived sufficiently to fill his mind with the raw materials of such
pictures. One bred in the woods shall not lose his lesson in the roar
of cities.... At the call of a noble sentiment, again the woods wave,
the pines murmur, the river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon
the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his infancy. And with these
forms, the spells of persuasion, the keys of power are put into his
hands." And as it is with contact with nature, so it is with first hand
experience of life in any form.
3. Practice. The effects of practice have already been cited in the
case of Beecher. It is one of the mournful facts of human life that so
many powers that might have been brought out by practice always remain
in the latent state. Practice story-telling, practice finding "likes,"
and you will find before long that there is growing up in you a new
power, just as if you were to discover in your organism a stop, by
pulling which you could jump ten feet in the air. "Practice is nine
tenths. A course of mobs is good practice for orators. All the great
speakers were bad speakers at first." And a course of nephews and
nieces is the best of practice for story-tellers, and for those who
would be adepts in the use of side-lights.
A word of caution. Great care must be used not to make the stories and
illustrations more prominent than the truth we wish to illustrate. Dr.
William M. Taylor tells of a conversation with a carpenter in which he
advised him to use certain decorations. "That," said the carpenter,
"would violate the first rule of architecture. We must never construct
ornament but only ornament construction." So it is in story-telling.
Never tell a story for its own sake, merely, but for the sake of the
truth that lies embedded in it. A story or an illustration must grow as
naturally out of the subject as a flower grows out of a plant.
V.
STORIES AND STORY-TELLING.
That was a profound and true saying uttered by President G. Stanley
Hall not long ago, that "of all the things that a teacher should know
how to do the most important, without any exception, is to be able to
tell a story." And a student pursuing a university course in education,
after seeking to know what stories to choose, where to find them, how
and to whom and wherefore to tell them, touched the same truth when he
said, "It gradually dawned upon me that if I knew how to tell a story,
I had mastered the main part of the art of teaching." For to know a
good story is to have literary and pedagogic taste; to adapt or make a
good story for children is both to know the secret of the mind of a
child and to have creative power; to tell a good story is to be a
master of a noble art.
The child's thirst for stories--has it no significance, and does it not
lay a duty upon us? And yet the insatiableness of the child's thirst is
often paralleled by the inadequacy of the teacher's power to satisfy
it, and by the parent's despair at being so bankrupt of material.
In his admirable suggestions for making the Sunday-school able to
appeal to the interest and the respect of boys and girls who are no
longer children, and whom to treat as children is an offense against
good taste and Christian charity, Bishop Vincent recommends, among
other things, "lectures and outlines, and independent statements by
individual pupils and teachers." Story-telling, both by teachers and
pupils, is here suggested as a means of further enrichment.
The "wholes" of Scripture narrative, whole books, whole lives, whole
stories _told as wholes_ by the teacher or by a single pupil, and
not picked out piecemeal by the teacher from halting individuals--these
are the things that in the class give interest and that in the mind
live and grow and bear fruit. "Moral power is the effect of large
unbroken masses of thought; in these alone can a strong interest be
developed," and from these alone can a steady will spring.
He who has never read or heard as a whole, at one, or at most, two
sittings, the story of an entire book of the Bible, as Jonah, Daniel,
Job, or one of the Gospels, has missed one of the chief sources of
interest and power.
Our course through the Bible--incident by incident, verse by verse,
here a little, there a little, years of "lessons," but no idea even of
the life of Christ as a whole--is not unlike the toilsome road
traversed by the boy "reading" Cæsar as his first Latin author: so many
separate, mutually repellant parts, but no wholes, no idea of what it
is all about; or it may be compared to the route of the milk-man--a
stop at every other house, and never a good run.
Not one of these plodders, the Sunday-school pupil, the young Latin
student, the milk-man's hack, can be looked upon as a model of
spiritedness or of continuity.
A teacher of English in the old days, when literature was used chiefly
as a clothes-line on which to air grammatical linen, was once guilty of
giving out a lesson in Washington Irving--so many constructions,
figures, analyses, so many pages, and no more. The end came in the
_middle_ of the ride of the headless horseman. But by the time the
next class studied Irving the teacher had met with a change. The limit
of the first lesson was set according to the structure of the story.
The pupils were told to read the story.
"Only read it!" said they. "Aren't we to do anything with it?"
"No," said the teacher, "you are to read it _for fun_."
Should one be in danger of being misunderstood in saying that we do not
have enough of reading the Bible for fun, for the pure enjoyment of its
stories and of its matchless pictures? The rest will come in due
course. It will come just so surely as the story is _realized_.
But important as reading is, telling is incomparably better. The eye of
the teacher is then fixed on the class, not on the book; the tone is
conversational, the hand is free to gesture and to draw. One can grasp
the whole of the story and the whole of the situation. One can bring
out dramatic power. For there are few stories that do not have some
dramatic quality, both in the making and in the telling. The following
points kept in mind will aid the teacher:
1. The story must have a beginning, concrete, interest-compelling,
curiosity-piquing. "All things have two handles; beware of the wrong
one."
2. It must have a climax, properly led up to, easily led down from; and
that never missed.
3. Many good stories have rhythm, recurrence, repetition of the _leit
motiv_. "The Three Bears" is a favorite for this reason, among
others. The commands of the Lord to Moses were regularly repeated
thrice in the Bible story; in the book of Daniel the sonorous catalogue
of flute, harp, sackbut, and the rest, comes in none too often for the
purposes of the story-teller.
4. All good stories have unity; parts well subordinated; the main
lesson unmistakably clear; the point, whether tactfully hidden or
brought out by skilful questions, never missed.
This use of stories by exactly reproducing them is naturally the
teacher's first method. There follow naturally the _adaptation_ of
stories and the making of _original_ stories. The latter way must
be dismissed with a single word of caution. Beware of a certain fatal
facility in reeling off "made-up" stories. Have you not heard such
teachers and such stories? The latter at least are not true, or
healthy, or wholesome. They are about unreal people who do unnatural
things. They are a poor, ragged device for covering the nakedness of
barefaced moralizing.
No one who has tried to tell Bible stories to children, whether young
or old, can fail to appreciate the need of adaptation: of enrichment
and expansion on the one hand, of condensation on the other. Suppose
the story to be told is the parable of the Good Samaritan. There must
first be preliminary work. The minds of the children must be made
ready, not merely for the lesson, as, for example, by a talk on the
meaning of "neighbor," but also for the story. This latter kind of
preparation for three reasons:
1. To give your hearers something of the same knowledge about the road
from Jerusalem to Jericho, the relations of Jews and Samaritans, the
standing and dignity of high priests and Levites possessed by those who
heard the parable from the lips of Jesus.
2. To give the setting of the story--time, place, people, customs,
atmosphere.
3. To make the language, the steps, the moral, as intelligible to your
hearers as they were to the young lawyer to whom the story was first
told.
The need of the first way of filling in the picture is brought out by
Mrs. Gaskoin in the "Children's Treasury of Bible Stories," Part III.:
"Pages might be written about this parable, for every line is full
of teaching, wrapped in beautiful words. But my object just now is
only to draw your attention to the circumstance that the third
person who passed the wounded man--and the only one who cared about
his sufferings and took pains to relieve them--was a Samaritan. On
this the point of the story turns. First a priest, and then a
Levite, whose very offices alone should have made them ready
helpers, had shunned their poor countryman, and had passed on
without even a word of sympathy. But the person who did pity him,
and, indeed, showered kindnesses upon him, was, not only neither
priest nor Levite, not only a mere stranger--but a Samaritan. Now
to say this was the same thing to the "lawyer" who was listening to
the tale as to say that he was an enemy. The Lord could have chosen
no stronger expression; in using it he spoke quite as plainly as
when, once before, his words had been these: 'I say unto you which
hear: Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them
that curse you!' Clearly, then, it is only by understanding how the
Jews felt toward the Samaritans, that we can grasp what the blessed
Savior meant when he said that every disciple of his must love his
'neighbor' as himself."
A striking example of the mode of using a full knowledge of customs and
people to enrich the story is given by the same author in the following
vivid word-picture of the thrilling experience of Zacharias. After
describing the method of choosing by lot the priests to take charge of
the temple services, the narrative continues:
"To Zacharias, however, one autumn, the coveted lot did fall, and
leaving his quiet home, he went up to Jerusalem, and there entered
at once upon his sacred duties. They lasted for eight days,
including two Sabbaths.... Every morning at nine o'clock, and every
afternoon at three, a priest entered the Holy Place to sprinkle the
incense-offering on the golden altar. He was accompanied by an
assistant priest, who withdrew as soon as he had made the necessary
preparations. The privilege of sprinkling the incense-offering,
like the other priestly functions, was bestowed by lot. One day,
during his week of attendance in the Temple, the lot fell upon
Zacharias. So, in his white robes, with bare feet and covered head,
he went slowly up, through court after court, to the entrance of
the Holy Place. Then a bell rang, all the other ministrants on duty
in the Temple took their places, and the people assembled in the
various courts composed themselves for prayer. Zacharias
disappeared within the sacred enclosure, and in due course his
attendant left him alone there, separated from the Holy of Holies
itself only by the splendid Veil-of-Partition. Silvery clouds of
fragrant smoke presently arose from the kindled incense--then,
kneeling before the altar, he paused, in prayer and adoration.
Suddenly he became aware that he was not alone. Lifting his eyes he
saw, to the right of the altar, a glorious angel, who thus
addressed him, dispelling his gathering fear: 'Fear not, Zacharias,
for thy prayer is heard, and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a
son, and thou shalt call his name John.' ... 'Whereby shall I know
this?' he asked, hesitatingly. And the angel, answering, said unto
him, 'I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God, and am sent
to speak unto thee, and to show thee these glad tidings. And behold
thou shalt be dumb and not able to speak, until the day that these
things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words,
which shall be fulfilled in their season.'
"Meanwhile the people were anxiously waiting for Zacharias to
return. His reappearance would be the signal for the laying of the
sacrifice upon the altar, accompanied by a joyous outburst of the
beautiful Temple music. Great, then, was their uneasy wonder at the
unusual delay. But at last he did appear."
An illustration of what is meant by re-telling the old story in a
modern way for modern hearers is found in the following characteristic
extract from a sermon of Dr. Parkhurst's on the text, "And he arose and
came to his father":
"The prodigal had not enjoyed nearly as much as he expected--what
he had arranged to enjoy. His scheme had collapsed; his experiment
broken down. Going away from home and living as though he had no
home had not worked as he expected that it was going to. Lonely,
ragged, hungry, he thought the thing all over and said to himself:
'I think I had better go home.' He had let go of home, but home had
declined to let go of him. He had been his father's boy for twenty
years or more, and his experience in the far country had not been
quite able to cure him of it. Home still had a pull upon him."
While many of the stories both of the Old and of the New Testament need
expansion rather than contraction--think of trying to bring the
masterly story of Jonah or the wonderfully simple tale of the
Shunemite's son into any smaller compass!--yet the need of condensing
the long stories, of Abraham, Joseph, David, Daniel, for instance, is
obvious, for we must give the children a picture of the whole life and
character of these great and simple figures. To this end selection and
suppression are necessary.
The various books mentioned in a later chapter are all more or less
successful in the attempt to recast the old original story. So perfect
is the original form, however, that the task is one of extreme
difficulty. Yet it must be attempted by every teacher, and it is
certainly worth a trial. The following suggestions may prove helpful in
both modes of adaptation:
1. Use direct discourse. It will require an effort to keep yourself
(in your embarrassment) from taking refuge behind the indirect form,
saying, for example, "And when he came to himself he said _that he
would_ arise and go to _his_ father and tell him _that he had_ sinned."
2. Choose actions rather than descriptions, the dynamics rather than
the statics of your subject. Those of us who have grown away from
childhood tend to reverse the true order, to place the emphasis on the
question, "What kind of a man was he," and not on, "What did he do."
Let what he did tell what he was. Your story will thus have "go," as
all Bible stories have.
3. Use concrete terms, not abstract; tell what was done, not how
somebody felt or thought when something was being done; be objective,
not subjective.
4. A story-teller should, in short, have taste. To form this taste it
is indispensable that he should not read, but _drink in_ the great
masters: Homer, Chaucer, Bunyan, Hawthorne ("The Wonder Book," for
example), and above all the Bible itself. No one can absorb these
without unconsciously forming a pure, simple style and getting a more
childlike point of view and way of speech. Modern writers and modern
ways of thinking are, in general, too reflective, self-conscious,
subjective, and, where children are concerned, too direct, bare,
"preachy."
5. But the secret of story-telling lies not in following rules, not in
analyzing processes, not even in imitating good models, though these
are all necessary, but first of all in being _full_--full of the
story, the picture, the children; and then, in being morally and
spiritually up to concert pitch, which is the true source of power in
anything. From these comes spontaneity; what is within must come out;
the story tells itself; and of your fulness the children all receive.
Finally, the points of practical story-telling may be thus outlined:
1. See it. If you are to make me see it you must see it yourself.
2. Feel it. If it is to touch your class it must first have touched
you.
3. Shorten it. It is probably too long. Brevity is the soul of
story-telling.
4. Expand it. It is probably meager in necessary background, in
details.
5. Master it. Practice. Repetition is the mother of stories well told;
readiness, the secret of classes well held.
6. Repeat it. Don't be afraid of re-telling a good story. The younger
the children are, the better they like old friends. But every one loves
a "twice-told tale."
VI.
SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES: UNITY, REALITY, ORDER.
_Unity._
One of the greatest of American preachers never goes beyond "firstly."
He makes but one point in each sermon. But he makes that point, drives
it home, burns it in, wears a crease in the brain that nothing can ever
iron out. Every picture--and those sermons are full of pictures--bears
upon that one point, and every argument and lesson, for which the
pictures have been laying the foundation, is a part of the same unity.
You never hear him say, "And we learn further," but always, "The same
truth comes out in another way." One is never more than two bases away
from the home plate. It is not a cross-country run, but a game of score
and tally.
At the opposite pole from this intensive method is the typical
Sunday-school lesson. The typical Sunday-school lesson is--is it
not?--hodge-podge. Does the last lesson always bear upon the lesson of
to-day? Is to-day's aim single? Do you hold before your mind the one
point, the one picture, that your pupils shall carry away with them as
an everlasting possession, or do you have in mind to display so many
pictures, so many points, that some must needs take effect?
It is easier--at least it is lazier--to provide _many things_ than
to prepare _much_. One can rake over an acre more easily than dig
one post-hole. And the deeper you go the harder grows the digging. But
it's the last six inches of hole that makes firm the top two feet of
post.
Now pictures help toward unity of aim in a lesson in two ways: they
help to elaborate the one main point--twenty illustrations of one
point, not twenty points from one illustration; they help to teach us
the law of unity, for a true picture has but one theme, is always
simple.
_Reality_.
"The great trouble with the stuff taught in our schools is that so much
of it always remains _stuff_, and never gets worked up into _boy_." So
said Dr. Parkhurst, in a sermon from the text, "Taste and see that the
Lord is good." The only way to work up the raw materials of a boy into
real boy is to bring him into touch with them, to have him taste, see,
handle. But in order to be tasted these materials must be real. And to
make them real is the first duty of the teacher. It is also his hardest
task. For consider what it costs to make a thing so real to yourself
that it can't help being real to some one else! Ah! there's the rub. It
costs to do that--costs time, pains, life.
How long did the Lord make Ezekiel lie on his left side, and how long
on his right side, without the relief of turning over from one side to
the other, before he judged him ready to deliver his message with a due
sense of the reality of its import? Three hundred and ninety days "for
the iniquity of the house of Israel," forty days more "for the iniquity
of the house of Judah"; each day for a year. After that there was no
lack of a "realizing sense" in Ezekiel. He had "been there" himself.
And was it by way of mere luxury or was it from pedagogical necessity
that the Lord showed himself last of all to Paul also, and sent him
into the desert, for a year or more, to think it over and get a real
grip on the experience? It was a true instinct that made Thomas, the
doubting one, want to reinforce a sight-picture by a touch-picture. A
dose of the same "doubt" would be a tonic to much of the pale "faith"
in the world.
When I was a boy I wrote, after the fashion of the day, an "essay" on a
subject about which I had the slenderest knowledge. A tannery lay on my
way to school, and the tanner would have been friendly and
communicative, but the encyclopedia article, "Leather," was my sole
authority. You may imagine the result: a cold, dead thing, not in the
least savoring of real leather. On the other hand, when I became a man,
I traveled a thousand miles merely to see, and hear the voice of, a
master whom I admired and whose picture I wished to have hanging in my
mind. Who has not, when freed from the dead atmosphere of the schools,
done a like thing? And with what gain to the precious sense of reality!
The whole country, not long since, was touched--many people were
shocked--by the news that a Christian minister had dared to see with
his own eyes the evils he was fighting, the existence of which he had
been challenged to prove. Many good people at that time thought he had
made a mistake. He said, "It is necessary that some one see these
things. Do you think that I would be so base as to ask another to do
what I would not do myself?" The result has proved the soundness of
this position. No one now doubts that Dr. Parkhurst was in the right.
For not only were the facts shown to exist as alleged, but (and this is
the point) the man himself who had seen them was so filled with a
burning sense of their terrible reality, that he clung to his point
with an everlasting grip, carried it triumphantly, and laid the
foundations of our "civic renaissance."
The vast audience who heard Bishop Thoburn, missionary to India for
thirty years, at Chautauqua, was stirred to its depths by the simple
power of the man. What was the secret of his power? It did not lie in
his bodily presence; it grew out of what the man had done. He was a man
of action. He had given his life, and had lived. His speech was of that
which he had lived. You felt that he had a right to speak--for every
sentence had behind it weeks of real life.