XIII

THE TEACHER'S QUALIFICATIONS AND NEED OF TRAINING

While the superintendent in the school is the moving and guiding intelligence, the pulse of the machine, the teacher in the class is the worker at the anvil, or the loom, or the lathe, for whom all the plans are made, and upon whom all the success depends. In the warfare for souls he is on the picket line and at close range, fighting face to face and hand to hand. The sphere of his effort is small, that group gathered around him for an hour on Sunday, but in that little field his is the work that counts for the final victory. His task requires peculiar adaptedness, supplemented by special training.

1. His Qualifications. There are on the American continent not less than a million and a half Sunday-school teachers, who give to the gospel their free-will offering of time, and toil, and thought. They are not like civil engineers or the majority of public-school teachers, graduates of schools that have given them training for a special vocation. In every respect they are laymen, engaged for six days in secular work, and on one day finding an avocation in the Sunday school. Yet there are certain traits, partly natural and partly acquired, which they must possess, if they are to find success in their Sabbath-day service.

(1) A Sincere Disciple. The Sunday-school teacher must be a follower of Christ, not merely in profession but in spirit. He is one who has met his Lord, has heard and has obeyed the call, "Follow me." He enlisted in the grand army of which Christ is the Commander, before he received his assignment to the army corps of the Sunday school, and his fidelity to the department is inspired by his deeper loyalty to his Lord. It is eminently desirable that the Sunday-school teacher should be a member of the church; but it is imperative that he should be a disciple of Christ.

(2) A Lover of Youth. By far the largest proportion of scholars in the Sunday school, perhaps nine tenths, are under twenty-five years of age. Therefore, with few exceptions, the teachers must deal with young people; and youth at all its stages is not easy to understand and to manage. Moreover, the fact that not only the teachers, but to a large extent the scholars, are volunteers enters into the problem. Pupils attend the week-day school and submit to a teacher's rule because they must, whether their teachers are acceptable or are disliked. But the rule in the Sunday school is not the law of authority; it is the law of persuasion. The teacher who cannot draw his scholars, but repels them, soon finds himself without a class. In all teaching sympathy, or the coördination between the interest of the teacher in the pupil and of the pupil in the teacher, is a strong factor in success; but in the Sunday school it is an absolute necessity by reason of the voluntary element in the constitution of the Sunday school. That mystic power which will combine uncongenial spirits, and fuse the hearts of teacher and scholar into one, is love. Let the teacher love his scholars, let him see in each pupil some quality to inspire love, and the battle is half won. Love will quicken tact, and love and tact together will win the complete victory.

(3) A Lover of the Scriptures. Whatever the Sunday school of to-morrow may become, the Sunday school of to-day is preëminently a Bible school. There are tendencies in our time which may in another generation render the Bible less prominent, and introduce into the Sunday school studies in church history, in social science, in moral reform, in missions, perhaps in comparative religion, or in some other departments of knowledge. But as yet the great text-book of the school is the Holy Scriptures. The volume should be in the hand of every teacher and of every scholar during the school session; and the teacher, especially, must study it during the week. If all of the Bible that he knows is contained in the paragraphs assigned for the coming lesson, and the rest of the book is sealed to his eyes, he will be a very poor teacher. He needs to have his mind stored with a thousand facts, and to have these facts systematized, in order to teach ten; and the nine hundred and ninety which he knows will add all their weight to the ten which he tells.

(4) A Willing Worker. The teacher's love for Christ, for his scholars, and for his Bible is not to expend itself in emotion or even in study; it is to find expression in efficient service. A task is laid upon him which will demand much of his time and his power of body, mind, and spirit. He must be ready to meet his class fifty-two Sundays in the year: on days of sunshine and days of storm; when he is eager for the work, and when he is weary in it; when his scholars are responsive, and when they are careless; when his fellow workers are congenial, and when they are anti-pathetic; when his lesson is easy to teach, and when it is hard. He must be regular in his service, not turned aside by opportunities of enjoyment elsewhere; and he must give to it all his powers and all his skill. Work such as this can be sustained only by an enduring enthusiasm, a devotion to the cause; and therefore the teacher must have his heart enlisted as well as his will.

As a Sunday-school teacher, then, four harmonious objects will claim a share in his love: his Lord, his scholars, his Bible, and his work.

2. His Need of Training. For two generations it was supposed that any person fairly intelligent, without special equipment, was fitted to be a Sunday-school teacher. There are found no records of training classes in Sunday-school work earlier than 1855, when the Rev. John H. Vincent began to gather young people and train them for service in his Sunday school at Irvington, New Jersey. The seed of his "Palestine Class" grew into the "Normal Class"; and by 1869 there were in a few places classes for the teaching of teachers in the Bible and Sunday-school work. It is not remarkable that Sunday-school teacher-training should be delayed so long after the organization of the first Sunday school, when it is remembered that in America the first Normal School for secular teachers was not founded until 1839. The Chautauqua movement, begun in 1874, gave a strong impetus to Sunday-school teacher-training; the state associations and denominational organizations took up the work; and now teacher-training classes are to be found in every state and province on the American continent. The thoroughly graded school includes in its system a class for the training of young people who are to be teachers.

It is late in the day to inquire why the Sunday-school teacher needs training; but the question is often asked, and the answers are ready:

(1) The General Principle. All good work involves the prerequisite of training. Especially is this true of teaching; and there is a reason why the principle holds with regard to the Sunday-school teacher even more directly than with the secular teacher. While the subjects of teaching are vitally important, relating to character and efficient service, the time for teaching is short, less than an hour each week, in contrast to the twenty or twenty-five hours in the week-day school. To make an impression in so short a teaching period, with such long intervals between the lessons, demands that the teacher be one who possesses exceptional fitness for his work, and this superior fitness cannot be obtained without special and thorough training.

(2) The Teacher's Responsibility. All-important as is the work of religious teaching, for which the Bible is the chief text-book in the church, there is but one institution in our time charged with that mighty duty, and that is the Sunday school. The Bible is rarely taught in the home, which should be the first place for teaching it; it is only incidentally taught in the pulpit, of which the aim is not so much instruction as inspiration. Practically all the teaching of the Bible now devolves upon the Sunday school, and the Sunday school only. If the Sunday schools of the world for one generation should fail to teach the word of life, the knowledge of that word would well-nigh cease. And the one person charged with that task, the one on whom the responsibility rests, is the Sunday-school teacher. He who is intrusted with so great a work, and upon whose fidelity the work depends, must have a proper equipment; and that equipment presupposes training.

(3) The Demand of the Age. We are living in an intellectual age, unparalleled in the history of the world. The boundaries of knowledge in every direction have widened, and in each realm the search is deeper and more thorough. Such wealth has been added through recent investigations to the store of Bible knowledge that most commentaries, expositions, and introductions of the past have now but slight value. Another exceedingly important realm that has been added to the domain of knowledge is that of child study, but recently an unexplored field, now open to every reader. In such a time as this the teacher who would impart the contents of the Bible to the young must have eyes and mind opened. He must know the results of modern investigation in the Scriptures and in the nature of those whom he teaches. His pupils are under the care of trained and alert specialists through the week; they must receive instruction from well-taught minds in the Sunday school.

(4) The Teacher and His Class. The peculiar relation already referred to as existing between the Sunday-school teacher and his class presents another incentive to training. His relation is not like that of the secular teacher, who speaks with authority, and can command attention and study. The teacher in Sunday school cannot require his scholars to learn the lesson; the authority of the parent is rarely employed to compel home study; and as a result most of our scholars come to the Sunday school unprepared. This is not the ideal or the ultimate condition, but unfortunately it is still the real condition in at least nine out of ten Sunday-school classes. This condition makes the demand upon the teacher all the greater. Because his scholars are unprepared he must be all the better prepared. He must be able to awaken and arouse his pupils; he must inspire them to an interest in the lesson; he must so teach as to lead them into knowledge of the truth and a desire to seek it for themselves. Anyone can teach the scholar who is eager to learn; but to teach those who come to the class unprepared and careless, to send them away with a clear-cut understanding of the lesson, and an awakened intelligence and conscience—all this, under the conditions of the Sunday-school teacher's task, and in his peculiar relation to his scholars, requires not only ability, but also thoroughly trained ability.

In view of all these considerations, it is not surprising that at the opening of the twentieth century the demand of the Sunday schools everywhere is for better teaching, and for teachers who have themselves been taught and are able to teach others.