Part 18

1. _In the matter of knowledge._ The teacher knows much more than the pupil. His knowledge is his treasury. From it he draws in his work as a teacher. That which he draws must be fitted to his pupil’s want, else it is valueless. He must therefore learn what the pupil knows, and work along the line of that knowledge. In such a process they become companions, and the teacher can lead the pupil almost at will. With adaptation of knowledge—progress: without it—nothing.

2. _In the matter of personality._ The teacher and pupil who meet but once each week, must meet on the plane of a common personality, or their meeting will be vain. This is something finer than adaptation of knowledge to knowledge. It is adaptation of heart to heart. It makes teacher and pupil for the time of their intercourse in class absolutely one. Teacher and pupil forget that either one or the other, no matter which, is either rich or poor, well or ill dressed, old or young, graceful or awkward, wise or ignorant, clever or stupid, and remember only that each is the other’s hearty friend. This is one of the highest possible acquirements of the teacher’s art, and the one who possesses it has the gift of soul-winning.

3. _In the matter of thought._ As the former is the secret of soul-winning, this is the secret of soul-feeding. The average scholar is a poor thinker. He thinks that he thinks, but his is not his teacher’s thinking. It is the ploughing of the ancients. It only scratches the surface of the soil: and the human heart is too hard and barren to be made productive of divine fruit by any such process. This essential goes deeper than the other two. Its burden is to answer how shall the pupil be brought to think on Bible themes as the teacher thinks. This is the teacher’s most difficult problem. Its solution is possible through community of thought, or an adaptation of the teacher’s way of thinking to the pupil’s way of thinking.

The three essentials enumerated are possible,

1. Through a close and intimate acquaintance with the pupil. (_a_) _Socially_; (_b_) _religiously_; (_c_) _literarily_; (_d_) _in business relations_; (_e_) _Biblically_. Let the student give a reason why knowledge in these particulars would bring teacher and pupil together.

2. Through personal sympathy with the pupil in (_a_) cares; (_b_) hopes; (_c_) fears; (_d_) temptations; (_e_) joys; (_f_) pursuits. Let the student give an illustration showing how adaptation of person to person could be produced by such sympathies.

3. Through occasional study with the pupil of the appointed Bible lesson—to show how (_a_) to select the most available part for study; (_b_) to arrange it harmoniously; (_c_) to outline it; (_d_) to show its relations to other scriptures; (_e_) to trace its historic connections; (_f_) to understand its obscure allusions or phrases. Let the student show that adaptation of thought to thought or mutuality of thought would result from such study.

LESSON VIII.—THE TEACHING PROCESS—APPROACH.

A second needful step in the teaching process is _approach_: not the approach of teacher to pupil simply, _but of the teacher to the lesson_ in the act of teaching. This can therefore be no part of the teacher’s preparation. For this step there is no uniform law. Each teacher’s approach must be his own. What is successful with one will not be with another. An exact copying of methods will be of no avail unless circumstances are exactly alike.

Approach may occupy a large or small portion of the time allotted for teaching. A teacher may be twenty-nine minutes of his half hour making his approach, and in the remaining one minute flash the lesson straight into the center of the pupil’s soul. A teacher may reach his lesson in one minute and spend the whole remaining time in pressing it home to his pupil’s hearts.

Imagine a Sunday-school hour. Picture: A new teacher for the first time with a class. Boys—six; age, fourteen years; unconverted; one dull, one stubborn, one restless, the rest mischievous. Opening exercises finished; lesson read; superintendent announces “Thirty minutes for the lesson.” The teacher alone with the class; four things press on that teacher with a mighty force:

1. _Self I._ Untaught in teaching, and the center for a circumference of eyes.

2. _Need._ The power of the word _must_ was never felt before so fully. Here is a lesson to be taught, and the thoughts in the teacher’s mind can only shape themselves into these two words: “_I must_.”

3. _Immediateness._ _Now._ Minutes become small eternities, while the cordon of eyes draws closer. “_I must now, at once, teach_ this lesson,” but

4. _How?_ After all it becomes a mere question of knowledge. There are three elements which enter in to make the answer—

1. How to prepare for the lesson work, making necessary a study of the (_a_) necessity, (_b_) nature, and (_c_) methods of preparation.

2. How to plan the conduct of the lesson, a step which costs (_a_) earnest thought, (_b_) fixed purpose, (_c_) persistent effort, and (_d_) patient prayer.

3. How to perform. This makes necessary a fertile brain and a ready tact. The actual step-taking on the line of a well-prepared plan consists in (_a_) using good illustrations; (_b_) in attracting attention to noticeable things in the text; (_c_) in exciting curiosity to find things not on the surface; (_d_) in asking right questions; (_e_) in using elliptical readings; (_f_) in working out topical outlines; (_g_) in concert responses, and (_h_) in map drawing.

All these are steps toward the real lesson which the teacher would bring to his class.

EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.

FOUNDER’S DAY.

We have received the following document, which will, we have no doubt, meet a hearty response among members of the C. L. S. C. everywhere: “The Counselors of the C. L. S. C., acting in this instance without the knowledge of the Superintendent of Instruction, but in consultation with President Miller and Secretary Martin, propose that, in honor of JOHN H. VINCENT, the 23rd of February, the anniversary of his birth, be designated ‘Founder’s Day,’ and as such be entered on the calendar of the organization for future observance by the members, as one of their Memorial Days. Signed by Counselors J. M. Gibson, William C. Wilkinson, Lyman Abbott, Henry W. Warren, and approved by President Lewis Miller and Secretary A. M. Martin.” With this came a letter stating that at the banquet of the New England graduates of the C. L. S. C., held in Boston on Saturday, February 23, it was announced that the Counselors had decided unanimously to adopt the resolution. We believe we are not wrong in saying that members of the C. L. S. C. everywhere will be heartily pleased with this honor conferred on Dr. Vincent. Indeed, we predict that there will be a universal lament because the Counselors did not adopt the measure long enough before February 23rd to have made it possible for the circles to have celebrated this year instead of being obliged to wait until February 1885.

There are many reasons why this measure is peculiarly acceptable to the members of the C. L. S. C. The majority of our readers feel that in this course of reading they are personally indebted to Dr. Vincent for a plan which has been of infinite service to them. They know, too, that he is their friend, thoughtful of their interests, mindful of their trials and hindrances. They will heartily rejoice in the new Memorial Day as that of a personal friend and benefactor, and will celebrate it with the peculiar delight and enthusiasm with which we love to honor our friends. There are more powerful reasons for observing the day than this feeling of love and gratitude. The days we do celebrate are in memory of men whose written thoughts are leavening the world. We delight to honor them for their thoughts. We honor Dr. Vincent for the strong thoughts which he has wrought into acts. There are many minds capable of brilliant ideas, of philanthropic plans; but there are few capable of carrying them out, of making them active agencies in society. It is this ability to make a plan a reality, to prove it, which is a distinguishing characteristic of Dr. Vincent’s mind. He has that rare gift, first-class organizing ability. A course of reading planned for those who wanted to read, but did not know what to undertake, had been often tried, on a small scale, before the C. L. S. C. was organized, but to extend such a course to the world at large was a new idea, and to most minds one entirely impracticable. The magnitude of such an undertaking would have staggered any man but one of the broadest sympathies and largest organizing powers. As Dr. Vincent had both of these qualities, he did not hesitate to undertake the organization, especially since he had the prestige of Chautauqua, with its wonderful history, behind him, and Lewis Miller, Esq., his friend and co-laborer, to lend a helping hand in the great work. A purely unselfish enterprise is always treated skeptically by the world at large. The flaws in the C. L. S. C. have been persistently pointed out. Steady sustained enthusiasm in the face of such difficulties is the quality of a hero, and it has been with this unfailing faith and interest that Dr. Vincent has met every doubt or complaint. Very much of the success of the C. L. S. C. is due to this one characteristic in its founder. His warm sympathies and broad humanity, joined to his mental ability and enthusiasm, make him a typical nineteenth century hero; a man whom the world delights to honor, and whom the readers of the C. L. S. C. will be glad to remember by celebrating Founder’s Day.

POLITICAL METHODS.

With quite sufficient reason, the public mind has long been disturbed by our political tendencies. This dissatisfaction does not arise from the fact that in matters of principle and public policy, intelligent people think we are on dangerous roads. In what are called questions, such as those of banks, tariffs, coinage of silver, payment of the national debt, etc., etc., it may be that the majority would prefer changes of policy; but there is a conviction abroad that we are as a people free to change in these matters if we really and earnestly desire new policies which we are able to define. Our feeling of apprehension springs from the knowledge that our political methods are bad, undemocratic and dangerous, and from a fear that the fountains of public life are being defiled by the wicked spirit of “practical politics.” It is not easy to corrupt the moral sense of such a people as ours. The level of intelligence is high, and patriotic impulses are strong in us. And yet we have gone down some steps. At the end of the war, men physically wrecked refused to take pensions; they would not take pay for a religious self-sacrifice. Now, men who came out of the army without a scratch and are still sound in health swear falsely to obtain pensions. These greedy seekers of pensions did not dream fifteen years ago that they could sink so low. Any one of them would then have said: “What, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?” Their fall is directly traceable to the corruption of the civil service, to the fact that in the theory of our public life, bounties should be given to men who handle political organizations successfully. Salaries for civil service are bounties to be had by scrambling for them, or by earning them in the service of Party.

The theory of “practical politics” converts the salaries paid for public service into a pool which parties are organized to secure for distribution among the sergeants, corporals, lieutenants, captains, colonels and generals of the order. “What are we here for,” cried a delegate in the Republican National Convention of 1880, “if we are not after the offices?” That indignant question expressed the very heart of the practical politicians. A party, in his view, is an organization to get offices. And as much of its work is, in the same view, secret, dirty and wicked work, he believes that the party should be under the strict control of “bosses.” Each town should have its leader, all the town leaders should be under the control of the county leader, and county leaders should obey the state “boss”—and the edifice should be crowned with a national committee of “bosses.” This committee the politicians struggled to create by the famous theory of “the courtesy of the Senate.” That theory made the President the clerk of the party’s Senators in each state. It gave Senator Conkling the vast Federal “patronage” of New York to distribute at his will. The edifice was not crowned; the Senatorial “boss” system went down in the terrible struggle of the spring of 1881. Our readers know that history. We do not recall it to reproach anybody. Senator Conkling was the victim of a theory that he ought, under the rule of “the courtesy of the Senate,” to be President within the state of New York. The theory is silent now; it will rise again if the people do not disestablish political machines in towns, cities, counties and states.

Turning to a more gloomy side of the subject, we observe that there has been a vast increase in the amount of money spent in politics. Thousands of persons are, while we pen these lines, living on the patrons who hire them and send them forth to “mould public opinion”—or in the choicer phrase of the men themselves, “to set things up.” It is the business of this perambulating political machine to invent and distribute lies, to purchase useful sub-agents, to promise funds for the election day bribery. The floating vote increases each year, and four-fifths of this vote is a corrupt vote—the voters stand about the market place waiting until some man shall hire them. We tolerate and smile at all this business—except the concealed bribery—and this tolerance of ours is the sign that the malarious atmosphere of “practical politics” is beginning to weaken our moral sense. If we are still in full vigor, this year will probably afford us a large number of opportunities to wreck the local political machine—without distinction of party. Reform will have to begin by disestablishing local machines and bruising with conscience votes the men who corrupt the popular verdict with money.

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

We are glad, though at a late hour, to pay, with many others, our tribute to the ability and worth of Wendell Phillips, and to review his life and work. Glad to do this, for his life was clean and clear, the kind men love to honor; his work was that of the philanthropist and patriot. He had entered his seventy-third year, having been born November 29, 1811, in a house which is still standing on the lower corner of Beacon and Walnut streets, Boston. He came from one of Boston’s aristocratic families; for several generations the Phillipses were well known, rich and influential. His father, John Phillips, was chosen first mayor of Boston in 1822, in a triangular contest, with Harrison Gray Otis and Josiah Quincy as rival candidates. Young Phillips had the best of educational advantages. He prepared for college at the famous Boston Latin School; entered Harvard in his sixteenth, and graduated in his twentieth year. One of his classmates was the historian Motley, a man, like Phillips, of handsome person, of courtly manners, and high social position. From college Phillips passed to the Cambridge Law School, from which he graduated in 1833, and the following year he was admitted to the bar. But he was not long to follow the law.

The public career of this man whose name is known in every land, dates from a certain illustrious meeting held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in 1837. It was an era of great excitement. In Congress, John Quincy Adams, the undaunted, was presenting petitions for the abolition of slavery, in the midst of the howls and execrations of the friends of the institution. Elijah I. Lovejoy had been murdered by a pro-slavery mob at Alton, Illinois, while defending his printing press. Two years before, Boston had witnessed the mobbing of Garrison. Phillips himself was a witness of the spectacle, and the following year he joined the American Anti-Slavery Society. A meeting was called in Faneuil Hall by Dr. Channing and other friends of freedom to express indignation over Lovejoy’s murder. That meeting will long live in history. Jonathan Phillips, a second cousin of Wendell, presided. Dr. Channing and others spoke. At length, the Attorney-General of the State, James T. Austin, took the platform and delivered a speech in direct opposition to the sentiments which had been expressed. It was not without effect. The people cheered as the speaker declared that Lovejoy died as the fool dieth, and placed his murderers by the side of the men who destroyed the tea in Boston Harbor. The meeting, designed to be one of indignation for the murder of Lovejoy, bid fair to turn into a meeting of approbation. But Wendell Phillips was the next speaker, and he had not spoken long before the tide was again reversed. This, his first public plea for free speech, human freedom and equal rights, was wonderfully effective. It carried the audience and established at once the speaker’s fame as the foremost orator of the anti-slavery cause.

From this time on, until in those years of blood the shackles were struck from the slaves of America, Phillips was a man of one work. He lived for the cause of abolition. His motto might have been: “One thing I do.” By the side of Garrison he stood, in full sympathy with his ideas. His name has long been the synonym of extreme radicalism. He held, with Garrison, that the constitution was “a league with hell,” and would not vote, or take an oath to support the iniquitous document. In the years before the war of the rebellion, he freely advocated a dissolution of the Union; but when the war came, he was found a stanch defender of the Union cause. In that band of once execrated, but now honored abolitionists, who “prepared the way of the Lord,” there may have been others who did as effective work as Wendell Phillips; but he was the incomparable orator, gifted with eloquent speech to a degree unapproachable. Stories of his power over an audience will long be told. Delightedly the people have listened to his silver tongue and chaste diction when he spoke upon purely literary themes; the lyceum in our land had no more popular lecturer. But he will live in our history as the matchless abolitionist orator. Since the death of slavery he has been a prominent worker in different reform movements, and the advocate—as it seems to us—of certain vagaries, but his fame is inseparably connected with the colored race, of whose rights he was the devoted, unselfish, and fearless champion. His private life was singularly simple, sweet and beautiful. His wife, an invalid of many years, his devotion to whom was beautiful indeed, survives him; and an adopted daughter, Mrs. Smalley, wife of the well known newspaper correspondent, is also left to mourn his loss.

FLOODS.

In this country and in England the ravages of high waters have become a matter of much seriousness and alarm. Nor have we failed to observe that in recent years the floods have been far greater and more numerous than they were a generation ago. This is due, we are told, to the clearing away of the forests, allowing the water to rush, unhindered by the undergrowth and fallen leafage, into the rivers, thus causing their sudden swell and overflow.

The serious and practical question is how to avert, in some degree at least, the frequent wholesale destruction of life and property, as has been experienced in the exposed districts during the last few years. It is mere nonsense to talk as some have done of condemning the flooded districts as dangerous and unfit for human habitation. Any one acquainted with the human family knows how little it is restrained by the motives of fear or danger in choosing its dwelling-place. Men will build their houses where the ashes of muttering volcanoes fall on their roofs, and with the knowledge that underneath their foundations lie their predecessors buried by former eruptions. How absurd, then, to talk of abandoning as places of human dwelling those great valleys, the most fertile, and in many other ways the most highly favored on the continent. For fertility of soil and beauty of situation, the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi may safely challenge the world.

Neither will it do to say that by heeding the warnings given by the Signal Service Department much of these calamities can be averted. The Service published its warnings to the people of the Ohio valley a week in advance of the recent floods, but no attention was paid to them. And though the time is coming when the statements of meteorological science will command general confidence, still it will not suffice to avert the great loss of life and property. Men are not easily warned, and besides there is the impossibility in many cases, of providing against danger and loss, even though warning has been received.

Since it is now too late in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys for the method at present being discussed, with reference to the waters of the Hudson, viz.: To spare the Adirondacks, there is nothing left but to refer this important subject to the State and National Committees on “Levees and other Improvements against Destructive Floods.” Nor do we have to look long for encouraging examples of this mode of prevention. A large part of Louisiana is habitable and cultivable only through the protection afforded by hundreds of miles of levees. For six centuries Holland has shown to the world what can be done by this method of protection. Her whole North sea coast and a hundred miles of the Zuyder Zee is provided with dikes, her constant safeguard from inundation. Before the dikes were built in the thirteenth century, a single flood destroyed 80,000 lives. At an annual expense of $2,000,000, those rich lands yielding their luxuriant pastures and crops of hemp and flax, are defended from the waters.

We are persuaded that this is the only solution of the flood problem in this country. Whether partial or entire, it should be attempted without delay. In the light of recent experience government can not begin its work too soon. The vast amount of property swept away during the last decade would have gone no little way in defraying the expense of dikes as solid and sufficient as those of Holland. Add the amount given by Congress for the relief of the suffering districts, together with the amount given in benevolence and sympathy for the same purpose, and the sum is much increased. By procrastination we may expend in the above painful manner treasure equal to the whole cost of the needed protection before the work is begun. Let us hope that the year will not pass without decisive action by the government.

EDITOR’S NOTE-BOOK.

A party is reported in Ohio claiming to organize C. L. S. C. local circles, taking collections, etc. Now be it known that no agents for such purposes are appointed by the Chautauqua authorities. Such self-appointed agents are likely to be swindlers. Our workers render their services voluntarily. We appoint no agents.

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