Counted on the Rolls. rant as to what he has undertaken to do; or, so long as he is in doubt as to the nature of his undertaking. 7 PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 1. Teaching It is obviously true that a man may be called "a teacher" without being a teacher. A superin- Nature of the tendent may designate a person to the office of teacher in the Sunday-school, or the church authorities may duly designate him as such, without his being competent to teach. That makes him "a teacher"-by the record; but it does not make him a teacher-in fact. Nor does his acceptance of the position tendered him, make the selected "teacher" a teacher. His saying that he is "a teacher," no more gives him a fitness to teach, than does the similar saying of those who are in authority over the school. "How many legs does a calf have, if you count his tail one?" is a boy's conundrum. "Five," answers one. "Not a bit of it," says the other. A teacher "Counting a calf's tail a leg, does n't make it one. A calf has only four legs, however you count them.” How many real teachers are there in all the Sundayschools of the United States, "counting" all who are on the rolls as teachers? There are two ways of answering that question; and the answers would be a long way apart. Until each one of those "teachers" knows what teaching is, he is unable to decide for himself whether he is a teacher in fact, or only "a teacher" by the record. (Yet it makes a vast difference to a Sunday-school, whether it has teachers who fill their places, or only teachers who hold them. may be no teacher. PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 1. As an evidence of the prevalent uncertainty and indefiniteness in the use of this term, it may be well to look at two or three of its common and improper Nature of the uses, by referring to certain processes which often pass for teaching, but which are not teaching. The considering of these misuses of the term, will prepare the way for a more intelligent examination into its strict and proper meaning. Teaching Process. Poor substi tutes for teaching. Talking to the Deaf. 9 II. TELLING IS NOT TEACHING. A Common Error; No Teaching without Learning; Ignorance of Longtime Hearers; A Good Teacher's Great Failure; The Pump and the Bellows; What Telling may do. PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 1. Teaching ONE of the commonest mistakes of a Sunday-school teacher is in supposing that telling a thing to a scholar is teaching that thing to the scholar. Telling a thing may be a part of the process of teaching; Nature of the and again it may not be; but telling, in and of itself, never is teaching-it cannot be. Until a teacher realizes this truth, he is not prepared to be a teacher; therefore I would like to tell this truth to all teachers and to all who want to be teachers, although I am very well aware that merely telling it in this way will not teach it to anybody. If the scholar is deaf, and you tell him a truth by word of mouth, with your head down so that he cannot see the movement of your lips, it is very clear that you have not taught him what you have told him. If he has ears, but they are intent on something else than your words while you are talking to him; or, if you talk in a language which he does not Speaking to closed ears. PART I. The Teacher's Teaching CHAPTER 1. Teaching understand,—it is equally clear that your telling is not teaching, so far as he is concerned. Thus far all Work. will agree; but the principle involved has a proNature of the founder reach than this. No person learns at once everything that is told to him; and no person is taught until he learns; nor more than he learns. To tell a child for the first time all the letters of the alphabet does not teach him his alphabet. To tell a scholar all the rules of grammar or of arithmetic, all the boundaries of all the states of the Union, or all the principles of natural or moral philosophy, does No teaching not, by any means, teach him all those things. without learning. If only telling would teach! Teaching would be a very simple matter, if telling were teaching; but no one thinks of counting the two processes identical-except in the sphere of purely religious truth; as in the church and Sundayschool. Who would think of teaching an apprentice to shoe a horse, or to set type, or to make a watch, by simply telling him how? Who would expect artists, or authors, or soldiers, to be taught in their profession by the mere telling of their duties? If men and women knew all the valuable truths which have been told them, from the lecture platform, in social converse, and by direct personal instruction, how wise the world would be! If children had been taught all the good things that have been told to them at home and elsewhere, how much more they would know than their parents-who have not always been taught An Ignorant Hearer. 11 PART I. The Teacher's Teaching Work. CHAPTER 1. by simply being told! And what learned congregations we should have, if all that some of these wise and venerable preachers have told their people, had been learned by their people! That telling has not Nature of the been teaching in every case, all will see at a glance, whether they are ready or not to agree that telling is never teaching, nor ever can be. How common it is for a preacher who has been faithful in proclaiming the truth from the pulpit, to bemoan the fact that persons who have sat under his preaching for years are found to be in woful ignorance on points which he has pressed most plainly and earnestly, until it seemed to him that every hearer must understand them perfectly! A preacher of rare ability and of rare faithfulness, who was a pupil of Dr. Thomas Chalmers, and who remained the pastor of a single New England church during the period of nearly a full generation, gave me this testimony: "There was in my congregation a woman of more than average intelligence, who seemed to me one of my most interested hearers, as, for years, she was one of the most regular attendants at our church services. I was often encouraged by her attentive and responsive appearance as I preached, although she was not a member of the church. But by and by she fell sick, and I visited her to press home the subject of her personal needs and duty as a sinner. To my amazement, I found her hardly less ignorant of the great fundamental truths of the gospel than Teaching Ignorance of listeners. many good |