PART I. Teaching CHAPTER 4. Twelve in one. the Prisoner; and their practical lessons were seen to be: Dangers in the Path of Duty; Encouragements in the Path of Duty; Rewards in the Path of Duty. Twelve lessons from the Epistles, including Romans to Titus, showed the Christian Believer: (1.) The Believer's Character; What He Is: (2.) The Believer's Possessions; What He Has. (3.) The Believer's Conduct; What He Does. Yet another twelve lessons, from Hebrews to the close of Revelation, showed, Our Saviour: (1.) Our Saviour's Work; What He Does for Us. (2.) Our Saviour's Provisions; What He Prepares for Us. (3.) Our Saviour's Demands; What He Asks of Us. In each of these three review lessons, every lesson of the quarter reviewed had its place in the new-view lesson, without any forcing. And so it might be in almost any quarter's lessons. Although this method of reviewing a series of lessons so as to find one new lesson in the several lessons of the series, brings all of the lessons of the series into an utterly new light before the scholars, it is not as if the material out of which the new lesson is constructed were before unknown to the scholars. The The scholar's new lesson is still a review, while it is also a new view. Its very construction, indeed, is by the scholars themselves; although under the skilled direction of their teacher. The teacher asks the scholars to look back over the lessons they have learned, and to tell him what they see in the direction of his point. work. Questioning-Methods. 233 PART I. CHAPTER 4. ing. As they go on in this work of re-examination, under their teacher's guidance, they see for themselves the of the new lesson which their answers progress are constructing, and they have an interest in it, and an understanding of it, accordingly. It is as if the teacher were to take the irregularly formed bits of a dissected picture, each of which bits is known by itself to the scholars, but not understood in its relations to the other bits, and should question the scholars as to the correspondence of certain outlines A dissected picture. of one of these bits to the outlines of another bit; and so should go on, in the way of such suggestions, until the scholars were all alive to the completion of the one picture of which those several bits were but the portions. That would not, indeed, be the drawing of the picture anew; but it would be the showing anew a picture, which otherwise might never have been perceived by those who had in their possession all the material for its correct exhibit. begin. A few general questions on the series of lessons as a whole, are better as the beginning of a reviewexercise for the purpose of a new-view, than any How to attempt to recall the lessons separately would be. For example, when the quarter's lessons are from Exodus 35: 25, to Deuteronomy 32: 52: In what books of the Bible have our lessons for this quarter been found? About how many years are covered by the range of these lessons? Concerning what people have all these lessons had to do? Whose PART I. CHAPTER 4. Leading up to the new view. people were this people called, peculiarly? Where did the opening lesson of the quarter find the Lord's people? Where does the closing lesson leave them? These questions will serve to show the scholars that the twelve lessons are one. Then comes the effort to find a common teaching in the twelve lessons. A few specimen questions, with their natural and probable answers, will go to illustrate the method of drawing out from the scholars the common lesson of the series; it being borne in mind that these reviewing-questions are based on a foundation of knowledge acquired by the scholars in the former study of the lessons. Thus: For what purpose were the Lord's people led up and down in the wilderness, all these years? "For their training." For what purpose were all these varied directions given them: about offerings, and buildings, and feasts, and the like? "To show them how the Lord would have them serve him." As applied to ourselves, then, what do all these lessons go to teach, and to illustrate? "Our proper service of the Lord." What is that, which you find as a practical teaching of this quarter's lessons? "Our proper service of the Lord." Suppose we set that down on our class-slates, as the quarter's lesson-teaching: Our Proper Service of the Lord. Now, let us find out something more from these lessons about this one great subject. What is described in the first lesson of the quarter? "The bringing in of gifts for the Tabernacle, by all the Preparation a Necessity. people." What is made prominent concerning all 235 PART I. CHAPTER 4. View Calling attention by a few questions to the prescribed details of the construction of the Tabernacle, as given in the second lesson of the series, will bring out the truth that it is the method of the Lord's service which is there emphasized; and that point, also, can go down in its place on the class-slates. After this, as the several lessons of the series are called up in their order, the scholars will readily assign to them their places under the two sub-heads of the main The new topic on the class-slates. When the lesson on the obtained. Day of Atonement is reached, a few questions will call out the truth that there it is the purpose of all this service which is illustrated: "That ye may be clean from all your sins before the Lord." And so the review will bring the scholars to see, by their own work, that the lessons of the quarter form a new-view lesson, on Our Proper Service of the Lord: (1.) Its Spirit. (2.) Its Methods. (3.) Its Purpose. It need hardly be added, that to secure the teaching of such a new-view lesson in a review of a series of lessons, the teacher must be well prepared with PART I. Teacher's CHAPTER 4. Process. his plan of the lesson, and with his outline of questioning in order to bring that plan before the minds of his scholars; or, rather, in order to bring the minds of his scholars to recognize that plan as of their own finding in the series of lessons reviewed by them. But, without such a new view of a series of lessons in its review, the best study of a series of Seeking com- Bible lessons, under the best teacher in the world, would be incomplete, and one with which no teacher in the world has a right to be satisfied. pleteness. RECAPITULATION. AND now, having gone over the teaching-process in all its details from its inception to its review, it may be well to look back upon our work as an entirety, in order to see its various portions in their relations to each other and to a common whole. There is often a gain to be secured from a Summing up recapitulation of the main points of such a work, even when no formal attempt is made at testing, or at fastening, or at new-viewing what has been taught. Indeed, a summing up of the steps of progress is, frequently, in itself, a new view of that progress; and so a recapitulation may secure the threefold advantage of reviewing. may give a new view. Our endeavor has been to ascertain what teaching |