MANAGING SCHOLARS WHILE PRESENT. Practical Details to be Considered; What Managing Means; Gain PART II. The Teacher's Other Work Managing while Present. AFTER all that can be said—and properly said—of the importance and practical value of influence and of affection in the sphere of a Sunday-school teacher's SECTION III. work, it must be admitted that both influence and affection are in the atmosphere and in the spirit of the teacher's work, rather than in the methods and in the practical details of that work. And when both atmosphere and spirit are all that they should be, the methods and the practical details of the work in this realm are not to be overlooked or under- Something practical. valued. The teacher whose character is most Christlike, and whose heart is overflowing with Christian love, coming face to face with a class of untrained and mischievous scholars in the Sunday-school, finds that there is a severe and rugged reality of difficul PART II. Other Work. Managing Pr. sent. ties to be encountered, and of obstacles to be overcome, in the management and control of those Scholars, which cannot be met by any purpose, however sincere, or however well carried out, of recognizing the importance and potency of one's personal influence, conscious and unconscious, and of loving and being loved as a teacher. Here are these scholars to be cared for. How can they be so manNow, what? aged as to bring them under influence and instruction, and as to show love for them while winning their love? This is a question which has to be met, and now is the time to meet it. A ridingschool. And, at the start, it is well to consider the fact, that a class which needs managing should fairly have a certain attractiveness to a really good Sunday-school teacher, above any class which is under no necessity of management; that, indeed, a class can be said to have a value as a class in direct proportion to its need of being managed. "Manage" is primarily the government of a horse. It has its origin in the French manège, "riding-school," "horse-training," "horsemanship." Shakespeare says: "In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched, A horse needs managing, needs training, needs a firm hand, a skilled touch, and a wise discretion in his guidance and control, just in proportion to his Worth of High Spirit. life and spirit and capabilities; and both his attractiveness and his market value rate accordingly. There are horses which need no managing. They have no spirit which requires controlling. They can be trusted safely in a milk-wagon, or a garbage-cart, with a child to drive them; and they have their uses in the world. But they are not of that sort which is described in the Book of Job: "Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? The glory of his nostrils is terrible; He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength; He goeth out to meet the armed men; He mocketh at fear and is not affrighted, Neither turneth he back from the sword." Such a horse needs managing. So, also, does the hunter, or the carriage-horse, of high spirit and thorough training, which is the pride of his owner, or which is the delight of the family which he serves. Without the need of management, there is, indeed, no possibility of high attainment in a horse, or in any other creature formed for service. 299 PART II. The Teacher's other work. SECTION III. Managing Scholars while Present. Job's horse. better. It is not that there is no worth where there is no restlessness and need of close control,—in horses or in children, but it is that there are added advantages Good and always accompanying these characteristics, in animal life, and that there is an added attractiveness in the possibility of securing these advantages. Oysters l'ART II. The Teacher's and brook trout, for example, are both very well in their way as articles of diet; but when it comes to SECTION III. fishing for the one or the other of these denizens of Other Work. Managing Oysters and trout. High possibilities. the water, there is no such attractiveness in the slow dead-lift of the oysters, from their sea-bed, with the sure and clumsy oyster-tongs, as in the flashing of the fly, cast from the graceful rod-tip, in the effort to hook the trout in his shady pool under the forest trees, and in the adroit endeavor to land him safely when hooked. Brook-trout need managing. Oysters do not. There are Sunday-school classes which represent the oyster element, and there are others which are as lively and spirited as brook-trout. Again, there are classes which represent respectively, on the one hand, the war-steed, the spirited racer, or the blooded carriage-horse; and on the other hand, the spiritless treadmill hack. The teachers who have classes which need no management are in no need of counsel on this subject. If they think themselves entitled to congratulations, it would be ungenerous not to gratify their expectations. But there are many teachers whose scholars are not altogether like oysters, nor yet like spiritless hackhorses. They need counsel and encouragement, and they are entitled to congratulations also; for their classes have higher possibilities than classes where there is less need of management. In other words, it ought to be a real comfort to a Sunday-school teacher to have scholars who pecu Classes Which Differ. 301 PART II. The Teacher's Other Work. Managing Without liarly require managing, and who peculiarly lack it; who have had no good teaching at home, and who seem to have no thought of any responsibility for the SECTION III. preparation of their lessons out of the Sunday-school hour, or for their quiet conduct during it. Scholars who lack all life and spirit, or, again, who are well taught by their parents, and who study their lessons faithfully, could almost take care of themselves. Teaching them in the Sunday-school is, in a sense, need. a supplemental work, and managing them is quite unnecessary. But when a scholar gets all his managing and all his teaching in the Sunday-school, and during the lesson-hour, having an exceptional need of both teaching and managing, he is one of the scholars worth having in charge. Sunday-school teaching and Sunday-school managing ought to amount to something in his case. There is cause of encouragement to teachers who have such scholars. Instead of repining over their trying lot, they have reason to rouse themselves to the exceptionally good work to which they are sunimoned by the exceptional need of their scholars. It is to teachers of this sort that these words of counsel are now addressed. That there are scholars in the Sunday-school who require managing, and that there are teachers who are at their wits' end in devising expedients for with need. managing such scholars successfully, every one who has had wide experience in the Sunday-school sphere is well aware. A good illustration of the sort of |